GU10 Replacements

[Ash]

A little while ago I posted about replacing GU10 Halogen Spots with LED equivalents. The general opinion was that they were very good.

Since then decided to buy one and give it a go. Found it to be no where near as bright as a halogen, but it does a good job of illuminating a specific area in the kitchen.

I have replaced another failed GU10 halogen with a GU10 compact fluorescent fitting. This I would say is just about as bright as a 50 watt halogen, uses just 11 watts and is meant to have a life about 5 times longer than the halogen lamp. They aren't cheap, I paid just under £10.00 for one at an electrical wholesalers. They are slightly longer than the halogen, but they sit nice and flush in my ceiling spot fittings.

As the halogen bulbs fail I think in future I will be replacing them with the compact fluorescents. Anyone else had any experience using these? any comments?

Ash

[Andrew Gabriel]

Really? There have been a few such threads, but they've all indicated that LED GU10's will be pretty useless.

As a general guide, multiply a compact fluorescent's power by 4 to get the equivalent. These GU10's are probably worse than that because of the problem of getting the light out from a reasonable length tube in such a cramped space. However, they are flood lamps and may now be directly lighting more of your kitchen than the previous GU10's did, which could easily more than compensate. (You should judge their relative effectiveness by how well they light the kitchen, rather than how bright they appear.)

Life of these tiny lamps may be significantly affected by their run temperature, which in turn will depend on the fitting and ventilation.

I've seen them cheaper in Homebase, but this may have been a 7W one.

[Ash]

Andrew - Oops, missed out the word 'not'. Sorry.

Ash