My sister wants to put in some energy saving "halogen" downlighters (at
240V).
The standard halogen bulb seems to be 50W (so that's not energy saving at all!) and she's looking at the LED bulbs with the same fitting (GU10).
They are rated at 0.5-1.2W, but there is no "equivalent" Wattage described on the box. Does anyone know what this is?
(BTW we also noted some compact CFL's that fitted into the same fitting and they did have the 7W = 30W (or whatever) info on the box, but she doesn't want those)
I don't know what the equivalent is, but they're bloody useless unless all you want to do is light the interioe of a display cabinet.
You can get 11W versions (Google Megaman), but if she wants a number of downlighters, I'd go for some 11W CFL and some 50W Halogens - not as efficient, but she'll gain some efficiency, while having some instant light while the CFLs warm up.
If you really want halogen and energy saving, the only swap you could realistically make is to go for a 12V halogen of slightly lower wattage
- say 30W Vs 50W. The higher light output per watt will compensate and the ligt is whiter from the LV bulbs and hence seems brighter in many cases. You won't be able to use the same fittings though.
They are not equivalent in any sense of the word - hence why no rating. They tend to have a very narrow illumination pattern as well.
They are probably her best option if she wants an energy saving option that gives some usable light.
IME you need about 5W LED to get close to a 50W halogen. These are very expensive to buy. See
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> (BTW we also noted some compact CFL's that fitted into the same fitting and
I doubt 7W CFL would be anywhere near a bright as a 50W (or even a 30W halogen). Beware that CFL GU10s tend to be longer than the original halogen bulbs so may not fit.
SWMBO recently had some of these installed in our kitchen. They come as a complete set but I think that the lamp is slightly longer than the standard GU10. On switch onthere is a second or so delay before they go to half brightness and they are up to full brightness in less than a minute.
It is possible to have some of the best of both worlds by using concealed fluorescent lighting with low power halogens. One of the wiki articles talks about this, probably the halogen one.
Lets put it like this - I had 11*50W halogens in the kitchen in the house i've recently moved from (it was about 6 foot wide and 15 foot long) - it was "bright" but halogens are prone to creating shadows and dark areas because the beam is quite focussed which she might find annoying.
Prior to that there were two 4 foot fluorescent tubes (one either end) which did the job just fine :-}
That's it. It's that minute that's the problem - it's quite common to nip into the kitchen to grab some scissors or something, but searching in the dim light is a pain and waiting for them to warm up is worse, hence the mix of types. On the other hand, we've got them in our toilet and they're great, as they don't dazzle you if you need to nip in in the middle of the night!
LED is fantastic, used in the right places, replacing GE44s in pinball machines being a great application, short range , replacing a small filament lamp that has fallen off the efficiency cliff and cutting heat build up.
In a kitchen application, under and in cupboard and in kick plates are great application for LED, instant light and with selective switching can have a low level light for late night fridge visits.
Not so great at replacing large wattage units , LED equivalent for 50W halogen dosen`t yet exist. Best of 5 W units are approaching 20W equivalence.
240V GU10 MR16 lights are rubbish, weren`t any good when they came out and they haven`t improved, MR16 in 12V is actually pretty good efficiency wise and has a very pleasant light quality.
CFL retrofit for GU10 is rubbish, light output both intial and after warm up is poor, lamp lifetime is very suspect, these are not `green` lamps by any interpretation.
Fluro downlighters are not a bad idea, but something that is designed form start as such is much better idea, aperture ends up a bit bigger :
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one light source is correct for all applications, mixture of sources is often best way , cable is cheap to pull during construction and very expensive after.
is astonishly good and the only LED downlight I have come across so far that is both bright and has a warm colour. In light output terms it is difficult to distinguish from a 50W halogen by the naked eye. The downside is the price at £20. A nine bulb kitchen is quite an investment! But hopefully they will come down in price in due course. Regards Bruce
About a 1-to-1 match for filament lighting, for the consumer grade products you'll find in the shops, i.e. equivalent to about 1/50th of the output of the 50W halogen. And the colour will be pale blue.
That's a lie anyway. With such small compact fluorescent reflectors, you'll do very well of you get even a 2:1 ratio, so you'd need a 25W one to match a 50W halogen, and they don't exist because they'd overheat. Sometimes swapping for the 7 or 9W CFL is not quite as disasterous as calculations alone would imply, because it's a wider beam spread, lighting up walls more, and improving the useful levels of illumination in a room.
BTW, LED's are fluorscent too, if it's that that she doesn't like about CFLs.
There are no consumer grade low energy downlighters which produce any useful quantity of light. If you go to commercial grade, then you do have the option of high efficiency LED (but still nothing like 50W equivalent output) and metal halide which is what many shop displays use (they start at slightly above 50W equivalent output). You would be looking at somewhere in the £100 and up each for these, and they aren't bulb swaps, but whole new fittings and control gear.
Anyone fitting GU10 or MR16 fittings now is nuts. They always were appalling for general lighting, but it's likely that the filament bulbs for them will become outlawed within 5 years, rendering the fittings completely useless. Still, they're only fitted because they're dirt cheap.
The other option is to make your own, since this is a DIY newsgroup. The components are not very expensive, it's just that buying commercial grade style lighting is always vastly more expensive than anything consumer grade. I have done this, and I'm pleased with the results.
um, no-one else has said this, what is the basis for this claim?
Perhaps this is preferable to "yellow"
She wants to save electricity (whether this is for cost, or environmental reasons, I do not know)
And what do you suggest that people do fit.
Personally, I think that downlighters are a damned stupid way of lighting anything other than a "display", but there are loads of poncy people who think that it's a cool way to light every room in the house. Given that there is a large incumbent market I can't believe that the fitting will go out of use when filament lamps are banned, there are already non filament alternatives. It's not like replacing a lighting system based upon having
30 holes in your ceiling is going to be easy to do.
I dont think downlighters are cool, I think they're hot, and as they're often recessed into ceilings it scares me that one mistake and that heat will cause fires... I wonder how many fires have been caused by them?
I know of one case of uplighters causing a fire in an old thatched cottage. Tenant found a switch in the airing cupboard which turned on uplighters in the bathroom floor. "Coo, that looks nice". A few minutes later she was calling the fire brigade to rip the floors up and extinguish the beams that were burning. It turned out the owners had never used them and no one had spotted the hazard.
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