I have a three light fixture in my bathroom that went from incandescent to CFL then to LEDs that I bought at Lowes (pretty good price even though they are still too expensive)
Problem is that they keep failing. I changed to two LEDs and one CFL and the CFL has not skipped a beat, but I will soon be replacing the two LEDs (plus one previous replacement). The LEDs either flicker or just shut off. Last night one of the ones that I thought had completely failed came back to life.
The bulbs are FEIT UtiliTECH PRO 7.5 watt 430 Lumen
Any suggestions as to why they keep failing, other than they are FEIT?
Personally after cfl failures in bathroom fixture, I'm only using incandescents there, maybe like the cfl's, the led's don't take well to short term cycling.
neither do cfls. they're supposed to have a period of about 15 minutes after turning them off before they turn on. shortcycling them (like in a outdoor fixture security sensor light) kills them pretty quickly.
Every single 110V LED light I bought so far has died, so you're not alone. I think I'm going to sit on the sidelines for a couple more years before trying another one.
It's actually quite amazing how reliable and well-performing LEDs are in low-voltage applications like flashlights and the like and how miserable they are in high voltage fixtures. It's also rather strange that there's no class-action suit against at least some of the manufacturers because every LED light has 30,000hrs life expectancy printed on the package. There's probably a fine print somewhere though, which states that this is for each individual diode. You start connecting 24 of them in series, it'll probably drop to a very uncomfortable 1000hrs or so. Even then, none of my LED fixtures lived longer than 24-30hr.
My guess is that all these problems stem from the need to power the LEDs with constant current and the forward voltage of each LED is only 3 to 5V which makes it rather cumbersome (=expensive) to connect them in parallel. The benefit would be that the fixture would continue working even if one LED has died. But the flip side is that you need to drop it all the way from 110V down to 5V and then provide a constant current driver for each individual LED.
It's possible but too expensive so everyone just keep stringing as many of those in series as they possibly can so the power supply would only need to drop the voltage to a manageable level and if one LED dies, the entire circuit dies and that means either the whole thing or half of it if they had two circuits of diodes facing the current in opposite directions.
The power supplies inside the bulbs I've opened so far are pretty basic and capacitor-based, i.e. create spikes when switched on which may be exactly what kills the diodes (and again only one needs to die for the whole thing to go dark). People do try to hack the power supplies and I've tried, too (like described here
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) but eventually the ones I hacked died anyway.
I've yet to look inside an expensive LED bulb: can't bring myself to buy one and then for me to open it, it has to die too, which would completely ruin my trust in this kind of lighting. I've seen ads for 1-LED bulbs (and
2- and 3-), which should be designed differently, so maybe there's a brighter future for those, but I'll just wait a bit longer to find out ...
------------------------------------- /\_/\ ((@v@)) NIGHT ():::() OWL VV-VV
I've never had a LED or CFL emitter die. I've had numerous bulbs die, and it's always been the stuff that powers the emitter.
An incandescent has one component, the filament. LED and CFL lamps have dozens of components, each made with the cheapest materials by the zillion with the cheapest possible labor. If you looked at the quality of soldering in a typical CFL, you'd be amazed they last as long as they do.
I had some failed CFL's with lifetime warranty. In order to claim the warranty you merely had to mail the failed lamp plus a $4.50 shipping fee back to the vendor. They claimed they'd cheerfully replace your $1.00 lamp. Care to guess how many of them I sent back?
Even if Home Depot handled the warranty, the cost of gas to drive there far exceeds the value of the lamp.
Complaints in sufficient numbers do have a long-term effect on the buyers.
I've taken two of them back. I don't get any sense that they are interested in being FEITs quality control service...I would, however, expect their computer system to flag trends in the returns.
Biggest problem I have with Lowes is that I bought them for $9.97 or so and they just want to do a return when I wanted a replacement that is now twice as much. Finally got them to understand and do their magic so I could get a replacement.
I am not going to do that in the future. I'm just going to go back to CFL's of which I have tons
Could it be the connections in the fixture itself ? Sometimes the little metal thingy that hits the middle of the bulb loses it's spring and makes for an intermittent connection, depending on moisture and temperature...... A long shot, but easy to fix by using a tool to bend the little finger back out a little, or cleaning off the contact point with abrasive paper/cloth... (Be sure to turn the electricity off :>)))) )
Just because you think the bulb is not on "a long time" the filaments producing the light for you to use get QUITE HOT very quickly...
At this rate with heat killing LED lamps and with all the mercury in the CFL lamps, it sounds better for the environment pollution-wise and better for the users financially to stick with the proven less polluting and fussy A- lamps until a properly engineered drop in replacement emerges...
I have some property with fixtures designed for 2-pin 13watt CFL lamps that really don't like the cold outside (the lighting is noticeably dimmer on the coldest nights) normal A-lamps don't suffer from that problem...
Just because you think the bulb is not on "a long time" the filaments producing the light for you to use get QUITE HOT very quickly...
At this rate with heat killing LED lamps and with all the mercury in the CFL lamps, it sounds better for the environment pollution-wise and better for the users financially to stick with the proven less polluting and fussy A- lamps until a properly engineered drop in replacement emerges...
I have some property with fixtures designed for 2-pin 13watt CFL lamps that really don't like the cold outside (the lighting is noticeably dimmer on the coldest nights) normal A-lamps don't suffer from that problem...
Well, the first generation of 120 volt LEDs was about as reliable as the first generation of the CFLs.
The CFL technology has matured. I have CFLs all over the house and very seldom have to replace one.
But the LED technology is better and potentially much more reliable. ALL the LED lamps from over a year ago have failed in service but my present batch (some 5 to 10 lamps) seems to be hanging in there.
So far, all the LED I have seen use "resistive" ballast. When they start to use electronic ballast like the CFLs they will be just about perfect. The only incremental improvement will be a shift from UV-fluorescent LEDs to three or more color LEDs to produce the white light.
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