For the past 47 years we've had a fluorescent light on in the kitchen 24 hours a day. It has always been an 18" T-8 light, but I'm moving up to the 21st century. Bought a 24" LED fixture.
The real beauty of this is the savings in electricity and how much better I will sleep knowing my carbon footprint is reduced, thus leaving more oil to power Al Gore's jet. The fixture cost was 6X more, but the savings will be $3.15 a year. Hmm, a 20 year payback on a fixture rate to last about 5 years.
LOL! That's just so funny. ...and so true.
Ah, c'mon now. It's for the children.
makes ya all warm and fuzzy, doesn't it?
I think you should worry more about the other kind of payback:
Is the light quality going to be better? Does the fixture look nicer? Will the lights be more reliable? Are you getting your investment back in satisfaction?
Those are the reasons I bought the light. I do like the brightness and quality of light,It is a nice looking fixture but mounted where you don't see it.
As for reliability, I won't be able to answer that possibly for a few years. As mentioned, it is never turned off so I hpe for a long life.
Ed's being a good citizen. We need to applaud him.
This post made with 85% post consumer recycled text.
. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus
LEDs are surely getting better and cheaper. I just replaced 4 - 60 watt flame incandescent lamps and 2 - 150 watt rectangular floods, which light up the subdivision gate area and the subdivision sign, with 4 - 5 watt LED flame bulbs and 1 - 40 watt (2-20s in one fixture) LED flood. The way I calculate it, with the cost of bulbs included, we've paid for the bulbs and fixture in 1 year of power saving. The bulbs should last several year. Let's see if they do. And BTW, it looks really nice.
I just did my first led kitchen lighting job. All the upper cabinets have glass doors, so we have strips of stick on leds along the interior vertical face frames, as well as under cabinet strip fixtures. The connection ends on the stick on strips are very finicky, so I have concerns about loose connections. The led strip fixtures for under the cabinets seemed pretty durable, so I have higher hopes for them. The most bizarre thing was that written on the package that contained the roll of stick on led tape, was a warning that said something like: For use inside of and underneath cabinets. Do not install closer than 12" from side wall. WTF
Amazing that you had an 18" T-8 and ballast last for 47 years of 24 X 7 usage without replacement. Surely that old fixture with the magic bulb belongs in a museum. The new one might be equally magical if you paid $60+ for a simple LED under-light -- I managed to put concealed LED strip lights into five shelves of a 3-foot-wide floor to ceiling display cabinet for about that cost (but mine includes a remote dimmer).
FWIW - we just redid our kitchen as well and for over the sink purchase a 30" LED strip for approx $100 (out). But, held it up and the illumination created strong bright circles for the projected width of the strip to the sink/counter. No acceptable says the wife. So we looked and tried and looked and tried and finally purchased two 30" thin flourescent fixtures from Wamart for $8 each. Mounted (with screws) both in paralled adjacent to the front panel, spliced the wires, drilled through the cabinet floor to pass the wire and plugged it in.
The illumination is bright without being super focused, the level is perfect, the total cost was $16 and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the woman of the house is quite satisfied.
Just FYI. Myself, I like the LED approach but in certain areas. In my finished basement I have 14 cans each with a 50W halogen that costs $8 each. They burn out in abou 3-6 months and draw lots of current. I'd like to try LED's and can tolerate the cost. But why are they so incredibly UGLY???
Don't remember the details, but my church just put in a ten lot of LED flood lights. They seem OK. Sylvania, IIRC. The guy said they were about $40 each. The cheap ones, blue fog light. Yikk.
. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus
I should have been more clear. It was a series of them. It was about $1 more to buy a fixture and bulb than to just buy a replacement bulb. They did last a long time though. In this house I think I had three or four in 32 years in this house. Not sure how many in the old house.
I'm hoping so, at least a long time. It has 8 bulbs that can be replaced so that would keep the overall cost down as compared to a new fixture each time. At my age, I'm rather certain I don't have 47 years left, but 31 would be nice. Extra points for centurions.
Grammar police here: A centurion was a commander of 100 -- a "century" -- in Caesar's armies.
You want "centenarian". May we all make it to our respective centuries. With all our marbles.
HB
I've got a jar of marbles in the garage, all glassies. They are the shakers from spray cans of paint and other things that you shake up before using. Can send you a few if you have only lost some of your marbles.
Right, Wrong click on the spell check.
$100? Yikes. I've noticed a huge price discrepancy between LED strips online and in local stores, and that sounds like an example. There's a good chance you could have been able to find the same or comparable strip for a fraction of that cost online. Course, it didn't work out in your case - but if anyone else is checking out LED lighting, be sure to shop online. I'm intrigued with the option of tuneable color lighting, just because the being able to change the color to something other than white at whim sounds fun.
8' for $27 - $70 depending on led count per foot:
The color stuff looks intriguing.
costco usually sells led strips about that size for about $35.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.