I'm thinking that I should probably start replacing all the rather tatty old fluorescent strip lights in my garages (yes, I have two) with LED lighting.
There's a mix of 4ft and 5ft tubes at the moment, but it would seem sensible to make them all the same.
Something with built in 'shine the light down a bit' would help as there's no ceiling as such in either garage, one has a pitched corrugated roof with a steel frame and the other has an upstairs so the lights are screwed onto rafters (rafters and floor above unpainted).
So, recommendations wanted for reasonably cheap, reasonably efficient
4ft or 5ft units in quantity - I'll probably need 15 or so of them.
Are the ones that Screwfix sell OK? ... or the Toolstation ones?
Cheap (4' is £8), easy to fit (two screws then clip in) work fine, good light (I recommend the 4000K versions). The light pattern is about
180 degrees; since they're a single block (not a suspended tube) there's no light in the direction of the fitting.
Main annoyance is the input cable is 1-1.5m and the link cable about 20cm, so you'd have to junction box to extend them. Like many of these 'linkable' fittings the cables are slightly different to the other brands out there, there doesn't seem to be cross compatibility.
100lm/W is about normal for LEDs but nothing fancy. OTOH I'd imagine they aren't going to be on 24/7 so probably fine.
They've all been there so long (20 years or more) that I suspect they're all getting pretty inefficient by now and replacing all at once makes sense in terms of buying 10 or more replacements for a (slightly) better price and doing the work all at one time.
LED battens are a useful amount more efficient than fluorescents (typical examples 120 lumens per watt against 92 lumens per watt), but as all the light goes down with LEDs, a lower lumen batten can be used, saving more.
At £60 a time isn't that a bit on the expensive side? They state 100 lumens/watt output. Compare with a triphosphor 5 ft fluorescent tube (
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). That gives 90 lumens/watt, and costs about £3! Wouldn't a replacement led tube such as
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be considerably cheaper? You'd need a couple, however, to give the same amount of light as the fluo.
It's true that fluos fade with time, but it is usually a /long/ time. What happens with leds over the same length of time? Perhaps some info can be found here:
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or here:
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It's interesting that the comparison is always made to /filament/ lamps. It seems to me that comparison with fluos is avoided because, basically, there is very little difference between them, except that the leds cost
4 - 20x as much!
I see those panels are guaranteed for 3 years. That doesn't seem particularly generous to me considering how much they cost, and how much they would cost to replace.
The difference between 92 and 120 is hardly noticeable, if at all, to the human eye - so not really that much more efficient. Yes they are quite directional, but that can sometimes make visibility more difficult rather than better. I do gerally support LED use, but would not rush to swap florescent tubes to LED's unecessarily.
I have around 20 such florescent tubes in my garage and two workshops, used occaisionaly - I confidently expect them to more than see me out and have no intention of swapping them to LED. Around the house, I long ago swapped out all of the regularly used lights to LED's. Only two filament lamps remain - one lighting a cupboard, the other lighting a tiny area between the inner and outer kitchen back doors. The lamps are
40+ years old and so rarely need to be used, there is absolutely no point to replacing them.
Yes, OP here, that's exactly why I specified some sort of enhanced downward reflection, not all the LED battens I've looked at seem to do this (though of course the 'bulbs' do point downwards presumably).
There's not many reasonably priced LED battens that are as good as 120 Lumens/watt. Nearly all the CPC ones are very close to 100 lumens/watt though there are some v-tac ones that are 120 lumens/watt.
The CPC prices are *much* lower than either Screwfix or Toolstation though.
A couple of timber battens, fixed across the joists and you could fix panels to the battens.
I have a couple of LED 'flying saucer' shaped diffused LED fittings now in the kitchen, about 5" diameter, ceiling mounted. They are absolutely perfect, giving a good level of shadow free light throughout our large kitchen/diner. Over the years we have had florescent, spots and floods, but these ceiling mount LED fittings have proven to be the best light yet.
Most figures I have seen indicate a 50% reduction in overall power. Probably from taking into account of the losses in the choke. Fluorescent phosphors also degrade.
I was able to compare LED tubes with old 5ft ones, and the new LED tubes were brighter and gave a better colour. The brightness might have been from the more directional nature of the LED tube and the old tubes were decidedly magenta in colour output.
It is 30% better, which translates into 30% less power needed for the same lighting need.
The ones in my shed seem to give 180° coverage - rather than the wasteful 360° coverage of a fluorescent tube.
Again, as only some of that light will be reflected back, the required lumens for an LED replacement can be lower, so, along with the better lumens per watt, 1/2 the wattage likely produces more useful light than the fluorescents.
I agree with that. The shed needed new tubes, so I decided to change to LED battens there. They were far better.
The garage is still on fluorescents, but I am intending extending it and will need more lights and in a different arrangement, so I'll upgrade then.
Agreed. Intermittent use and already pretty good efficiency suggests no need to up upgrade. Although, unless you already have a number of spares, replacing tubes with LED ones, as and when replacements are needed, might make sense.
We have a mix of LED and CFL - as the living room light fittings need candle bulbs or very short, spiral CFLs and the candle bulbs aren't available as more than 60W equivalents. We don't really want to change the light fittings, although we may do one day.
We are down to one - a 30W Halogen in the bathroom ceiling - as, despite trying numerous different PSUs, all the bathroom LEDs flash continuously without that in place. It's very odd as the first PSU worked fine with all LEDs, then started flashing after 18 months. An identical replacement flashed from the start, as did a replacement of a different make. I may replace the PSU with a decent, general purpose PSU, rather than a switched mode, dedicated lighting PSU.
We have fluorescent tubes in two workshops one of which is predominantly wood working. I find removing the tubes and cleaning them makes a great difference
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