Led lighting

FLUORESCENT, DEAR BOY.

A point to you, hope you relish it.

Well I suppose it depends on where you are shopping.

There are circumstancies where they are clear winners, but those may not apply to you.

They are slightly more efficient, but also more expensive. Theoretical life is longer, but some makes won't make it. They normally direct the light to one side only, much more efficiently than the reflector in a fluorescent luminare can rediect light from the back of the tube to the front (which makes them much more efficient for directed lighting). If the light is being directed downwards, dust settling on the top won't reduce light output.

I suspect prices will drop over the next couple of years, making them more attractive to you, so no need to rush in now if you aren't convinced yet.

I've got some under cupboard fluorescents - standard size tubes - with electronic ballasts, which are heavily used, and over 15 years old. I suppose they may not give as much light as once - but it's not obvious.

My DW is absolutely brilliant at spotting spelling errors. If we go to a restaurant and there are no spelling errors in the menu, she is terribly disappointed. She'd have a field day if she ever found usenet. :)

Its worse on the newspapers and the MSM sites.

I assume they are written by stewdents with meeja studdies degreas...

There probably isn't any if you only use the light intermittently. If they had been available when I still had factories where the lights were on continuously 10-16 hours a day, they would have paid for themselves within four months and I could at least have doubled the interval between lamp changes.

Does anyone actually know how much less electricity a decent LED uses versus decent fluorescent? Real figures rather than advertising. ;-)

Decent long tube fluorescents max out efficacy at around 55 lumen/watt the consumer LEDs are now pushing 120 lumen/watt and improving in addition to their intrinsically better colour rendering. They still have a way to go to reach low pressure sodium's record 220 lumen/watt.

Ok. I've yet to find any LED which betters decent fluorescent (not plain white) for colour rendering, though.

Did that include the replacement or modification of the existing fittings to allow LED tubes to work in them?

It's an easy mistake to make --- I know how to spell the word (out loud, for example) but still sometimes type it wrong, I guess because "ou" is more common in English & therefore in my finger memory than "uo" is.

I bought 10 PAR 28 LEds from LED HUT on offer a while back. They are quoted as 120W equivalent. Today I got the adapters, the kitchen has 8 of them. I can see what I am doing. They were something like £3 each, they are £15 today. I bought them in error thinking they were small edison scre w. Kicking myself now that I did not buy more.

I had to keep checking "Floureon" batteries - had trouble spelling that, having avoided it for so long for tubes.

Yuo can stuff that up your doudenum then.

The modification on the ones I've seen is to wire the mains direct to one of the end sockets. Removing the redundant bits is optional.

Check for EMC compliance :-)

I almost always spell guage wrong. Did I do it then? I didn't check. I've overthought it now, it has stopped sounding and looking like a word.