The ceiling mounted light fitting in my computer room has 3 Halogen R50 spotlight bulbs which get insanely hot and do not last too long. As each one blows, is it okay to replace with an LED or do I need to replace the lot?
Taa
I think that depends on whether the remaining halogen bulbs would cause the LED bulbs to heat up significantly. Running hot reduces the life of the LED bulbs.
Caecilius pretended :
+1 If they are reasonably well ventilated - no problem.
The heat from adjacent halogen lamps will cook the electronics of LED lamps. You are better off swapping them all at once.
Beware that some fireproof ceiling fittings designed for halogen lamps to prevent them setting fire to your house will reliably kill LED lamps stone dead in short order. The insulation to prevent then catching fire traps the small amount of heat from an LED bulb and once it gets over boiling point the capacitors have a very limited lifespan.
You may be better off swapping to a luminaire designed for LED.
There is plenty of ventilation. I'll use up the spare bulbs and then replace the lot with LEDs. In my younger days I could easily swap the 13 year light fitting for a new one, but now I'm old and getting done. Thanks for the advice you men, much appreciated.
If not on dimmers replace as they blow
These are 230/240V and so no reason why you can't replace one at a time. The only proviso is if the heat of one will transmit to the others. LEDs will last longer if kept cool.
Personally I would replace all 3 at the same time so they match. Perhaps that's my OCD.
all shops are selling them off for peanuts so just stock up
Jim GM4DHJ ... explained on 18/10/2021 :
Quite true, the cost of some LED lamps is approaching that of the old filament lamps. If these lamps are used much, it can be worth swapping them out, if you can buy LED replacement cheap enough and to save on the power bill.
Exactly why do halogen seem to cook themselves far more than the old just filament bulbs did? My only reason for not going led, apart from the fact that it will be mainly for visitors benefit, is that so many LED devices have such crap switch mode psus in them that they are like little radio jammers and as one of my hobbies is listening to radios from afar, I have enough trouble with the neighbours ones!
Brian
Brian Gaff (Sofa) submitted this idea :
Halogen run much hotter than the usual filament lamps, often there will be multiple halogens, rather more than other types of lights - so more lamps, more chances of regular failures.
Thanks for all the help You Men. I'm gonna change all the lights to LEDs now.
Physically smaller and run the filament much hotter so that a quartz envelope is needed and the halogen can scavenge tungsten off it and diffuse back to the filament where it is redeposited on the filament.
They have a bad tendency to explode if you contaminate the envelope with sodium from a fingerprint. The sodium lowers the melting point of the quartz envelope and begins an inevitable degradation.
You can probably find ones that are more RF friendly. Try Philips for example - not the cheapest around but probably one of the nicer ones.
Some older LED lamps are little more than a simple rectifier and a very long chain of LED dies I doubt if they generate any RF interference. They are however rather prone to single point failure when the weakest LED in the chain dies prematurely. You may need to do some homework to find which ones are best for radio hams (other hams for example).
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