I want to replace a CFL bulb. It's failed after a few years and I'm not sure to replace it with the same. Perhaps xwitch out other CFLs in the house too.
Is an LED bulb better for a room pendant fitting?
The old bulb is bright at 35W (175W tungsten):
You don't really want to put LED bulbs in a globe.
The bulb should have some airflow.
Bulbs come in different color temperatures. Your CFL might be 6500K, which is blue-white.
There is 4500K (my kitchen LED, not as irritating as 6500K or unnatural 9000K would be). You want the kitchen light to be "a bit edge-ish", a "keep me awake" light.
There is 3500K (my computer room, sorta reddish like an incandescent). For your relaxing room, your sleeping on the couch room, you want something that isn't as much of a poke-in-the-eye.
On a bicycle, where the power is generated locally, you might want a 9000K bulb, because they're the most efficient, and people will see you. But for a reading lamp, you want to tone it down.
You can have any power you want on LEDs. There are some modules that run a couple hundred watts -- the gotcha, is making a cooler to remove the heat. It would take a fair amount of forced air for something like that. Whereas in most situations, the cooling is via convection cooling. And that's why a globe tnat encloses the light, isn't good.
They make LEDs now with silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, and these can take more heat without extinguishing.
But generally speaking, if you want the 25000 hour life printed on the tin, you have to take care of them. Abusing the bulb, getting 2000 hours, getting in a fight with the seller or manufacturer, well, that's not a lot of fun really.
On my Phillips with the remote phosphor, I added my own heatsink to the base. For fun. That's the bulb that says on the box "this light is NOT yellow". Then when you use the bulb and compare it to an incandescent, or another LED bulb, you can definitely see yellow light :-) I guess their reality distortion field didn't work.
I wouldn't give a penny for the fake filament ones. Fads are a dime a dozen in the LED business.
The "corn cob" ones were also a fad. But the thing is, this is how you get extreme light outputs. This one is
5000K, which will be a bit on the blue-white side like a CFL. But it's otherwise a near fit for your current one, in terms of power in and light out. Perhaps not quite as efficient.This corn cob has such a large outside diameter, it's not going to fit a lot of fixtures. It accepts 100W input power, to make 500W of light. That would probably poke your eye out - you wouldn't want to stare at this one.
But that's how you get above the "100W equivalent" class, is to go with the collections of linear arrays arranged as a corn cob. And hope it doesn't overheat. Because that's a lot of heat to dump. My 17W dissipation bulb, gets hot enough. A bulb that consumes 45W is going to be a miniature toaster.
Paul
uk.d-i-y The uk part means we are in the uk.
Those are pictures intended to show the type. I'm not sending you there to buy one.
Fixturing is always a problem. There are lots and lots of lighting types, limited implementations that go in them. In this case, it's the shape of the emitting element I'm pointing out, and the name "corn cob". I don't know if there are any alternate names for them . But that's how you get a 100W AC product that emits 500W of light.
You can also get higher power devices, as "spotlights", the outdoor kind. However, those are physically heavy and could damage some sockets due to their weight. And some of those, aren't even eye safe - I discovered that the hard way one day, using one outside in the dark.
In other forms, the "ordinary" looking incandescent imitation bulbs, you're lucky to find 100W equivalent output devices. You can't even find a good "trilight" replacement, which is a bulb with multiple contacts on it and three filaments for light levels. I've never seen a LED replacement for those. And those would be, approximately, in corn cob country.
The other style of emitter, is an array with a yellow phosphor finish on top. They may use those in some pot lights, but I couldn't recommend that because of the lack of cooling. (There are some pots, where the end opens into a false ceiling, and there's a chance for airflow.)
If someone says "I need the equivalent of 175W tungsten", you don't get that in the grocery store light bulb aisle. That's a bit too much for their collection.
Paul
The colour temperature of the bulb is down to personal taste and possibly the quality of eyesight of the occupants of the house.
I prefer 6500k bulbs (or more correctly LED panel lights) in most areas and especially where I tend to "work" such as the kitchen and I find that I can read a lot easier with bulbs towards the blue end of the spectrum (cool white) because it gives me better contrast for the printed page.
I have compromised in my main living room with a panel type light fitting that first switch on the light is 3500k but turning on/off within 10 seconds comes on at 6500k. I tend to set it to the latter most of the time.
My aged mother has failing eyesight and all the bulbs in her house have been replaced with with 6500k bulbs towards the higher available wattage (at a sensible price). She says it has made a big difference to her mobility, especially at dusk/night. However this may be down to replacing old CLFs and lower wattage traditional bulbs with something that gives out more light, or more light instantly, rather than a change of colour temperature.
Consider LED panel lights either utilitarian or more "designer" type rather than just replacing bulbs. Although requiring fitting rather than just bulb changing they can be much higher wattage and push out more light downwards and provide more even lighting. The only gotcha is some designer lights are NOT designed to take into account a ceiling rose with multiple wire connections and alternative wiring arrangement have to be sought - although not of the type once found in my mothers house where the rose had been removed, the wires twisted together, insulated with Sellotape and pushed back into the ceiling void.
If it was really 9000K I would have thought that a lot of the output would be in the UV, with limited red. 6000K should be the most efficient like our dear old Sun, as our eyes are adapted to that.
Of course they all just pretend to produce black body radiation, so it's just a matter of personal preference.
I'm just going by the manufacturer bins and spec sheet.
Those particular LEDs come off the production line, in a wide 4500K to 9000K range. A machine bins them and puts them in matched bags of 50 LEDs. I bought three bags, and no array has more than 50 LEDs in it, so the color temperature is consistent on a per-bag basis. They look a perfect match if you look at the array face-on.
The particular LEDs have a 15 degree lens on the front. That allows the array to "project" a cone of light, without using any additional optics. When I attempted to use a point source high power LED, and a silvered polycarbonate reflector, the results were terrible. (A test under actual conditions, I could hardly see where I was going.) I had to redo my project as a result. That's what happens when you believe hype and marketing. It was only by accident (throwing a bag of 50 LEDs into the high power LEDs order), that I discovered a second way to do it.
The thing was, out of thousands of LED products, there was only one suitable T1 3/4 white LED with a 15 degree lens on the front. And it just happened to have those bins, stretching from
4500K to 9000K. There was really no suggestion as to what those LEDs were for (an intended application).Incandescent bulbs have a smooth spectral output. Whereas white LEDs and CFLs have an output with spectral "spikes" in it. At least one LED bulb, they had some way of "blending" the light from two kinds of LEDs, to put an additional spike to "warm" the output. It's not always done with phosphor chemistry changes. The color temperature is likely a kind of "curve fit to data" and an approximate single point specification. They have another spec, the CRI, and you'd likely need a web page or two to get to the bottom of that one.
It's better to look at the display at the building supply (where you can press the button and their promoted LED bulb comes on), to get some idea what they look like this year. In terms of obnoxious, can't-stand-it, coloration.
LEDs don't have to be ugly. I have one lighting product here which is "perfect". Nothing has come close since. The yellowish bulbs that say "this bulb is NOT yellow" on the box, being an example of comedians making this stuff. At least that bulb, I still use it, as the yellow cast isn't bad enough to reject it entirely.
Paul
Andrew pretended :
We have a Woolies lighting the under stairs cupboard, put in 1992.
Definitely agree that 2700K is usually horrible. I think I prefer around 5000K for general use.
But we have a problem - or two.
First, I simply do not believe the colour temperatures claimed. At the bottom end, almost all are at least a little better than true 2700K incandescent in having some blue end. But they seem quite random at times.
Second, the concept of CRI seems to have been thrown out. We saw CRI stated on quite of lot of fluorescent tubes, or at least on the manufacturers' websites, but through CFLs and even more with LEDs, it has pretty much disappeared.
Some of our lamps are nominally 4200K but are pretty much indistinguishable from others that are 5000K or higher. But very different to yet others which are also 4200K.
You're a bit late to the party, I suspect most people ditched CFLs 4-5 years ago ... unless you're waiting for the mythical 200+ lumen/watt LEDs?
I'm getting a bit old to wait for those! Managed to get 100 l/W about 3 years ag and not much improvement since then. Couple of years ago Ikea went all LED on sale - warning sign not to touch as HOT. About 60-odd l/W, same as I'd got from Aldidl a few years previously. Home bargains had 12W 1500l COB ('filament') lamps; bought one out of curiosity (at £2.99...!) and it's an eye-burner in most places. Possibly
6500K CTE wasn't a good choice. Got some Minisun GU10s off Ebay, 3W 420 l, so a small increase over the years.
Simple. It's a black body radiator with a continuous spectral output. With lots of energy in the infrared.
Whereas CFL and LED are discontinuous (spiked) spectral plots.
Paul
Eyes don't require continuous spectrum, but noncontinuous light sources can alter some colours somewhat. Discolouration is also caused by light sources being not CRI of 100.
NT
It is continuous spectrum light. And very similar to daylight at certain times of the day.
Pretty well all other forms of lighting can look odd (to me) under some conditions. Although I'm happy with quality fluorescent - which we never got with CFL.
I suppose it's true that we once coped with dreadful light in the form of low pressure sodium for street lighting because it was cheap to run.
Very much so. No point in choosing your decor carefully if it changes when the lights go on. Although I'm sure many don't care if it saves a few pennies on their electricity bill.
I still have some of the free ones that the energy companies had to hand out to their customers !.
I have a filament bulb in the bathroom, and a 150 watt one one the garage. The garage bulb is borrowed for decorating because it is perfect for seeing where you are painting on gloomy winter days.
No PIR security light ?.
I have a couple of filaments lights here. As a one-time hobby potter, I used to specialise in copper-red glazes, AKA oxblood or Sang-de-boeuf, and have quite a few on shelves etc around the house. In sunshine, mornings or evenings especially, they look magnificent, a rich deep transparent blood red. They also look good under filament lights, but they take on a slight brownish hue under anything else, whether halogens, CFL's or LED's, so I use filaments in fittings that are close to my displays.
Many years ago, when coloured bathroom suites were popular, the mfrs had to go to considerable lengths to get the colour of the bath to match those of the toilet and hand basin under different lighting conditions, because the pigment used in the bath enamel or resin could be different to those in the ceramic pieces.
what percentage of houses do you think have PIR security lights?
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.