spotlights - how many?

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:15:26 GMT,it is alleged that "PC Paul" spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:

Can you borrow someone with small hands to reach in and cut the cable to the transformer or possibly fish a new cable in and abandon the old?

One of the slimline electronic transformers would fit neatly through the hole, and provided the old one is disconnected, it would be safe.

Reply to
Chip
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LOL Don't knock it. That's about the age my Dad started me doing things like that. I hated hearing him say "My hands are just to big for this little job" because I new his next words would be "Wanna give me a little hand", and he meant little hand, mine. LOL :-)

Reply to
BigWallop

Now yer learnin' :-) LOL

Reply to
BigWallop

Very Roddy Llewelyn year before last year look. Spotlight are very nice where you need spotlights and useless in a kitchen (unless its main use is for unpacking the MacNuggets bag).

If you don't like ceiling mount fluorescent try putting them on top of units so they reflect off the ceiling and use HF units rather than standard ballasts.

Reply to
Peter Parry

Our kitchen is about 4m square and we started with 6 pointable 50W GU10s (B&Q's banks of 3) but ended up needing 9 to get full coverage.

Reply to
Mike

In message , Mark Downey writes

As someone in the property business, there seems to be a murmur going around that Halogen spots have had their day. They are bloody difficult to replace, and blow easily if you dont do it right, and the light produced is directional rather than diffuse, (if they are the right words).

Personally, I will never again specify halogen spots in any property - mainly because of the difficulty with maintenance.

Screw in spots, fluorescent, or traditional tend to be easily replaced and rarely blow.

Reply to
Richard Faulkner

Halogen dichroic lamps are very easy to replace and maintain in my experience. What type of spot lighting did you have in your properties?

Reply to
BigWallop

My kitchen is 2.5mX4.5m. I put in 5 rows of 2 recessed lights which run

35w 240v lamps. As I was unsure ultimately how bright this would be, & was redoing all the wiring anyway, I put them on 2 circuits (ie, 2 gang light switch) so we can have all 10 on, 6 on, or 4 on. In the end, with the floor, kitchen units & black worktops this has worked really well. I used 240v spots - first month went through about 10 bulbs (lasted anything from 2 days to 2 weeks) & now I haven't had to change a bulb for about 4 months.
Reply to
Pufter

Spotlights are not suitable for general room lighting. They are an environmental disaster and a financial drain to keep running. Just say that she can't have spots, because of your concern for global warming. There are other ways.

Christian.

Reply to
Christian McArdle

Agreed. Someone I know fitted _three_ GU10s in a living room ("That's

150w, plenty bright enough"). What they actually got was three puddles of light on the carpet and a room you couldn't see the corners of :o)

For my kitchen, I wanted the 'bright' look of halogen, but didn't want spots. I ended up with a SWMBO-compliant bar fitting that has 4 x 40w G9s. Each lamp can be individually positioned and has a small egg-cup shaped frosted white glass shade. You get some directional light, but most is diffused by the shades/ceiling and it works really well. Been up a year now and I haven't had to replace a bulb yet. Room size is

2.6 x 3.5m.

Alan

Reply to
Alan Vann

IME they're worse than normal bulbs, but not necessarily as bad as some people make out. My dad has a 4 spot GU10 unit in his living room, one of the (supplied) bulbs went within a couple of weeks of me putting it up, and in the 18 months or so since, he's had to replace another two. That's three in less than 2 years for a fitting that (in Winter) is on for possibly six or seven hours a day.

On the other hand, we have eleven GZ10 (note, *not* GU10) downlighters in our kitchen/dining room and although the reflectors on a couple are looking decidedly dodgy, I've only had to replace a bulb once, and that, believe it or not, was a GU10 that I had to fit originally instead of a GZ10 because I only ordered 10 bulbs from Screwfix to go with the 11 fittings, and B&Q don't sell GZ10s. We've been using them for about a year now, though they're switched in three banks and one bank in particular gets a lot more use than the others. Oh yes, and they're on dimmers too which might help.

As with most things I suspect two issues:

1: 240V halogens are a relatively new technology

2: You get what you pay for

In case anyone is confused by this GU/GZ10 thing (most DIY places tend only to sell "mains halogen" fittings, and they are practically all GU10), the GU10 has an aluminium (or similar) reflector and a shaped base. The GZ10 has a dichroic reflector which allows most of the heat radiation out through the rear of the bulb. Its base is more "square".

Since you obviously need a more heat-resistant fitting, and more careful siting for GZ bulbs, GU bulbs will fit GZ fittings, but GZ bulbs will not fit GU fittings.

Back to the original post, lots of downlighters (of any variety) is very pretty, but you really really need to consider them as task lighting, so rather than scattering a few about the ceiling, concentrate them above work surfaces, and try to place them where you aren't going to cast shadows. Wall cupboards above work surfaces are a killer, but we don't have many of those.

Unlike fluorescent or standard pendant fittings, the light is pretty directional and very little of it is dispersed around the room from reflective surfaces. Likewise, our kitchen area has 7 50W GZ10s. That's

350W. We could have achieved a similar level of lighting with a couple of 4ft fluorescents with vastly lower power consumption.

Hwyl!

M.

Reply to
Martin Angove

re halogen spots:

Like Christian and Richard, I would not recommend an all halogen spot system. 6 spots means 6x as many bulb failures, if your bulbs are reliable. If not, as is often the way...

They also add a lot of heat into a room, which is no fun in summer. 6 spots @50w = 300w, 10 spots = 500w, that adds several C to the temp.

The glare is a nightmare if ever you lean back for a rest. Having a house you cant lean back and rest in would p-ss me off.

The run cost is excessive, I would always suggest calculating it before saying yes.

Brightness tends to be wrong, and get uncomfortable, as its not easily adjusted like filaments or CFLs are.

Environmental rating is rock bottom, as although the bulbs themselves are medium efficiency, downlighter spots lose most of that light making the install the lowest efficiency of all types.

And finally, the quality of lighting really isnt that good. Uneveness and glare are the bugbear of halogen spots.

You can however have your cake and eat it, by fitting fl upilghting to provide the bulk of the light, plus 10w or 20w halogen spots for effect more than for significant lighting. Its far cheaper, far more environmentally friendly, more reliable, etc.

Always use 12v not 240v if you go for low power halogen. mains low power bulbs are not new tech, theyre decades old, no-one wanted to use them in the past due to lower efficiency, shorter life and lower reliability.

Finally, always use a switchbank. Sure its another few quid, but again that will be saved many times over. It gives you good control over brightness, reduced run costs, comfort when you want it, and bright lighting when you need it. A single switch is a cheapskate idea, and just poor practice.

NT

Reply to
bigcat

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 08:46:58 +0100,it is alleged that Martin Angove spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:

[snip]

I suspect it helps a lot, they seem to 'pop' due to the switch on surge which IIRC is higher with halogens than with normal incandescent lamps.

[snip]

Yes, definitely true, we have 6 in the conservatory (fairly standard leanto affair, meaning the centre of the ceiling is unavailable for light fixtures), this requires *6* 50W lights to achieve a brightness I could easily achieve with a single 20w (100w equivalent) Compact Fluoro in a more conventional room.

Reply to
Chip

On 12 Jul 2005 01:13:42 -0700,it is alleged that snipped-for-privacy@meeow.co.uk spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:

[snip]

Ahh so you were in our conservatory then? :-(

As apparently the 'electrician' who hooked ours up failed to do.

I enclosed the word in ' ' because he failed to see the point of sleeving or indeed even connecting that pesky bare wire in the T&E...

I have switched our 2x3 light fixtures on a twin switch as opposed to the single that was installed.

I am going at some point in the next few weeks, when I find some round tuits install the 1.8 watt 'bluish white' LED GU10s from TLC in one of the 2 fixtures (the one that is on all the time, the other being used for task lighting on a table).

I shall let people in this group know how it compares brightness and colour matching wise.

I am likely to be 'permissive' with my opinions of the colour and brightness, due to the obvious advantage of them drawing between 3 &

4% of the power of GU10 50w spots and having an expected life in excess of 50,000 hours.
Reply to
Chip

They are about the same efficiency as 12V halogens, and therefore somewhat better than 240 halogens, but realistically, you're going to be looking at less than 1/10th of the light output. It is directed into a much narrower beam, so on-beam it would not appear quite that bad.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

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