Hello,
I have around 14 GU10 bulbs in my house and was just looking at the Tool station catalog, they have quite a few different types of GU10 bulbs.
Which one would be the best if after an energy saving alternative?
GU10 Halogen Xenon, Long life. GU10 Cold Cathode Reflector lamp. GU10 LED Lamp- 20 clusters. GU10 Compact flouroscent.
Your views are greatly appreciated.
197mm. Well that's how long my bit of string is.
Seriously, it depends totally on your requirements. The LED will look pretty if you like that sort of thing. It will use very little power but give so little light as to be useless. Any light it does give will likely be very blue and highly directional which may or may not be what you want. The CF will have its own colour characteristics and probably give a good spread of light. You may like the way it looks, you may not. It will be physically longer than normal bulbs and may require you modify the fitting. Power use will be low though. The Halogen will use more power but will give lots of crisp white light. I don't know about the Cold Cathode as I've not seen one in this format but generally I would expect it to have characteristics similar to the CF, maybe a little bluer.
You really need ot buy a sample of each and try them in the intended use.
Lowest power consumption will be LED, but you might not notice much difference from leaving the bulbs out completely. Either way, you'll need to buy torches so you can actually find your way around the house.
Compact fluorescent is probably the next best, and might be usable. You won't get same light output as filament, but the wider beam spread may more than compensate by lighting walls and other reflective surfaces better.
Best solution would be to replace the GU10 lighting with something more suitable for general lighting. I've never understood why people accept cheap unsuitable crap lighting, which costs a fortune to run, or why it ever became so trendy.
The lights are in one bedroom and the Kitchen. I reckon it will be the CF then.
A decent surface mounting fitting with your choice of decent CFL lamps will cover the GU10 holes and give much better light spread.
GU10 CFLs and CCFLs are a joke, they aren`t efficient, tend like they`re line volatge halogen cousins to be somewhat short lived, and simply dont fit.
Cram cones of loads of small LEDs aren`t very good in general.
Adam
my results will be different to household use..... i have a mix of halogen, cold cathode, led and fluorescent bulbs in my motorhome, they all run on 12 volts DC tho, not mains, but that means they run off my battery bank, and whilst i have 3 large solar panels on the roof, i do need to conserve power when boondocking for a while especialy in the colder months.
the halogens, pull the most power by a long shot, but give out a nice warm light.
the fluorescents give out a white light, use half the power of the halogens,
the cold cathodes use about half the power of the fluorescents, but give out a very bright clinical white light (once they have warmed up, take a while to reach full brightness)
The led's give out an almost blue-ish light, and are very focused, good for a reading light over the bed, but not really for general illumination.
i have an AA battery powered stick on led light in the bathroom (it's a big un, got 2 settings, inner circle of about 6 leds, then outer circle of about
20 leds), as the main 16 watt 2D fluorescent tube light dosent start up when the voltage to it is below 11.5 volts, the led light in there is fine to see where to point percy in the middle of the night, i can just about read a magazine in there from the light on the 20 led setting, but i wouldent want to try and shave by the light, even tho it is between the toilet and sink.
I found that whatever GU10's I used, their lifetime was crap and hence they were expensive to run. I believe this is general experience. I changed over to 12V lights and found that they very rarely have to be replaced. In the end however 20W is 20W regardless of whether it is at 240v or 12v.
Rob
I have different experience, the standard GU10's that I have now are nearly a year old. In the hallway and staircase I think we have light with a transformer of some sort- I can't remember the last time we changed any of those bulbs.
The CF: I've a fitting with 4 of these in my kitchen. I prefer the warm white to the cool white which is too cold for my taste. By comparison halogens seem horribly yellow. The CFs give a wider spread than the halogens so you don't get the effect of WW-II or 20th Century Fox type searchlights cutting beams through the sky.
Be warned though, apart from the expense they don't seem to have the longevity they promise, and they start up extremely slowly so are best suited to being left on for long periods. Ours are in the kitchen where we put them on when we get up on dark mornings and off again when we go off (or it gets lighter) and on again for the evening. Thus the energy saving will be less than if you had halogens and switched them off every 5 minutes (though in our household I'm the only person who'd do that anyway, so in practice they'd probably stay on most of the time regardless of what type of lamps were in them). Personally I loathe the little yellow pockets of light you get from halogen spots (though I know it's very personal and others feel the opposite) and would happily have an electronic ballast 'proper' fluorescent, but since the designs of fittings for these are so industrial I would never be able to get one of these past SWMBO.
Another possible gotch with enegy-saving GU10s is that they're physically bigger than halogens: I had to discard some of the trim bits from our fitting to take them.
I've looked at a few recessed CF downlighters, like smaller relations of the things you get in commercial lighting in offices etc (which are generally too big to fit in domestic ceilings). I saw a nice one a while back but the fluorescent tube bit was a special type which wasn't (at the time) available as a spare for replacement!
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.