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Post by skeptic on Jan 14, 2012 15:52:20 GMT 1
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Post by principled on Jan 14, 2012 21:37:37 GMT 1
Skeptic
At last someone who recognises that trying to do anything detailed using a CFT is doomed. I've gone back to halogen. Brilliant white light and still 20% more efficient than normal incandescent, and you can get 6 for £10 at a certain company that "fixes screws", if you know what I mean!
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Post by mak2 on Jan 15, 2012 11:48:10 GMT 1
I am using some excellent bulbs that have a coiled coil tungsten filament in an inert atmosphere. Simple, cheap, no flicker, good light quality and they provide a bit of heat as well. Do you think they will ever catch on?
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Post by jonjel on Jan 16, 2012 11:24:45 GMT 1
After a lot of research I bought a lot of LED's from China to replace all the 50W tungsten halogen downlighters. 6w, and the light output is great, around 420 lumen. I can sell them for a fiver and have been considering it!
And they have the distinct advantage that is some clodfoot is wandering about upstairs they don't blow for a pass-time, as is the case with the tungsten halogen variety.
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Post by alancalverd on Oct 19, 2012 14:11:40 GMT 1
I've just acquired a converted barn with 16 foot ceilings. The original builder thought nothing of putting some fairly expensive light fittings right up at the top of the ceiling, but not everyone has a mobile platform or a cherrypicker in the garage for changing lightbulbs. I looked at the cost of renting a platform and decided that fitting a dozen 12W dimmable LEDs at £20 each, with 25000 hour MTBF, was going to be cheaper over the next 10 years than bringing in a platform every couple of years.
Also installed a lot of wall lights, and fitted then with EU-pleasing halogen candle bulbs. Good color temperature but the damn things don't work sideways! They are so dependent on convection cooling that if you mount them horizontally, the filament melts the caspule glass which collapses and breaks the filament after 100 hours! So I'm on the lookout for "illegal" proper tunsgsten/argon bulbs such as have worked for the last 150 years or so.
What a load of nonsense the green lobby dishes out! If the halogen bulbs had survived the trauma of being switched on, they might have consumed about 20% less energy than the equivalent "proper" lamps, and just about paid for themselves in 10 years - except that even in the best of conditions, they wouldn't have lasted 10 years, and knowing the bosslady's penchant for redecoration, I'm sure the whole lighting scheme will be revised in 5 years at most!
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Post by dan on Dec 14, 2012 16:10:48 GMT 1
Sounds good!
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Post by marchesarosa on Dec 14, 2012 19:33:08 GMT 1
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Post by Mr Red on Mar 20, 2017 10:46:49 GMT 1
A small observation The step-down voltage is done at high frequencies (anything up to MHz), which produces an AC voltage/current. But LEDs are diodes and although they conduct in one direction, light bulbs have many of them. If you put two LEDs in parallel (reversed polarity to each other) - not only do you get AC current comfortably passing, but you also limit the reverse voltage on them both. Something that we did when I first became an Electronic Engineer. Way back then LEDs were the latest thing, and only came in red. Now they light the streets and my boots (which are red).
FWIW LED lights are not all good news. The "whitest" ones have far more blue which mimics mid-daylight which wakes us up, bad in the bedroom. And the new street lights around the world are altering wild-life habits & demography. Predatory spiders eating lesser insects all night, same right up to mammals like foxes. We have the tech to modify that - but not the politicians!
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