I resisted the CFL (fluorescent)lighting craze. Couldn’t stand ‘em.
I did jump on the LED bandwagon. I like ‘em. We have them all over the house, indoors and outdoors, too.
I have a few cases of 100W incandescent bulbs in the basement. I thought they’d be worth more than I paid for them after our all-knowing, all-seeing government banned them.
Any takers?
Two things:
1. Don’t be surprised if long-term health risks start to get talked about, although I haven’t heard anything yet, but it’s typically what happens when Leftists for something on to society.
2. Keep a few of old bulbs around (or halogens), as, even if we do get the power grid back up after the Norks (or Iran) do a high altitude ‘nuke test’, LEDs will be worthless.
“Light bulbs”
AOC eats light bulbs. She said if you turn it off she’d eat it.
I don’t remember people being against LED’s. It was the mercury containing florescent bulbs that were on the market when incandescent bulbs were outlawed.
The only legitimate reason the government had for interfering in the market was to reduce energy usage. But they did so by making us buy a dangerous product.
Had they waited LED’s would have come on the market anyway and people would have adopted them over incandescent bulbs the same way they replaced the florescent bulbs.
They’ve gotten better and they’re much cheaper now. But RFI is still a problem with many of them. Also, some of them flicker for no good reason (even when not on a dimmer).
The prices have really come down
I was an early adopter. My wife made fun of me because every time we went to the store I had to stop and look at the light bulbs.
What I hated was passing laws to kill the incandescent
I had LED lights installed above my dining room table, home to my laptop. They lights gave me headaches, which went away after I had the old-fashioned lights reinstalled. (Thankful they still had them).
Harsh fluorescent lights bother me too.
I recently replaced the fluorescent tubes in my attic with LEDs (they work in the same fixtures without modifications).
I love them. They are brighter and use less current, and they work in the winter when the traditional tubes won’t light up at all.
I was a fan from the beginning. We will look at incandescent light bulbs the way we now look at gas or kerosene lamps.
Further, when the population switches, it has a significantly noticeable effect on the electric grid. I know this because that’s where I work. It’s not just a dent. It is much more significant than that.
However, I didn’t jump on at first simply because they were too expensive, just like a radio shack calculator in 1971 was too expensive.
Here’s another dirty little secret about them: Some will last pretty much forever while others will burn out because they are cheaply made.
But I live on 32 acres in Kentucky and I can now have lighting all over my property without stringing wires. The reason? LED’s use so little power that solar powered lighting is a reality now. That is a true game changer.
Such a harsh white light. No warmth at all. Surgical.
Like most of us, when the price went from $39.99 to $3.99 and they solved the blue light problem, it’s a decision that makes itself.
I recently replaced all my low voltage outdoor lights with LED’s. I have to admit it looks spectacular and it got me Yard of the Month in my neighborhood.
The one thing I simply have to have incandescent bulbs for:
My LavaLamp collection. I have a dozen. They need the heat.
Who was wrong? What did they think?
I was an early adopter - LEDs are improving all the time and dropping dramatically in price.
They save electricity AND they greatly reduce the heat burden your air conditioner need to remove from your home.
We changed out all lights with the most accurate color spectrum lights we could find from GE. The color is great!
I have an all-LED house. I use the “daylight” ones in the kitchen and bathrooms and the “softglow” ones everywhere else. I haven’t noticed any flickering....
I like the LEDs just fine.
I think they would have done very well in the marketplace without government coercion.
When government outlawed incandescent bulbs and forced people to buy CFLs or LEDs, the fact that people were buying an arguably better product was beside the point. Government manipulation of the marketplace is always bad, even if I like the new product I am forced to buy.
The marketplace is supposed to get us to this place, not government coercion.
I’ve had two or three “lifetime” LED bulbs burn out on me already.
Many of the different types of LEDs I’ve used to replace the incandescent lighting in & around my home have now failed, multiple times.
The LEDs themselves have “died” either partially or completely in the types with elongated LEDs and series of LED arrays. The other types (of LED lamps) have had (other than LED) board component failures e.g. all the magic blue smoke has escaped.
I attribute the failures to poor fabrication and/or poor workmanship. The problem is trying to find the “good stuff”.
I’m all for LED lighting and think it’s a wonderful technology. Hardly new as the original calculators used them in red. I used LEDs in the sign business 20 years ago and that’s where a lot of the research came about in making them put out a wider beam of light. They’re replaces neon in a lot of applications and that’s a good thing as neon runs off of 7500-15,000 volt transformers and piss poor installations have set a lot of buildings on fire. (gives you one helluva jolt too(:
We llived off grid for 5 years and it would have been tough getting along without them. I had saved some from the sign business and they’re still working to this day. Well over 10 years in service. They’re 12vdc so they run directly off of battery power. When the electric goes out, we don’t even notice except for the clocks on the range and microwave going out. Our LEDs could go for months on our golf cart batteries.
Only problem right now is the thousands of chinese designed and built LEDs flooding the market. You never know what color those will be. Orange/white, blue/white or somewhere in between. Mostly a problem with all the outdoor solar powered lights. I’ve got a neighbor that has several different brands and therefor several different shades of outdoor lights. Looks kinda funky. Never know how long the china stuff is going to last either and if you buy online, returns aren’t worth the effort even if it can be done. (amazon)
Menards sells some shop lights that are pretty decent. Four foot fixture for $30 are brighter than fluorescent. Oddly enough, another Menards wanted $40. URPower makes some decent motion activated, solar outdoor lights. For indoors, I stick with brand name screw in bulbs although I did get a pair of utilitech from Lowes that seem decent. There are some that have the nice slightly yellow glow that are real close to incandescent. CFL and a lot of LED “soft white” always seem orange instead of yellow. For the kitchen, the blueish ones are fine as they’re bright and reminiscent of old school fluorescent light as far as color.
I've never been a fan of bright overhead lights in my home at night anyhow. I prefer more subdued "accent" lighting throughout the house like pictured below. LED is perfect for that.
This is stock photo by the way to show what I'm talking about - not my actual living room.
