Posted on 12/20/2019 11:36:06 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
To each their own I guess. I'll stick with my Incandescents as well as my old large volume flushing toilet.........
You can have my old large volume toilet when you pry it from my cold dead hands after I've made my final flush.........LOL!
Excellent. I love your spirit!
Thanks. I use 2700k for the CFL’s in the bathrooms and around 5000k for the overhead fixtures in the garage. No, I don’t want to replace those 48” fluorescent fixtures. However, I may try the LED bulbs once my incandescent bulbs run out.
Mom passed away before the LEDs became popular, but the squiggly ones soured her on anything other than incandescent.
She figured if they were good enough for Thomas Edison, they were good enough for her! :-)
RIP Mom.
I use the Sansi 5000K 250W equivalent (!) (28W actual energy use) LED (from Amazon). Just slightly larger than a standard incandescent and absolutely kicks ass as a garage light. I have ONE overhead light, and this thing lights up the entire garage.
You may be able to dump your fluorescents.
Doesn’t sound to me like they released the standards in place already just kept them from getting even more stringent.
When I see real 60 and 100 watt incandescent bulbs on shelves I’ll believe it.
Given GE fought to get these requirements in place and shut down their incandescent plants once they did... really not holding out hope of getting bulbs that actually work anytime soon
Poor quality LED light bulbs made for household use tend to fail for 4 reasons, in my experience:
1) Inadequate heat sinking. I’ve run into this mainly with off brand 1500-1600 lumen bulbs.
2) Many LED bulbs are NOT made for use in mostly or fully enclosed fixtures. This can be because of “1” above, or because an internal component or components are not heat tolerant — and even a few watts can build up heat in an enclosed fixture. If it goes into a restricted ventilation spot, be sure to use a bulb that clearly specifies it is made for enclosed fixtures on the carton it comes in.
3) Inadequate protection from voltage spikes. LEDS and even fluorescent bulbs with electronic ballasts can easily be killed by voltage spikes. Incandescent bulbs are almost immune to such - although protracted surges can kill incandescent bulbs too.
4) Poor internal connections that may corrode or were iffy in the 1st place, use of wire that stress hardens / fatigues with temperature cycling and fails, and so on. The Chinese are great at trying to slip past “cut corners” construction, not catching critical materials changes from suppliers, etc. This is a VERY typical failure mode of inexpensive LED flashlights. The LEDs are nearly immune to shock, but the internal assemblies in many a LED flashlight or headlamp rely on pressed together parts connections that free up, suffer material “flow”, etc.
(Even good brands can get snookered by slipshod materials or construction, but, this is less likely than with off brands.)
Not really “failure” per se are bulbs whose phosphors lose efficiency early. This happens a lot with inexpensive flashlights, but, to be fair, incandescents and fluorescents lose brightness with use, also.
Also to be “fair”, many incandescent bulbs now available are made in China too, and I’ve had horrible “luck” with some. Sunbeam is one such brand. I’ve had “Sunbeam” 100w incandescent bulbs fail in 50-60 hrs of use, in low stress environments / usage.
On the plus side for LEDS, I think I’ve only had ONE Wally World (Great Value) LED fail to date: It was a 60 watt bulb with no “enclosed fixture” rating* installed into a ceiling fixture in a spot where some attic heat could also get to it. (*A few years ago it seems to me few LED bulbs specified that.) The other “brand name” bulbs have been fine too. Off brands, not so much.
For me, light quality with LED bulbs running at a color temp ~3000 deg. and with a CRI over 85 or so is usually fine. I’d say MY biggest problem is that my own aging eyes need more light than in the past!!
By direct comparison, and giving the CFL’s plenty time to warm up, I find good 3000k LEDS far superior to and less fatiguing than CFL’s, and, pretty much as good as incandescents. The spectral data confirms that. Smooth out the spectrum and knock out the UV — good soft white LEDS do that. (”Warm white”, 2700K, is actually a bit too yellow for me.)
Good LEDS are particularly excellent on timers or in other situations requiring a lot of switching on and off. They are almost immune to the cycling failures that plague fluorescents and incandescents.
As for energy savings, in the summer the savings (at least for my family) are significant. Typically in the evening we are saving .5 to 1 kilowatt with the lights, plus the same amount the air conditioning is not running to counter.
The bottom line though is that the gov’t has no business telling consumers they can’t use / buy incandescent bulbs. Freaking tyrants...
I'm not sure you got my point about a garage lights. One bright overhead bulb or to the side would not give me enough fill from different angles to work on my 58 Chevy Impala. I need standard 48" fixture lighting. If someone comes up with a 48" (or longer) tubular LED that has the same ends and works with the basic fixture, including the ballast, I'm stuck with the fluorescence lighting.
There's a reason that auto shops and others still use them.
Oh, heck. I just bought 4x ‘65 watt’ “BR30” (flood) 22 yr (they say) LED bulbs at a Wally World (”Great Value”) for $.99. It’s some sort of “deal” involving the local electric utility, but it’s a straight up price, not a rebate. They’ve had 4 packs of std. ‘60 watt’ equivalent (9 watt actual) LED bulbs, rated for enclosed fixtures, no less, for $2.88 for some time now.
I also bought a 4 pack of Sylvania ‘60 watt’ equivalent (6.5 watt actual, IIRC) LED bulbs, NOT rated for enclosed fixtures, for $1.88, IIRC. (I’d have to recheck the receipt, but that’s close if not exact.)
You must use an amazing amount of light bulbs.
I agree with your mother. I was stockpiling the incandescents also, so this legislation is a breath of fresh air and I LOVE that our President said that for every ONE regulation they wanted, two would have to go. That’s the way to do it and to get those old horrible bits of legislation off the books.
She mostly didn’t like being told what to do by a government her entire generation fought and died to protect.
So far LED has been much better than CFL. I don’t like the CFLs.
48” LED bulbs and fixtures (usually with integral bulbs) are readily available. Even our local Wal Marts have them, and all the home improvement and farm supply stores should (Lowes, Menards, Home Depot, Rural King, probably Tractor Supply, etc.) The latter (fixtures) can be cheaper than the bulbs, per lumen, however.
These should be available up to 7000 lumens at reasonable cost, (esp. if caught on sale.)
My shop has that reflective silvery color surface insulation on the walls and ceiling: Point a bright light* UP and it illuminates a good area with indirect light / fill, although for detail work I still want a 48” tube or 2 overhead.
Last year @ Black Friday I bought 4x 5000 lumen LED floodlights @ Menards. IIRC each draws 50 watts. I took one apart, sealed a couple questionable spots with silicone cement, and replaced our old 500 watt Quartz fixture with it. So far it’s working great & is almost as bright as the Quartz light was. (To be fair, the old quartz bulb may have been very near it’s life’s end & therefore not putting out it’s rated lumens.) In fact, we have to make sure the new light is off at dusk or my daughter’s pet chickens, over 100 ft. away, think the sun is still up & won’t go in to roost! I suspect the higher color temperature of the LED’s has something to do with that.
I can surely appreciate that. I sure can.
The Greatest Generation should never have been forced to recycle, switch to cable whether they wanted to or not, or use squiggly light bulbs.
THEY EARNED the right not to be bothered by crap like that.
I’m lucky enough that my overhead fixture is just about over where a vehicle engine compartment would be.
But you “can” get LED replacement bulbs for fluorescent fixtures...I had one over my workbench:
https://www.1000bulbs.com/category/t8-led-tube-lights/
“Yes, you can replace fluorescent tubes with LED tubes or LED integrated fixtures. If you aren’t ready to replace the fluorescent fixture and just want to replace the bulbs, you can use plug-and-play, direct wire, or hybrid LED tubes.”
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