Posted on 10/19/2023 4:08:51 PM PDT by george76
ANOTHER ANNOYANCE:
Bulbs now-—for some years—have been made with aluminum bases-—and the sockets are also aluminum.
Used to be that at least one was brass.
Because I had bulbs die & then were STUCK so badly that I had real trouble removing them to switch, I NOW spray the bulb base with “DRY SILICONE” to make them slip back out safely.
FIND A DIFFERENT SHOP
Exactly! With incandescent bulbs I was always following my wife and kids around to turn off the lights in empty rooms. With LEDs I don’t even worry about it.
so-called LED “drivers” are nothing more nor less than AC-to-DC converters, and cheap ones build with cheap components rapidly burn out, and all of them produce a significant amount of waste heat ...
take a look on amazon for giant LED panels made to illuminate parking lots, and the main attribute discussed is their ability to dissipate waste heat via heavy aluminum castings ... i tried some and sent them back because they ran so hot and produced so little light for the amount of amps consumed ...
i did some calculations when i was relighting my attached garage/shop and realized that i could obtain far more light (lumens at 3500K) per amp with 8’ High Output T8 bulbs and electronic ballasts than those parking lot LED panels, the reason being that less amps were being converted to wasted heat via the T8 bulbs and electronic ballasts vs the parking lot LEDs ...
then there’s the fact that those T8 bulbs and ballasts will function for many more years than LED panels ...
as far as i’m concerned, for large lighting projects, LEDs are a costly scam and a waste of energy ...
naturally, T8 bulbs are now being phased out and it’s almost impossible now to buy a T8 fixture, though it’s still easy enough to build your own with inexpensive, high quality electronic ballasts and tombstone lamp holders of your choice, plus a bit of sheet metal ...
He’s right that there are some awful looking LED bulbs out there due to having a low CRI or too high of a color temperature. But when they have a decent CRI and the right color temperature, they produce really nice light. And in my experience they don’t burn out nearly as often as incandescents.
Just this week I picked up a 4-pack of 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs at ALDIs for $4.99. They have a CRI of 90 which is excellent and color temperature of 2500K which is warm like a soft white bulb. They’re flicker free and have a projected lifespan of 23 years.
Side note: QLED 4k resolution is like looking through a window. In dark scenes with the smallest area light for effect, the black sky with all the stars twinkling is what I've been looking for years.
I've been through many High Def front projection TVs and many rear projection TVs on a 110" screen on dark painted wall, ceilings, and dark flooring. I never found true black until these new 4k TVs. I would get dark grey and the stars were faded from the ones I saw in the theater. Anyone who can afford an LG or Samsung 4k should buy one yesterday.
What was your symptoms of mercury poisoning?
Given it’s rampant abuse of being authorized to “regulate” economic matters, we’d be better off with a constitutional amendment disallowing the government to interfere with the economy.
You have to read the box. LEDs now come in a range of hues(?). My outside lights look like 1800s gas lamps. There is even some that are adjustable from warm to blinding white.
I’ll take an LED flashlight any day of the week and having lived off grid with only 350 watts of solar panel power, LEDs were a godsend.
Still don’t think incandescent should be outlawed. Let people decide.
I have an LED house bulb in a wall fixture with white coated glass that probably needs cleaning, as they usually do. Mimics an incandescent pretty well.
A droplight is another good place for LED. Bump an incandescent — boom boom, out goes the lights.
I resisted the curly fluorescent bulbs for the mercury-containing ecologic disasters they were, but today's LEDs, if you bother to move up just a bit on the quality scale, do last for thousands of hours, give off warm white light if that's what you want (I don't, I prefer daylight white) and cost much, much less to run.
The only location in my home that still uses incandescent bulbs is my oven.
” color of the light is very good, just like an incandescent.”
LEDs produce light at discrete frequencies. A white bulb has a red, green and blue LED that is white-looking.
But incandescents produce a continuous spectrum of light that I agree is more pleasing.
But in the LED flat screen TVs, each pixel has a red, green and blue LED and these TVs produce pictures that no one criticizes for their absence of richness of color.
So I don’t know what to conclude in comparing incandescents with LEDs.
What happened to the BIG saving by using LEDs?
The LED lights are getting better, but the cheaper ones do seem prone to failure. I like the ones that have a switch to control the color temperature. You don’t always know what the lighting will look like until you install it in a room.
Newer homes have much fancier lighting and usually more fixtures than older homes, so a bulb that uses less electricity and doesn’t put out a lot of heat is helpful.
LEDs are more efficient if your goal is light and not heat.
I’ve had LED light bulbs for years without replacing them. I should probably get an LED replacement bulb for my outdoor lighting; 3000 lumen bulb that uses 27 watts and lasts for years.
Not all incandescents when dimmed act the same. Dimming can shorten some incandescents life. Dimming LEDs always extends their life.
LEDs can only extend their useful life with heat mitigation
An led run at 100% current will melt itself off its solder pad if the heat is not dissipated.
What engineers due instead often or in combination, is to design in a scale back method where the pwm signal driving the led string is reduced, cutting the current to the led, which dims the light output.
Finally, if you want nice warm white led light, buy 2700K bulbs with a CRI of 90 if you can find them.
Any scientific way you cut it and my experience with LEDs over the past 20 years has far surpassed both incandescent and those CFLs (by a long shot). Yes, you have to choose the color temperature you want and have to gauge the pure output strength but it’s not that hard to understand. In today’s market LEDs are cheaper and their heat output is clearly less than incandescent which is a big advantage in my book.
I have LEDs that have been going strong (and better, more pleasing output than incandescent) for 20 years.
“””One thing I like to point out is that Incandescent bulbs can be 100% efficient in your home in a cold climate. This is because all the heat losses simply heat your home.”””
Most lights are at the ceiling where the heat is wasted, if I’m going to spend a 100 watts (85 subtracting the led replacement) of electricity I would rather put that 100 watts (85) exactly where I want the heat, like aimed at me.
This doctor has published quite a few videos that explain why near IR and red light are important for health. He promotes incandescent lamps, clear windows, and getting some sun.
https://www.youtube.com/@Medcram/videos
A decade ago, I bought a huge supply of incandescents. They’re still sitting on the basement shelf where I put them. I found LEDs to be the better choice by far.
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