LED Lighting...

[Turks]

This model of LED lamp is not dimmable, you can get them but not from Edison. You are also looking at more like £30 a pop as it is relatively new tecnology to be able to dim a mains powered LED! I wanted dimmers in my house in certain rooms but dropped that idea when I saw how much the bulbs were. Instead I had two lighting circuits installed in the rooms so I have the choice of two lighting patterns or both - this was cheaper and also gives a pretty nice effect.

I don't think you will be interested at £30 each but here they are...




Pretty big units made by Philips. You can get them in a number of different beam angles (25 and 40 degrees). These are 7W.

Philips Master LED


The Philips master range is pretty good. There are loads of different shapes, fitting types, colour (whiteness) and Wattage. Just a few are pictured below...












Another alternative that you have if you want to go dimmable is to go fluorescent. I bought some fluorescent ones to see what they were like... they gave a very good bright light BUT took about a minute to warm up. I have now put them in the chippy as the 1 minute start up is fine. The dimmable fluorescent are around £15 for an 11w and they last about 15,000 hours.

Dimmable Fluorescent


I think I need to open a shop!


Turks.

[pvr]

Just thinking about when changing the low voltage to mains LED, I would have to change all the fittings as well as the connection is different ...

[Turks]

If you want to keep your low voltage fittings then just use the Edison GU5.3 LED bulbs? There is nothing wrong with the fittings you have unless they have a fixed back on them?

If you want to change to mains you just need a little lighting wire and some new fittings... mine are all Deluce Twist and Lock which are really easy to fit and look great... bulb changing is very easy as there isn't the annoying metal rings clamping the bulb up to the fitting.


Turks.

[pvr]

Just that I would want to get rid of the transformers as well as they eat energy by themselves. Thinking it through, I suddenly thought that I did not have the back end do put the mains ones in. The current ones are on a metal bracket attached to the main fitting so a new backend connection would be required. Can you source those independently?

[Turks]

I wouldn't have thought that you would be able to modify them with new components. You would have to remove them to do this anyway and then spend hours modifying them to take the GU10's... You would be better removing them and fitting new Mains Powered fittings. I think that the Deluce ones I got from CEF were only around £12 each - might have been less. You can get them cheaper than that too.

These will do the trick, they have a metal bracket but you don't have to attach it to the Ceiling Ring. Just get some lighting wire to link between them all and to the mains and you will be sorted.

240v Downlights


Turks.

[slieverue]

Hey Turks

we did the same in our kitchen and bathroom - I think in total it was only about 12-15 lights, but at the same time we also changed all the other standard lights to low energy. We have definitely noticed a difference in the bills. Don't ask me what the difference is but it must have been enough for my wife to comment on it.

The other added benefit that you touched on was the reduced heat. Our kitchen has a low ceiling (very old house) and you could really feel the heat on the top of your napper.

Would recommend the changeover - even if it was just one room per month.

Good shout though Turks.

Cheers

Tony

[Turks]

Hi Slieverue,

Only just seen your post, not sure how I missed it!

Anyway, good idea just to maybe set a target of one room a month... can be really off-putting when you see the cost to do the whole house written down!

Anyway, I did a little test when I was at home - I've got one of theses Energy Monitors from British Gas... shows you your consumption in Real Time. Everything in my house is LED now apart from 8 little cabinet Halogens which sit under my wall mounted cupboards to light up the work tops - they give a really nice effect BUT...

I switched them on one night out of interest and BOOM... the consumption shot straight up! These are low voltage too (12v transformers). So I thought I'd test to see how many rooms I could light up before I matched the consumption of these little guzzlers... I lit the WHOLE HOUSE!!!

Since then, if I saw my missus putting them on i'd be off my chair and sprinting accross the house like Usain Bolt to turn them off. She must have thought i'm bonkers! In her eyes "they look nice and cosy" which is fine if she was cooking me some chicken or something but when they are just on so she can look through to the Kitchen from the Lounge and feel all warm and fuzzy while watching James Martin cook chicken... then NO!

Did you bother doing anything with yours PVR?


Turks.