Home LED lights

[alldodge]

All the packaging states the LED will last 100K plus hours, only issue is the circuitry controlling the LED's don't. All these lights cost from 20 to 50 bucks each, so replacing lights is costly. Have replaced two outdoor (12VAC low voltage), one went after two years, current one is one year old. Changed out 10 indoors and just had one go out after 8 months.

Home Depot, Lowes, Super bright LED's

Does anyone know how make the lights which will last?

 

[gm280]

AllDodge, they better last longer then that because we changed almost every light we have now with LEDs. I only have a few chandelier bulbs left to change out. But their cost is still too high yet. But all the typical 40, 60 and 75 watt incandescent bulbs are now changed. Even out outside low voltage bulbs have been changed. And I went with the warm white bulbs instead of the cool white. The cool white look too bluish and harsh. But the warm white has more of a typical incandescent glow to them. And therefore that is what we went with. JMHO

 

[64osby]

I put some LED mini spots (Sylvania) in several recessed fixtures, 2 years of service so far with no issues. Cost $11.00 per bulb.

Picked up some 60w replacements 10W from our local power co-op Brand is TCP, Elite series. They are running a BOGO right now $3.75 for 2 bulbs. Just put a couple in last week, have to see how they last.

The Admiral doesn't like them because they are not "white" light, color temp is 2700K.

Package states they will last 22.8 years, based on 3hrs/day. Equals 25,000 hours.

 

[alldodge]

For me they are failing, hence the question. picked up only two out side low voltage LED to spot light the American flag at night, one has gone out. Opened it up and it basically burnt everything inside. Replaced with a lower wattage and it's been going for about a year.

Replaced two 3-ways with straight bulbs which we use the most, four 50w plug style for dimmable at same time and one just went out tonight. Same time replaced two screw on spots and two floods, all dimmable and they are still working but not a good feeling.

 

[thumpar]

Do you have power fluctuations? That could explain them going out. Even if not from the power company I know I have lived in houses where the fridge, dryer or other high power devices will dim the lights when kicked on. There are some pretty good sales on LED bulbs right now. I haven't bought any yet because the house will be up for sale soon.

 

[StarTed]

If you are getting any brightening of some lights when a heavy 120V load comes on then that's a sign of a poor neutral and you need to correct that ASAP.

LEDs should last much longer but the control circuits can be flaky resulting in non operation. I got a package of 3 Duracell LED flashlights last Christmas and all the smaller ones failed. They come on and go right back back off each time the button is pressed. When they go off they just dim out.

LEDs are dependent upon special circuitry to keep the current controlled while driving them hard. I think the circuitry is the weak link.

 

[bruceb58]

My entire house is LED now. Most of the bulbs came from Costco. Going on 2 or 3 years and the only failures are a few of the candelabra bulbs. The bulbs at Costco are the Feit and they aren't known to be that great of a bulb. My friends have been buying the Crees from HD.

I have them in my vacation rental as well. No failures there either and they get left on a lot.

My power bill in my home has gone down from around $100/month to $60/month for a 3000 sf house.

 

[tpenfield]

I don't think any of the LED bulbs that I have put in over the past 2 years have failed. The florescent bulbs would fail almost as must as the incandescent bulbs, but the LED' bulbs have been true to their spec's.

I'm getting outdoor spot lights at Costco for about $10 each and the household bulbs for a few $$.

AD, is the power to your house higher than it should be?

 

[JoLin]

I'd vote with power fluctuations being the cause, too. I don't thnk LED's (maybe the circuitry as Star Ted mentioned) are as robust as incandescents. I'm gradually swapping to LED's as the old bulbs burn out. I'm about halfway there. Issue I have is with the lighting that's on dimmer switches. I need to change the switches out, too. The old dimmers allow too much current even on the lowest setting, so the LED's don't dim enough.

My .02

 

[fhhuber]

I'm changing to LED as the curly flourescents fail..

Buying mine in 4 packs for $15... or about $3.75 a bulb.

The electronics needed in the LED bulbs is really simple... a bridge rectifier, capacitor and a resistor. The LED wants DC and the resistor limits the current. Its dimmable because there's no logic chip. There have been bridge rectifiers tested long past the 100,000 hrs. (which is years of constant operation) For this type stuff its MTBF (Mean time Between Failures), with some potentially outliving your kids. Usually expecting that the fails will happen early and under warranty.

 

[alldodge]

The power level is correct, at least every time I check it. The ones that went out are the dimmable one. The landscape light just burned up, was a real bright one for the flag and has a built in transformer with heat sink (along with rest of the components). It burned up during the summer and it could be it just got to hot because everything was sealed up inside an aluminum housing (no air flow).

There is an issue around hear with power going on/off every so often, hadn't thought of that. If it is the power fluctuations this appears to be no more then flipping the light on/off. Then again the power coming back on could be lower of a second before it resets. Never seen so many power outages until I moved to the country. Have UPS on all the computers, maybe need something for the house

 

[bigdee]

I have replaced all the medium base bulbs in both my houses and have NOT had a failure yet. I have used the cheapest ones (Unitec) that Lowes sells.....they are all NON-DIMMABLE.

 

[StarTed]

I know this may be a little off topic but I'm not up on the latest LED technology. I've set up LEDs for use in the vehicles. I look up the individual LED current specs and use resistors to limit the current since a LED is a current sensitive device. It gets destroyed if the current gets too high. That said, a simple resistor in a DC circuit was often used to limit the current but a resistor drops voltage (creates heat thereby wasting power). A better way would be to limit the current by controlling the voltage but that would be a little more complicated.

It is much more energy efficient to run several LEDs from one resistor as long as the current can be limited. I've set 3 LEDs on 1 resistor for my pickup canopy lighting that uses the same power as 1 LED on a resistor. The set up i made has a red LED on all the time to find the switch in the dark. The red LED has a 33K resistor in series so it is very dim and the current is negligible to the pickup battery. For the super bright white LEDs I use 15VDC as my calculation voltage to be a little on the safe side. So far, no failures. i don't worry about using the canopy LED lighting when I'm camping in it over a few nights when out fishing.

I'm in the impression that the new LED lights use more than simple DC conversion and a resistor for current limitation. If not, there's more room for efficiency there.

 

[alldodge]

Agree with your thoughts for building lights using DC. The issue with home power is AC and the units are all self contained. Voltage needs to be dropped, rectified to change to DC, smoothed, leveled and current limited. Put all that in a small package and hope to keep the heat down. They can be opened up but in most cases not without destroying them. An LED cannot be dimmed so to make it appear to dim the LED is turned OFF/ON several times a second. The more OFF time the lower the light appearance.

 

[bruceb58]

Are your dimmable bulbs failing because you have them on a old style dimmer? On all my circuits that use dimmers, I have switched to these dimmers:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004DZOMI4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage

 

[alldodge]

No, I have standard 3-way dimmer

To clarify: One landscape light has failed (about 3 years) and one flood (8 months)

The flood is this type
http://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart...Light-Bulb-ECS-16-50WE-WW-FL-FS1-BL/206127784

 

[bruceb58]

No, I have standard 3-way dimmer

To clarify: One landscape light has failed (about 3 years) and one flood (8 months)

The flood is this type

If you have this hooked up to a 12V system that is supplied by an AC transformer, I am not surprised you would have an issue. These LED bulbs do not like seeing an AC input. I know they should just act like a diode but something heats up in them. I was experimenting with something similar with track lighting.

What is also possible is that when you put these bulbs on a 12V AC transformer, the peak voltage seen by the bulbs may actually be much higher than 12V so it might be worthwhile checking that voltage. Of course, you may not see it with a meter and might have to look with an O-scope.

 

[alldodge]

If you have this hooked up to a 12V system that is supplied by an AC transformer, I am not surprised you would have an issue. These LED bulbs do not like seeing an AC input. I know they should just act like a diode but something heats up in them. I was experimenting with something similar with track lighting.

What is also possible is that when you put these bulbs on a 12V AC transformer, the peak voltage seen by the bulbs may actually be much higher than 12V so it might be worthwhile checking that voltage. Of course, you may not see it with a meter and might have to look with an O-scope.

Guess I'm going to need a bit more info on your thought. Looked up old and new AC powered outdoor landscape lighting transformers and all are listed as 12VAC. If they were 4 to 5 VDC then the landscape light would not need a built in transformer or rectifier, just LED's.

 

[bruceb58]

Guess I'm going to need a bit more info on your thought. Looked up old and new AC powered outdoor landscape lighting transformers and all are listed as 12VAC. If they were 4 to 5 VDC then the landscape light would not need a built in transformer or rectifier, just LED's.

Just to let you know what I was doing, I had a track light system that had all these fixtures that attached to it that had there own self contained 12VAC transformers so I bought these 12V LED MR16 bulbs from China on eBay. They worked for around 6 months and then started failing. I bought some full bridge rectifier chips and was going to install them but decided to just change my fixtures to 110 fixtures and found 110V LED bulbs with the voltage dropping circuitry inside them.

One thing that is uncertain is if putting the LEDs on the transformer screwed up the output of the transformer so I was getting spikey voltage.

I have a bunch of these rectifier chips if you would like to try them. I can mail some to you if you want to try them. Only problem with rectifying a 12VAC signal is that you will end up with something over 12V assuming 12VAC is RMS voltage.

 

[bruceb58]

They do make outdoor LED Drivers that output DC
http://www.amazon.com/Waterproof-Tr...98762&sr=1-6&keywords=led+outdoor+transformer