LED lighting in homes

[badashuka]

Just wondering if anyone has first hand experience with the LED retrofit kit for recessed cans. I have installed them in older homes that don't have a ground in the wiring and my coworker said that they will only last half as long, so instead of 22 years they will last 11 years. I just started installing them within the last 6 months so none have failed yet because of the grounding issue. The kits that I installed don't even have a ground for the LED driver and I can't imagine that they were designed to achieve ground through the spring clips that hold them in the can. Thoughts and experience please.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

What does the equipment ground have to do with the LED lasting longer.

 

[badashuka]

Not sure, I know that there are plenty of LED that run without being grounded. My coworker just seemed pretty sure so I thought maybe there is something I don't know about these Led recessed lights. I tried to research this but could not find anything that validated his statement so I thought I would check here.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

For one I am not a lover of LED's. I am very much in favor of good lighting , saving energy and protecting the environment. LED's are non of the above, IMO. They are not perfected yet and I have seen hundreds of them go bad within months. Very much like the CFL deal where the public got sold a bill of goods. How many million CFL's are sitting in garbage cans not properly disposed of and how many millions of these never lasted a month.

There is no standard on either of these products so manufacturers are pumping them out like candy and they are poor quality. Those that are good quality cost a small fortune and most homeowners will never see their value from these things. Maybe someday but not now. Even the sales people will tell you it is not cost effective for a residence.

 

[badashuka]

A little puzzled by your stance on LED lighting. They operate on very little power, and don't have the toxic components that fluorescents have, and for thier quality of light, I feel they are pretty bright. I know they will fade over the years but in my opinion they are worth it. I would be interested in knowing why you feel they are not environmentally friendly or energy saving.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

A little puzzled by your stance on LED lighting. They operate on very little power, and don't have the toxic components that fluorescents have, and for thier quality of light, I feel they are pretty bright. I know they will fade over the years but in my opinion they are worth it. I would be interested in knowing why you feel they are not environmentally friendly or energy saving.

You have to take into consideration what it takes to produce them also. They have not proved themselves nor are many of them lasting very long. They do have toxin in them and must be disposed of properly. If they can get them to perform the way they are suppose to then I may have a different feeling but when $50 is spent on a bulb and it lasts a month or two then that does not do justice. As I stated before I have seen tons of these go bad over short periods of time.

Scientists from UC Irvine and UC Davis pulverized multicolored LED Christmas lights, traffic signal lights, and automobile head and brake lights, allowed residue to leach from them, and then analyzed its chemical content. They discovered that low-intensity red LEDs contained up to eight times the amount of lead allowed under California law, although generally brighter bulbs tended to contain the most contaminants. While white bulbs had a lower lead content than their colored counterparts, they still had high levels of nickel.Besides the lead and nickel, the bulbs and their associated parts were also found to contain arsenic, copper, and other metals that have been linked to different cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease, hypertension, skin rashes and other illnesses in humans, and to ecological damage in waterways. UC Irvine?s Oladele Ogunseitan said that while breaking a single bulb and breathing its fumes would not automatically cause cancer, it could be the tipping point for an individual regularly exposed to another carcinogen.The study found that the production, use and disposal of LEDs all present health risks, which the public should be made aware of. It suggests that a special broom, gloves and mask should be used when cleaning up broken bulbs, and that crews attending to car accidents or broken traffic lights should be required to wear protective gear, and treat the material as hazardous waste.LEDs are currently not classified as toxic, and are disposed of in conventional landfills.Ogunseitan blames the situation on a lack of proper product testing before LEDs were presented as a more efficient replacement for incandescent bulbs ? which are now being phased out around the world. Although a law requiring more stringent testing for such products was scheduled to begin on January 1st in California, it was opposed by industry groups, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it on hold before leaving office.?Every day we don't have a law that says you cannot replace an unsafe product with another unsafe product, we're putting people's lives at risk,? said Ogunseitan. ?And it's a preventable risk.?Incandescent bulbs, incidentally, contain very high levels of lead and mercury, while compact fluorescents are also high in mercury.The UC Irvine and UC Davis team's study appears in the January 2011 issue ofEnvironmental Science & Technology.​

 

[iwire]

I have seen hundreds of them go bad within months.

Huh? :huh:

We have installed literally 1000s of LED fixtures with very few failures and I would be the first to know if they failed.

I am going to guess it has a lot more to do with the manufacturer than the technology.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

Huh? :huh:

We have installed literally 1000s of LED fixtures with very few failures and I would be the first to know if they failed.

I am going to guess it has a lot more to do with the manufacturer than the technology.

That may be true. There also may be a difference between the light bulb and the led fixture also. Most of the failures I have seen have been with the bulbs. Hundreds was no doubt an exaggeration but I have seen many-- and I also have spoken to many electricians who have also seen many go bad.

I know Cree makes a great product but my point is there is a lot of crap out there and there is no way for most consumers to know. There is also a lack of education about them. How many CFL's got wasted. I have 2 in my house and one burned out in 2 months. I have recycled over a hundred of them myself just from replacing them at people's homes.

 

[badashuka]

I appreciate the time spent on this post, I will definitely look into it further

 

[Electric-Light]

Those LED bulbs that use a ton of tiny keychain light type LED put together are notorious for premature failure. Their efficacy is about the same as incandescent lamps or somewhere in between them and CFLs.

LEDs cost a ton and payback is not even expected, but their operating characteristics are compatible with residential use.
The big one is instant full output and instant on without the life reduction penalty unlike CFLs.

Unless there is a very strict limitation on demand like running on battery power or a small generator, LEDs really don't offer any advantage.

If you're on battery power, then it does matter if something is pulling 40W vs 150W. But if you're on the grid, hour or two that either setup will operate is insignificant. 80Wh/day vs 300Wh/day. or $8-16/yr.

 

[hillbilly1]

I'm trying out a commercial grade 10 watt led on my back deck, so far so good. We used a lot of them in restaurant retro fits, dimmers seem to be the biggest killer of them. I cut in 8-5" cans in the master bedroom of the house I just bought, two out of eight cfl's blew right away within 5 seconds of turning them on. The rest have done fine so far, I was just about to change over to halogens if any more blew. I put 130 of them in a house I wired a couple of years ago, and the homeowner has not complained about early failures. I think there making them cheaper and cheaper, so I think the failure rate will go up.

 

[badashuka]

I just installed 7 6" cans with the LED retrofit kit in a customers kitchen and they look great. They have five times the light they had with thier fluorescent fixture with less wattage than a 100 watt incandescent light bulb. The cost for the fixture was not that much more in materials and my customer loves them. I did an Apple executives home with the same lights and he was really happy with outcome and cost. I haven't had one problem with them at all. I will admit though I have just started installing them in homes within the last year so time will tell. And back to my original question I posted, I spoke with the manufacturer of the cans I installed and the ground will not limit the life of the LED, however not using the proper dimmer will.

 

[Electric-Light]

I just installed 7 6" cans with the LED retrofit kit in a customers kitchen and they look great. They have five times the light they had with thier fluorescent fixture with less wattage than a 100 watt incandescent light bulb. The cost for the fixture was not that much more in materials and my customer loves them. I did an Apple executives home with the same lights and he was really happy with outcome and cost. I haven't had one problem with them at all. I will admit though I have just started installing them in homes within the last year so time will tell. And back to my original question I posted, I spoke with the manufacturer of the cans I installed and the ground will not limit the life of the LED, however not using the proper dimmer will.

Energy use doesn't really matter beyond the extent necessary to satisfy government regulations for residential applications because, in grand scheme of things, lighting is only a small portion of the power bill.

 

[badashuka]

Very true

 

[Strife]

For one I am not a lover of LED's. I am very much in favor of good lighting , saving energy and protecting the environment. LED's are non of the above, IMO. They are not perfected yet and I have seen hundreds of them go bad within months. Very much like the CFL deal where the public got sold a bill of goods. How many million CFL's are sitting in garbage cans not properly disposed of and how many millions of these never lasted a month.

There is no standard on either of these products so manufacturers are pumping them out like candy and they are poor quality. Those that are good quality cost a small fortune and most homeowners will never see their value from these things. Maybe someday but not now. Even the sales people will tell you it is not cost effective for a residence.

I am not a lover of LED's either.
I've heard numerous horror stories from my vendors(whole batches burning up at a rate of 30-50% within the first month)
1: LED's manufacturers push the light output of the LED by pushing the voltage that an LED can take to the maximum. If you apply 27V to a computer core instead of 2.7V you'd get a SUPER COMPUTER. Problem is, it'll burn out fast. Same thing with LED's. Why do you think a 2" LED bulb has this 7" radiator around it? I have seen an LED lamp with a FAN behind it. SURE, BRIGHT, EXTREMELLY BRIGHT. But what happens when the cooling conditions are not the same as the test conditions? Do they test these lamps under normal conditions?
2: MYTH: LED's do not create heat: FALSE. Again, why do they need that big A.. radiator around them if they don't create heat??? YEAH, they're not hot when you touch them, because the heat dissipates fast enough through the radiator, but it still creates heat. And I could bet anything it creates more heat than CFL's
3: LED's seem brighter. ARE NOT necessary brighter. Pushing the kelvins into a lamp gives you the illusion of being brighter when you look directly at it. Most LED's seem to run at 4K PLUS Kelvin. Our church is still testing the LED idea, we put a few LED lamps 25 some feet in the air, which were supposed to be brighter than CFL's(MUCH BRIGHTER). Sure enough, the LED's are spots, the CFL's were floods. Took my light tester and measured 17 FC directly under the light with the LED. Moved 1-2 feet and the light level dropped to 8-10 FC. With the CFL I was getting a good 11-12 FC on a 2-3 feet radius

 

[Strife]

I just installed 7 6" cans with the LED retrofit kit in a customers kitchen and they look great. They have five times the light they had with thier fluorescent fixture with less wattage than a 100 watt incandescent light bulb. The cost for the fixture was not that much more in materials and my customer loves them. I did an Apple executives home with the same lights and he was really happy with outcome and cost. I haven't had one problem with them at all. I will admit though I have just started installing them in homes within the last year so time will tell. And back to my original question I posted, I spoke with the manufacturer of the cans I installed and the ground will not limit the life of the LED, however not using the proper dimmer will.

5 TIMES??????? Now.... you said fluorescent FIXTURE (as in singular), if they had ONE FL fixture and you put up SEVEN LED's, where's the gain of 7 over 5?
And if you made a mistake and replaced 7 for 7, EVEN MANUFACTURERS don't make that FIVE TIMES claim.....
HOW CAN YOU CLAIM THE COST OF THE FIXTURE WAS NOT THAT MUCH MORE?????????????????????
A CFl runs 2-3 bucks, an LED is AT LEAST 30 bucks. Assuming you installed the cans and wired them for 80-100 a pop how exactly is 1020 VS 700 NOT that much more? I really wished I was doing business in your area if 25% is peanuts.

 

[Electric-Light]

Fluorescent, especially the low-brightness tube ones provide very disperse lighting. So disperse that they're basically useless where you need collimated light.

LEDs on the other hand provide more of a cencentrated beam. Does not have the intensity of a HID or incandescent filament, so they can be collimated well for a flashlight, but not for a search light.

Five times the brightness level is easily doable, because the beam is so focused.

This might help someone a bit.
Brightness = pressure
Output = weight.

Stand a dull pencil on paper and call that 1.0 unit of pressure.

Sharpen it the best you can and stand it again. You can easily have five times the pressure on paper, but you didn't change the weight exerted.

highly focused task light isn't what we desire in our homes. We like diffused light and in the process of diffusing, we lose some light.

 

[hillbilly1]

Some manufactures "pulse" the output of the led so it appears brighter than what it actually is, while maintaining a low wattage consumption.

 

[Electric-Light]

Some manufactures "pulse" the output of the led so it appears brighter than what it actually is, while maintaining a low wattage consumption.

Where did you read that?
That's non-sense. If it's pulsed slow enough that it appears full brightness it will be impractical. 100-0-100-0 pulse with 50% on/off ratio at turn signal rate will use half the power with 100% perceived brightness... practical? no...

The output actually looks "lower" if pulsed faster. The tail lights on buses run at something like 400Hz pulse. When its driving around, its running at 50% on ratio. When the brakes are applied, it goes to 100%. When the pulse is fast enough that flickering is not directly visible, it will make it look dimmer.

Cheap LED products like to claim that as its cheap to connect two strings of LEDs connected back to back, so that one half runs on positive half of the cycle and the other half on the negative half.

You can't see it, but the two halves are alternating and they're never lit at the same time in that configuration. It's a common setup for Christmas light strings

 

[hillbilly1]

Where did you read that?
That's non-sense. If it's pulsed slow enough that it appears full brightness it will be impractical. 100-0-100-0 pulse with 50% on/off ratio at turn signal rate will use half the power with 100% perceived brightness... practical? no...

The output actually looks "lower" if pulsed faster. The tail lights on buses run at something like 400Hz pulse. When its driving around, its running at 50% on ratio. When the brakes are applied, it goes to 100%. When the pulse is fast enough that flickering is not directly visible, it will make it look dimmer.

Cheap LED products like to claim that as its cheap to connect two strings of LEDs connected back to back, so that one half runs on positive half of the cycle and the other half on the negative half.

You can't see it, but the two halves are alternating and they're never lit at the same time in that configuration. It's a common setup for Christmas light strings

I will have to look and see if I still have that issue, but it was in the EC&M magazine. They have been wrong before:roll: