Problem with Recessed LED Lights

Little Bill

Little Bill

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Staff member
Location
Tennessee NEC:2017
Occupation
Semi-Retired Electrician
I installed over 100 LED recessed lights in a new construction home about 3 years ago, in 2022. Starting in 2023, several of the lights have either totally stopped working, are intermittent, or flickering/strobing. The vendor has replaced them under the 5 year warranty. That is good, but I get no compensation for my labor. I think I have replaced 40 or 50 of them.

There is no pattern of where the lights are failing. They have failed all over the house, from top floor, main floor, basement, and outdoors. Voltages appear good, connections are tight, no other electronics in the house have failed.
I replaced all the lights in a high ceiling with a different brand as they are the hardest to get to. Two of them failed less than a year after being replaced.

Is it just bad lights, or is there something else causing this?
 
Little Bill said:
I installed over 100 LED recessed lights in a new construction home about 3 years ago, in 2022. Starting in 2023, several of the lights have either totally stopped working, are intermittent, or flickering/strobing. The vendor has replaced them under the 5 year warranty. That is good, but I get no compensation for my labor. I think I have replaced 40 or 50 of them.

There is no pattern of where the lights are failing. They have failed all over the house, from top floor, main floor, basement, and outdoors. Voltages appear good, connections are tight, no other electronics in the house have failed.
I replaced all the lights in a high ceiling with a different brand as they are the hardest to get to. Two of them failed less than a year after being replaced.

Is it just bad lights, or is there something else causing this?
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Don’t know about Tennessee, but in Georgia, your warranty would only be one year. Anything after that, they would have to pay for your labor whether the manufacturers warranty is longer or not. Sometimes the manufacturer will pay for the labor, but I’ve only seen that in commercial.
 
hillbilly1 said:
Don’t know about Tennessee, but in Georgia, your warranty would only be one year. Anything after that, they would have to pay for your labor whether the manufacturers warranty is longer or not. Sometimes the manufacturer will pay for the labor, but I’ve only seen that in commercial.
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I should have stated that I charged labor on the first couple of trips. I took it upon myself to not charge on the latest visits. I just felt like the HO was blaming me for the failed lights. They assured me they were not. I just feel bad for them as there were so many lights failing. I had to charge for the high ceiling (20+ ft) as I had to hire someone to help with those. Instead of having to move furniture and putting up scaffolding, we changed the lights from the attic.
The person in the attic would remove the lights and drivers, then lower them down with a rope. The person below would then put the replacement light on the rope to be pulled up.
 
I’ve got kinda similar situation, but it is 8’ LED HO strips I installed a little over a year ago. Bought them through Home Depot for a dump truck maintenance shop. About half of them quit working. Say what you may about Amazon, the cheap LED’s I’ve bought from them have held up well, and I’m replacing the HD lights with Amazon fixtures. The shop owner thinks it may be on the utility side, the poco has blamed squirrels on several power outages, so I’m putting in surge suppression too.
 
The sales pitch manufactures say is the LED lights will last for 50,000 hours. This may be true regarding the LED itself but in most
case's of failure it's the driver. I doubt your wiring or connections has anything to cause failure.
 
kec said:
The sales pitch manufactures say is the LED lights will last for 50,000 hours. This may be true regarding the LED itself but in most
case's of failure it's the driver. I doubt your wiring or connections has anything to cause failure.
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It is the drivers. As a test, on a few of the replacements, I used the same light but new driver. The old lights all worked with the new driver.
 
From various models of Halo brand in the big box stores that I looked at all made in lack of quality control communist china. I go way out of my way to not purchase or use any safety & test equipment, electrical supplies, hardware & LED lamps made in communist china. Had too many failures with those items.Most contractors only offer a one year free labor for warranty items. Problem with Amazon I usually have to send an e mail to find where products are made.
 
Little Bill said:
Is it just bad lights, or is there something else causing this?
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I feel your pain, this is exactly what was afraid would happen when they decided to phase out good old medium base, I have started going back to regular 6" cans in some places to 'hedge' my exposure to wafers, then the homeowner can go back to just replacing a light bulb.
I have installed a few whole house surge protectors which seems to fix it in a few cases,
it does seem these are not living up to the advertised life expectancy.

One of the little towns near me used to have Low Pressure Sodium (LPS) street lighting, if your not familiar with it its a very yellow light reminds me of the 1970's when it was everywhere, as I understand the efficiency of LPS (lumens per watt) is on par with LEDS even today and the lamps lasted a long time, some lasted decades.
Well they ripped it all out and upgraded to LED, and the led's are now failing after about two years, and in a weird way where all the streetlights turn purple one at a time, so the whole town went from being yellow at night to purple :ROFLMAO:
 
garbo said:
From various models of Halo brand in the big box stores that I looked at all made in lack of quality control communist china. I go way out of my way to not purchase or use any safety & test equipment, electrical supplies, hardware & LED lamps made in communist china. Had too many failures with those items.Most contractors only offer a one year free labor for warranty items. Problem with Amazon I usually have to send an e mail to find where products are made.
Click to expand...

What other country manufactures LEDs and driver circuits?

In MN, I believe all mechanicals, including electrical, are mandated to have a minimum 2 year warranty on new builds.
 
fireryan said:
Ive has this issue as well. Can I ask what brand your are using? Ive had bad luck with Nora and Halo brand. Nicor and RAB seem to be a lot better but still some issues
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Hubbell, RAB and Nicor have been decent for me. I've also used Hyperlight from Amazon, which are UL listed, but I've been having issues with them blowing GFCI breakers when turning them on.
 
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