Saturday, May 21, 2016

More LED lighting

A few years ago, I had four incandescent garage lights replaced with 7 fluorescent tube lights fixtures, for a total of 14 bulbs, each 4 ft long.  I have 6 fixtures above the car bays, and one fixture by the man-door alcove.  Each bulb is 32 Watts, for a total of 448 Watts.

Over the years, I've had to replace a great number of bulbs, and they aren't cheap.  They run about $4 apiece, and I seem to be replacing 1-2 every month.  I suspect it's reduced mercury content causing the failure to ignite after a short time in service.  Also we turn them on and off quite a bit, which is hard on fluorescent bulbs.



This past week I decided that instead of continuing to replace these failing bulbs, I would install LED tube lights instead.  There are two kinds of LEDs for replacing fluorescent bulbs.  One kind requires a minor electrical modification of the fixture (bypassing the ballast), and the other is a direct replacement, where the ballast continues to be in the circuit.

Being kinda lazy, I chose the latter type.  The ones I bought have a 4100 Kelvin color, so they are quite a bit more yellow than the 6500 Kelvin bulbs they replaced.  I am getting used to them.  They also only use 17 Watts each, so the total power draw is down to 238 Watts.  Better...



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