LED house bulbs?

Anybody here using LED bulbs in their house yet? They are starting to sneak down to almost reasonable prices and frankly I am sick of the compact fluorescents.

I'm still hoarding incandescent bulbs. I like the led bulbs, but they are still too much right now.

all I have is LED in the house.. I love them

I picked one up at ikea a few weeks back for under $5. I like it, the color seems decent enough. I'll definitely pick up more for that price next time I'm there.

Yeah, I'm hoarding them too. The other day, Ace advertised Feit brand for $7.99 with a $2 mail in rebate. For some damn reason I can't find the ad any more, though. I bet they will continue to drop through next year, get closer to at least the CFL's. FWIW, Lowe's advertises a 60w Utilitech brand for $5.98. The thing is, if I were to convert every light in this house I'm still looking at 40 including my outdoor floods, you do the math.

We swapped out to mostly LED in our can lights. Work great, and if it goes as advertised, we may never have to replace them.

CFLs gave me headaches. There is something in the inherent flicker in them that seems to aggravate my occasional migraines. LEDs do not do that to me. As a plus they use less energy, last longer, and do not have that nasty mercury stuff in them to worry about when disposing.

CFLs never found a home in theatre.. but LEDs have certainly made inroads quickly. We just replaced all the lights in the ceiling of the Borgata's event Center with LED moving lights. We use these for pinspotting tables, mood, and even occasionally for shows.

Based on good reviews, I bought two six packs of sixty Watt equivalents from Amazon last week. About seven bucks each. Really good light output. I'm Satisfied.

I have a ton of the CF types but their color isn't real good. 150W equivalent CF is great in the garage though.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KDZGBM8/ref=pe_385040_124510140_TE_item

I'm also slowly replacing incandecents and CFLs with LED bulbs. I just like the light better and you don't have the headaches disposing them like you do with CFLs.

Are LED's robust enough to work in a drop light?

I'm slowly switching out bulbs for LEDs, as the incandescent and cfls burn out. Just do it slowly to spread the cost out. Target has decent prices on LEDs and when you consider how long they last and how much power you save its worth it.

We just picked up some LED bulbs for the house last week. They were about $10 for the pair. Great lights, 40w equivilent are bright but not harsh. Actual draw around 7w.

The interesting thing is these bulbs have drawn our attention to a potential wiring issue. We put two in a ceiling fan fixture, that is contrled by a motion sensitive switch. (This room has the switch located in a weird spot)

This switch is set to turn the overhead lights off after 60 or so seconds of inactivity, but with these bulbs in the light only dims - they never go completely out unless I move the switch to off instead of auto. When in auto, the lights do come on full bright when the switch detects movement.

I think these draw so little wattage that they are showing us some wiring issue in this fan, but we have yet to investigate further. Any ideas what to look for?

i buy them as i have coupons. i really like the GE ones, i don't think i'd trust utilitech anything from lowe's to last.

Nick_Comstock wrote: Are LED's robust enough to work in a drop light?

Dunno about using the bulbs in a drop light but two guys at work got rechargeable LED work lights from Harbor Freight, they like them. Best part is they don't get hot.

EastCoastMojo wrote: We just picked up some LED bulbs for the house last week. They were about $10 for the pair. Great lights, 40w equivilent are bright but not harsh. Actual draw around 7w. The interesting thing is these bulbs have drawn our attention to a potential wiring issue. We put two in a ceiling fan fixture, that is contrled by a motion sensitive switch. (This room has the switch located in a weird spot) This switch is set to turn the overhead lights off after 60 or so seconds of inactivity, but with these bulbs in the light only dims - they never go completely out unless I move the switch to off instead of auto. When in auto, the lights do come on full bright when the switch detects movement. I think these draw so little wattage that they are showing us some wiring issue in this fan, but we have yet to investigate further. Any ideas what to look for?

I'd get that checked for sure. The wall switch should always kill the black wire which is the 'hot' leg. A dimmer can still 'leak' a little voltage across the resistor even when turned down all the way, BTW and the motion detector might do the same. It wouldn't be enough to light an incandescent but LED's use so little power that they might.

I used an LED bulb in the Trooper's dome light, it would not turn off. The place that made them said if this happened to use a small resistor, like a half watt, across the terminals. Worked perfect after that. But that's on a 12v system, not 110v.

Costco has a rebate on LED bulbs. Lowers the price to reasonable levels. Only for 4 at a time though.

Wait, people still have incandescent bulbs? Swapping to a CFL is a 100%+ ROI for average use. And that doesn't even account for heat generation. Why wouldn't you?

Only places I don't use incandescent bulbs are in floods, where they take too long to warm up. This is where I use LEDs.

I swapped the floods outside for LED about a year ago. The halls and closets get CFL bulbs now but will probably be swapped to LEDs as they go bad. Everything else gets incandescent. The color on the CFLs still suck.

ProDarwin, it's about quality of light, not cost of light. CFLs just don't have it.

Nick, the LEDs will hold up as a drop light. I use these and love them.

Clamp on anything, aim where you want it, cool, and don't shine back into your eyes. I picked them up at Lowes for about $15 each. I've got two on my mill, one on the lathe, one on the bandsaw, two on my tool box for use on cars, and one clamped to the bed. Wonderful lights.

In reply to Toyman01:

I have that same light clamped to my BBQ grill. It works great for night grilling.

Have you guys seen the T8/T12 tube replacements? I am thinking about using those in my kitchen as there are 3, 4ft dual tube fixtures up in the ceiling. They heat up the kitchen and the ballasts are loud. I guess you have to bypass the ballast and make sure the tombstones are unshunted. And yes, they are expensive

I have almost completely changed to LED's in our house. As ECM and Curmudgeon have found LED's and motion sensing switch setups do not play well with LED's. Also some older dimming switches allow a little current to leak thru.

I have replaced my older dimmer switches with ones designed to work with LED's. The newer LED compatible dimmer switches even have a potentiometer in them that allows you to set the amount of dimming at the lowest setting.

I do have a couple switches that are both dimming and remotely controlled by a motion sensor. They will not work with anything but an incandescent bulb, no LED's or CFL's.

Nick_Comstock wrote: Are LED's robust enough to work in a drop light?

That's what I'm using, the wal-mart brand LED bulb in a drop light. I've made it live up to it's name by dropping it several times off the lift onto the concrete and accidentally kicked it across the shop once. I've had to replace to light housing itself from my abuse but I'm still using the same bulb.

stanger_missle wrote: Have you guys seen the T8/T12 tube replacements? I am thinking about using those in my kitchen as there are 3, 4ft dual tube fixtures up in the ceiling. They heat up the kitchen and the ballasts are loud. I guess you have to bypass the ballast and make sure the tombstones are unshunted. And yes, they are expensive

I would love to get some of those. We have a 4-tube fixture in the kitchen and in my office. They do require rewiring the fixture and are very expensive. I am waiting for the price to come down to some reasonable level.

My local Home Depot has these bad boys on sale for $4. They're Phillips brand. I don't know why but the 2D shape cracks me up.

Never seen those 2D bulbs. They are funny looking. has anyone seen a noticeable difference in their power bill after switching? Reason I ask, IIRC lighting is typically only about 7% of the average power bill, HVAC is first followed by refrigeration then the various odds and ends. Of course that number varies depending on a lot of stuff.

At work, the shop is lit by those big mercury vapor lights that use bulbs about 2/3 the size of a football. The company got bids and will be installing LED's; they are commercial and pricey but the cost savings over the mercury vapor lamps is supposed to be recovered within 5 years. The company installing them guarantees each lamp to last 8 years. Sounds like a win-win.

I've noticed a difference elsewhere. Not here though, because I switched them all out before the first bill came.

The heat output of incandescent bulbs is huge though. For the extra 50w or so each one puts out, your A/C system has to remove that much extra heat from the house as well.