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affordable LED light


dick123

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Our "Cheap" LED's installed in http://banbrv.blogspot.com/2015/03/learning-every-day-leds.html 2 years ago are working great. Used every day with voltages that ranged from almost dead flat batteries to fully charged and on shore power. They've been rattled, shaken and left burning for months at a time (the exterior light got left on all winter).

And no RF interference!

BnB

2009 Monaco Cayman DP 38'

bnbrv.blogspot.com/

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Our "Cheap" LED's installed in http://banbrv.blogspot.com/2015/03/learning-every-day-leds.html 2 years ago are working great. Used every day with voltages that ranged from almost dead flat batteries to fully charged and on shore power. They've been rattled, shaken and left burning for months at a time (the exterior light got left on all winter).

And no RF interference!

BnB

 

Ours, too. I look for watts and color. I buy cheap enough that if I screw up and they don't have the right color or light output, I replace them with others. I have paid as little as $0.28 ($2.87 on Ebay with free shipping) for 12 volt LEDs. I don't look for variable voltage or dimmable. In my four years full-timing, not a single one has failed. They are everywhere except closets and in the hatches. Those are not on long enough to justify replacing the bulbs. When the incandescents fail, I replace them with one of the reject LEDs.

Michael

2017 Allegro Bus 45OPP
Cummins ISL 450

Visit us at schwarz.org!

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Another perspective on the efficiency of LEDs. . .

For every $1 of electricity you get $0.10 worth of light and $0.90 worth of heat with incandescent light bulbs and with LEDs, $1.00 worth of light and negligible a amount of heat.

 

So in the winter when you are heating anyway, the LEDs aren't really 90% more efficient, because you were going to buy that heat anyhow. In the summer when you are air-conditioning, you not only have to pay the power company $0.90 to deliver that heat to you, you then have to pay them again (around $0.23) to take it back out. So the LEDs are more like 115% more efficient than incandescent in the summer. I reckon on a year-round average the LEDs are around 90% more efficient, but if you only use the RV in the summer, they are really a little better than that.

 

To me, the savings in electrictiy is not as significant as other factors. In the case of RVs where 12v is converted up to 120v to run fluorescent bulbs, the bulbs are really cheap and fluorescent is much more efficient than incandescent. The problem is the ballast or converter in the fixture which seem to fail about as often as the bulbs and are a pain to repair or expensive to replace. I'm a little put off by the charred area in the ballast when it fails, although in all fairness, I haven't seen one actually catch fire.

 

On the other hand I have had two CFL bulbs start a fire around the base of the bulb when they failed. I happened to be close to the fixture when they failed, killed the power and put out the fire with no problem, but if I would not have been right there at the time of failure, could have easily turned in to a major fire. At this point, I wouldn't consider putting a CFL in my RV.

 

As the ballasts fail, I am replacing with LEDs, but not as a priority expecting the electricity savings to be significant.

F-250 SCREW 4X4 Gas, 5th NuWa Premier 35FKTG, Full Time, Engineer Ret.

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When buying CFL bulbs the brand really matters, a lot of the stuff we see here is quite dangerous. They may have gotten a UL label or it may be fake, even if real what they submitted for testing may not be what you are buying.

 

Same thing for a lot of electronic gear we see today, switches, GFIs and breakers are all worth a bit of extra care when you are shopping.

 

You see the same thing in other areas, bolts marked "high strength" but that snap under load and the like so shop carefully.

First rule of computer consulting:

Sell a customer a Linux computer and you'll eat for a day.

Sell a customer a Windows computer and you'll eat for a lifetime.

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