Hi guys,
Recently I am considering to buy a LED strip under my cabinet. Does it slash the bill greatly? The supplier always boasts that led lights are energy-saving. If does so, I am going to replace all the bulb in my new house. Have any one used before? How about the installation?
Thx
led strip-it is a good choice?
(4 posts) (3 voices)-
della2010
MemberPosted Thursday 19 May 2011 @ 6:39:08 am from IP # -
Lance
Key Masterdella, no probs, had my doubts it was spam, we get a lot of spam on the forums and people are getting a bit jumpy : )
Whether it cuts your energy bills will depend on what it's replacing, basically just compare the wattage of the old lighting and the new lighting. If there's a large difference then energy used for that use will decrease by the same proportion. What proportion of the total energy bill that saving will be only you can work out by subtracting the estimated saving from the LED upgrade from your average daily energy use...
Posted Friday 20 May 2011 @ 4:24:46 am from IP # -
cool at home
MemberWe have LED lighting under our counter top in the kitchen - strip (ribbon) lights in 'warm white'. We are very pleased with it as a feature though I can't compare running costs with other LED lights we have (halogen style, 240V recessed lights in the ceiling). If you are OK with the upfront costs I'd think ribbon lights could give you good light if sufficient are installed.
Over a year ago we replaced all our high use downlights with LED warm white options, mixture of 240 and 12V, as well as a few CFL downlights. The transformers for 12V LESD downlights are very expensive and also draw power so we went with 240V wherever we could. A lighting guru might say that comes at a another cost (longevitity of the globe???) that we don't know of, but it saved a lot of $$ upfront.
We noticed a significant drop to the power bill, but of course our outlay was very big... we hope it will give very long term benefits that will offset these upfront costs (and sellers claim it will) but can't comment on that as yet.
Incidently, we much prefer the light quality of the LED downlights to the CFLs and the longevity of the latter hasn't been brilliant, so I'd avoid those.
We had to shop around for a 'warm white' light that we liked - there is a huge variety of colour under this banner, and many we would never consider to be 'warm white'. Some were positively green! Unfortunately that's a 'nasty' upfront cost to bear... paying $35 plus per globe and postage, to end up sticking the light in a drawer as an 'emergency use only' globe.
We use the Cree 3 x 3W warm white halogen replacement globe that LED Central sell (cheaper on eBay than their website). The light is 'whiter' than a standard halogen but still pretty nice. My other half is very very fussy about light quality and even he is happy (quite a challenge). I think Lance recommends another place - it's been posted many times previously so just search this site for LED lighting options... you'll find a lot of comments that will help.
Be aware that you will need more LED lights than if you were installing halogen downlights, say. For instance, we have 5 x 9W lights over a kitchen bench where we'd probably put only 3 halogens. Can't comment on what that means for ribbon lighting, but presumably you need to consider that.
Posted Friday 20 May 2011 @ 4:28:26 am from IP #