What type of lighting is safest for a high-heat application?
Question by Kelsey: What type of lighting is safest for a high-heat application? Trying to install accent lighting under a fireplace mantle, which obviously gets hot when there’s a fire. Halogen bulbs are a no-no – killed the bulbs after 2 hours the first time the fireplace was on. Will LED bulbs be safe in this application? If so, should I purchase a pre-integrated puck, or a fixture for MR16 or Gu10 lights? And which of those two options would be safer. MR16 means the transformer would be elsewhere, but it’d end up inside the wall or directly behind the plasma TV, so I’m not sure that’s any better – Gu10s would have the transformer right at the light, but can they handle the light?
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what is the brightest most economical downlight that you can buy?
Question by Alex: what is the brightest most economical downlight that you can buy? I currently have a 5 spotlight fixing in my kitchen and replaced 50w halogen for LED’s to save elec. The LED’s don’t give off enough light and with it being a spotlight fixing it was causing black spots. I have decided to exchange spotlight fixing with reccesed downlights and need to know what was the brightest bulb i could get for the money. I’ve seen these new phillips gu10 bulbs at B&Q that claim to be bright and low voltage but cost £25 which i think is well out of order especially when something better and brighter comes out they’ll be clearing them out at half the price.
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Has anyone tried LED Lightbulbs?
Question by Robert W: Has anyone tried LED Lightbulbs? I have several fixtures that use the GU-10 bulbs (like in this picture http://www.febri.pl/img/GU10-50.jpg ). As I understand it, LEDs are very ‘directional’ and not especially good for regular fixtures, but what about in ones that are meant to be directional? In any case, if anyone has an opinion on these, I’d appreciate it.
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GU10 lights and light-fittings?
Question by FeBland: GU10 lights and light-fittings? Do you have GU10 lights/lightbulbs in your home/house or office? Are they good? Are they LED or halogen or neither of these! All answers will be helpful to me & thanks in advance!
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What type of lighting is safest for a high-heat application?
Question by Kelsey: What type of lighting is safest for a high-heat application? Trying to install accent lighting under a fireplace mantle, which obviously gets hot when there’s a fire. Halogen bulbs are a no-no – killed the bulbs after 2 hours the first time the fireplace was on. Will LED bulbs be safe in this application? If so, should I purchase a pre-integrated puck, or a fixture for MR16 or Gu10 lights? And which of those two options would be safer. MR16 means the transformer would be elsewhere, but it’d end up inside the wall or directly behind the plasma TV, so I’m not sure that’s any better – Gu10s would have the transformer right at the light, but can they handle the light?
Read More >>
what is the brightest most economical downlight that you can buy?
Question by Alex: what is the brightest most economical downlight that you can buy? I currently have a 5 spotlight fixing in my kitchen and replaced 50w halogen for LED’s to save elec. The LED’s don’t give off enough light and with it being a spotlight fixing it was causing black spots. I have decided to exchange spotlight fixing with reccesed downlights and need to know what was the brightest bulb i could get for the money. I’ve seen these new phillips gu10 bulbs at B&Q that claim to be bright and low voltage but cost £25 which i think is well out of order especially when something better and brighter comes out they’ll be clearing them out at half the price.
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50W GU10 Halogen Alternatives?
Question by BThunderW: 50W GU10 Halogen Alternatives? I have a basement full of 50W Halogen Recessed lights running on 120V through several dimmers (controlled in sections). Only problem is that they run incredibly hot, while the rest of the house is nice and cool the basement is running like a sauna. I’m looking for alternatives and so far I haven’t found anything that would really solve the issue. I really don’t want to rip up all the lights to replace them with something else. I’ve looked into GU10 versions of LED (3-6W, expensive, tall, not dimmable), CFL (~11W, tall, not dimmable) and even Xenon Filled bulbs that promise to run cooler but I haven’t found any real data supporting it. I’d like to keep my dimmers if possible but I’m open to other suggestions. Even though I found dimmable versions of LED and CFLs, most of them are too large to fit in the standard housing (Catalina Lighting Recessed Housing) or only are available in 240V versions.
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How many white LEDs in series on 120v AC?
Question by Kevin D: How many white LEDs in series on 120v AC? OK folks, I don’t think my actual question is quite as straight forward as it seems here, but maybe someone here can help anyway. I bought a GU10 48 LED bulb (think track lighting) made to run directly off ~120v AC. After a few months of use (around 100 total usage hours), it failed due to an LED burning out. So, being the inquisitive person that I am, I had to open it up to see how it ticked.
Basically, the simple circuit driving the LEDs contains a couple capacitors, a few resistors, and a full-wave bridge rectifier:
x | C1, C2, R2 (all in parallel) | —-| D — D |ssss| (-)o ———- R3 –o (+) |ssss| D — D —-| | R1 | x
The 120v line voltage is applied at the “x” and the circuit output is the “o” (the ssss is a space….it’s difficult to draw a circuit here). For whatever it’s worth,
R1: Resistor bands are too difficult to read (and I don’t have a multimeter handy), but I think it was around 500 ohm R2: Surface-mounted resistor; 150 stamped on it (assuming 150 ohm) R3: Surface-mounted resistor; 150 stamped on it (assuming 150 ohm) C1: 250v 474J capacitor (unsure of capacitance) C2: 250v 684J capacitor (unsure of capacitance) D: M7 diodes (rectifier bridge)
When I measured the RMS voltage at the circuit output, it was 110v (vs. 120v input). The 48 LEDs are wired in two series of 24 LEDs each (only one string was non-functional). Doing the math tells me that the LEDs are being driven at just over 4.5 volts, which seems exceedingly high (assuming a forward voltage of ~3.5v for each one normally). So, this brings me to my question….I wondered how many more LEDs I could string in a single series off this circuit configuration without going past 3.5v. Again, doing the math would lead me to believe that I could add maybe 10 more LEDs to the series and be OK. But, in experimenting with it, I was able to add a bunch more than that without any discernible decrease in light output. I think I stopped trying at around 25 extra LEDs in series with the original 24. What gives? I realize LEDs are current driven devices, but they would still need a certain forward voltage to operate, right?
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How effective are LED Halogen replacement lamps? Also, how good are the coloured versions?
Question by Andrew: How effective are LED Halogen replacement lamps? Also, how good are the coloured versions? I have over 60 230v 50W halogen lamps spread throughout my house and a huge electric bill to go with it. So, I have been looking at ways I can economise a little by reducing the power.
I have seen LED lamps that last 25 time longer and use about 1/20th of then power of a conventional 50W halogen lamp.
How good are these alternatives? Is it a cold light? Do they not offer much brightness?
Also, as I use lighting to create effects in the house, I was thinking about installing just a couple of the colour changing GU10 LED lights within each circuit of 8 to give effect. How good are these?
I would welcome feedback from anybody that has used these before.
Thanks
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Does anyone know what the difference is between GU10 and GU20 led lights?
Question by Kat: Does anyone know what the difference is between GU10 and GU20 led lights?
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