Incandescent light bulb replacements

compared to a rough service incandescent the payback is about 7 bulbs.

You needed a rough service bulb or a bulb that could handle whatever electrical disturbance the grinder put out? LEDs probably won't help in the later case, and will vary brand to brand in the former. Some I've seen are a bit prone to falling apart and then it is hard to fix the wires to get them to operate again. And it it is a hot environment (eg totally enclosed) that could also cause problems for the circuits that run the LEDs. My old garage door opener was a bulb killer, but I gave up faster than you did with that lamp. Nothing I put in there CFL, rough service, appliance, or higher voltage rating (for any surges) would last more than a month or two. Never risked a LED in it.

Elijah

------ seven bucks sounds cheap for an LED bulb

Oh, if it was truly shock to the filament, both CFL and LEDs should be much more robust. The LEDs should be able to take massive mechanical abuse, probably the first thing to go would be the plastic housings.

Jon

Have had several "decorative" LED lights give up the ghost, haven't lasted any longer than the incandescents or CFLs that they replaced. So you're right, they can screw up almost anything. Had a couple dead out of the packages, too. Since all of the current lights, no matter what type, are the products of that great Chinese QC, it's no wonder. The LED bulb failures were total, not just a few defective individual LEDs croaking like on a cheap flashlight. And this is with a stationary floor lamp, not on any sort of vibrating tool. At least the dead ones don't have any mercury.

Stan

At least the dead ones don't have any mercury. Stan

A study by UC Irvine's Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention has discovered that LED diodes contain unsafe levels of carcinogenic toxins. While LED's less energy friendly cousin's, CFLs, contain a measured amount of mercury, LEDs are laden with lead, arsenic and a handful of other chemicals that have been linked to different cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease, hypertension, skin rashes and other serious illnesses. Not only are these chemicals harmful to consumers if the bulbs are mishandled or broken, but extracting those toxins from the earth is a destructive process.

Study Finds LED Light Bulbs Contain Unsafe Levels of Carcinogenic Toxins | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Best Regards Tom.

I can't remember where, probably here. I've heard the Chinese made LED corn cob lights have a high failure rate.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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It would have to be a really crappy LED design to _not_ stand up to vibration better than an incandescent or fluorescent. No little thin wires, nothing working at high temperature, everything well supported, vibration resistance should be much better. However I have great confidence in the ability of industry to screw up a simple design.

Is there a link to the actual study anywhere? All I can find is stories based on a press release that may or may not have any relation to the content of the paper. The same press release goes on about the copper content like the copper contend of LEDs is going to end the world, so it has to be taken with a huge dose of salt.

Your link.

Leave it to Greenies to flux up a wet dream. I'll bet if you burn LEDs in a fire, they give off toxic smoke, too. Let's give up on their use! The EPA will get right on it, I suppose.

-- It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment. -- Freeman Dyson

Well then you had better not eat them

This has been my opinion for a very long time, that the waste products of CFL and LED lighting will end up being serious problems to everyone eventually.

Not only the problems associated with disposal of these lighting products, but also the pollution from the byproducts of manufacturing them.

How much coal needs to be burned to manufacture an LED or CFL lamp, sort of assessment.

Also, as wiseasses will say "don't eat the lamps" however most of the products made in China quickly end up in landfills around the world, although I suppose it's a delightful fantasy to believe that the liners used in those pits will never fail and release all those metals, toxins and plastic residues into water supplies. Wake the f*ck up.

Not only are toxins inside LEDs and the glass tubes of CFLs, but also in the electrolytic capacitors and other components inside these lightling products.

As China will very likely be manufacturing all this great new technology will be produced, by the lowest bidder, with the cheapest components available AND with lead-free solder and any other imaginable manufacturing shortcuts.. the reliability of these new lamps will probably be shorter than a decent incandescent lamp.

While the sheep flock to buy the new LED products labeled with statements like "30 year life" or "50,000 hours average life" they won't even recall how those thermal windows were pitched as "they'll pay for themselves" when they made the payment of a couple or several thousand dollars for them. As those windows have all fallen apart by now, and been replaced with even more expensive products at higher installation costs, so it's all just water under the bridge.

The environmental impact of common incandescent lamps will likely be very small to the problems associated with the newest greatest products.

Glass is still being used for CFLs so the manufacturing energy costs can't be significantly less.

I have yet to see a CFL lamp last longer than 2 years, and the majority of them that I've owned haven't come cloe to that (I mark the date on the bases when I put them into use). These are CFL lamps of various brands (not the cheapest I could find) that are packaged as 5 year or 7 year useful life lamps.

I've found LEDs to be very practical for use in flashlights, but they don't light a room worth a damn. OTOH, I have a portable worklight with 180 LEDs, and it's hardly more useful than a common incandescent flashlight of 30 years ago.

Flashlight batteries don't produce power spikes or surges the way AC power sources do, and without good suppression and/or regulation components driving up the manufacturing costs, the LED lamps will likely be too easily damaged to make them practical in many applications.

The other advantage to battery power is it's already low voltage which is what LEDs operate on.. dropping spiking/surging 120VAC to a low DC voltage requires stable circuitry.. which is only reliable if better quality components are used, not bottom of the barrel, minimumally adequate components.

I have a couple wall-fixture porch lights that killed every kind of CFL and incan bulb I tried in them within days. Apparently the fixtures just vibrate when the doors slam, since that's when the bulbs would always start to flicker or go out.

Last year I took a chance and bought a couple of these for $16 each- Utilitech 40-Watt Equivalent Indoor Warm White LED Light Bulb Item #: 338802 Model #: LA19DM/LED

So far they have worked perfectly--they are not ideal but they are bright enough, and have never flickered even a bit. And they are even cheaper now,,, on sale for $10 each.

--------

I have two other "difficult" fixtures however, vibration probably the culprit there too:

One is a light mounted over the kitchen stove, in the underside of the stove hood/microwave (the OEM bulb lasted a long time, but I can't get them anymore and every cheaper replacement the same size I tried burned out very quickly if the exhaust fan is used at all).

The second is a small lamp on a Sears bench grinder I have (Model#

21162). It is a smaller-socket halogen bulb and it worked great but burned out after only a couple months. A replacement I bought only lasted about as long, and cost me ~$7.

LEDs do not do well in heat so I dunno how a LED bulb might do over a stovetop. With the grinder, I haven't really gone searching for alternatives yet.

And ALL of the "hazardous" material is totally encapsulated in the plasic "dome" of most LEDs.

If you are comparing them to a 150 watt par38, or 150 watt R-40 flood, which are typical style lamps for large recessed down lights, you'd be incorrect about the light output. Of course, both these types of lamp are no longer available in 150 watts, in an incandescent type, but when they were, either type delivered over 2000 lumens compared to the approximately 800 produced by the LED. Par's and R's also direct the light downward unlike an "A" lamp.

Great quote: that's a new one to me (although I've read several of his books).

We were running a CFL light in one side and a bug light in the other side. The CFL was 'bug yellow' - so they though... That xxx lamp draws bugs and takes several minutes to put out light.

Rip off for a bug light. LED's might be better. Mart> >>

I have some approaching the 3 & 4 year marks, but I largely agree. I recently had to replace the last incandescent in that same area. It started out 50/50.

I too have started marking the date.

I think that traffic lights are a good model for this. The are essentially screw in bulb replacements, operating off of 120V with no special filtering. They do seem to last, and the failure modes usually seem to be portions of led on the "bulb" rather than total failures. [ But those partial failures seem to be a lot more frequent than they were supposed to be.]

jk

Only in preferable Environment