Thread: Replacement house lighting

Out of curiosity, how does this fair with your home insurance?

I finally found some LED fluoro tube replacements at a price I felt I could afford:

10 X Cree LED T8 18W Light Tube 1 2M 1200mm 4FEET SAA TUV Approved Milky Cover | eBay

Offered the seller $125 (box of 10, free postage) and he took it. They're great in the workshop, full brightness straight away especially in this cold weather.

Also LED globes are coming down in price, these:

10 X LED Lights Bulbs | eBay

are cool white replacements for 60W globes, very cheap, and these:

LED Light 3W 5W 7W 9W 12W 15W 18W LED Light Bulbs Australian Assembled | eBay

are brilliant indeed. their 7W globes equal 100W normal globes or 20W CFLs. The bigger ones are something else again. I'm down to only a few CFLs now where I rarely use them. LEDs have come of age with a vengeance.

Originally Posted by Vern

I swapped out around 70 x 50watt dichroics for led's in our place, reduced my total wattage down to 630w from well over 3000w.

I have a heap of these dichroics too. I have swaped a few out for LEDs but have been a bit disappointed.

The light from the dichronic spread evenly filling the entire room. The light from the LEDs I used was very spotlight like leaving dim patches in the room.

What model LED light did you use. Experimenting with these things is quite expensive.

I used e-star globes as that's what the wholesalers had, I can't really pick the difference between them and dicroics.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will pick up some of the new ballasts and fit into existing light fittings. Jim

I went and bought 2 new ballasts, fitted them and the new ones still get too hot to touch. Should they get hot?

Originally Posted by jx2mad

I went and bought 2 new ballasts, fitted them and the new ones still get too hot to touch. Should they get hot?

I was told by my sparkie that all wiring past a fluoro ballast should be high temp rated, 85C or higher, so I guess they get hot. You could have avoided this by fitting some LED tubes,they can be run without a ballast at all.

I had a smokey smell in our kitchen recently. After a bit of looking around it turned out to be the fluoro tube starter. Melted the casing with burnt bits inside. I don't know how old it was but by the writing on the surviving bit of casing it looked quite old.

I need to look into better kitchen lighting. It was alright with the twin tube fluoro but they are a fairly unattractive light. The short term replacement is a round 36w fluoro. An oyster light I think they're called. It is not bright enough though.

Will have to look into the LED option.