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| New LED lights reliability |
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| Kjelt:
Ah ok, well if the driver fails you can replace it or as we are EEs here repair it ;) But indeed when the leds are EOL the entire "pot" will need replacement or again since we are EEs here we could replace the donut (aluminium plate with the leds soldered on them) or replace the leds by physically removing them cleaning the donut and reflow new replacement leds on them. Since the life expectancy of these "pots" are 25 years with 60-70% of original lumens left and I reprogrammed the driver to output max 80% of the nominal current my guess is that these "pots" will outlive me :) |
| djacobow:
--- Quote from: timelessbeing on February 06, 2019, 10:20:15 pm ---We call them pot lights in North America, because the enclosure looks like an upside-down cooking pot. --- End quote --- I also hear them called "cans" a lot. |
| djacobow:
--- Quote from: Kjelt on February 06, 2019, 10:25:06 pm ---Ah ok, well if the driver fails you can replace it or as we are EEs here repair it ;) But indeed when the leds are EOL the entire "pot" will need replacement or again since we are EEs here we could replace the donut (aluminium plate with the leds soldered on them) or replace the leds by physically removing them cleaning the donut and reflow new replacement leds on them. Since the life expectancy of these "pots" are 25 years with 60-70% of original lumens left and I reprogrammed the driver to output max 80% of the nominal current my guess is that these "pots" will outlive me :) --- End quote --- I think you are right, assuming everything goes well. My fear is that many of these will not last 25+ years, but as they say, time will tell. My experience so far is that purpose-designed LED fixtures are working OK after >7 years. As it happens, I have some CFL-based cans in my kitchen that were mandated by the State of California at the time the kitchen was remodeled. These were designed to take CFLs and have the ballast built in. Out of six lamps, one of the ballasts has already failed, requiring me to go into our gross attic to replace it. I have also replaced at least a dozen CFLs in the last few years. So, once again, painful experience has made many of us rather skeptical. |
| Kjelt:
--- Quote from: djacobow on February 06, 2019, 10:24:23 pm ---It is not unreasonable for people to not want to replace their old fixtures, which they like and chose at least partly for aesthetic reasons with new ones just because the technology has changed. --- End quote --- If you have designer fixtures or antiques I can understand and you should preferably continue using the original conventional bulbs since that is where they were designed for. I must not think of the idea of a led bulb in an original Tiffanies. But for the rest it is silly esp when you see how easily people buy and throw away their other electronic devices some costing many times more than all the fixtures in the house. So I claim it is mostly not esthetics, it is lazyness for upgrading esp. when it needs extra work because it does not fit, which is ok but should be named as such. --- Quote ---Also, it's not like the LED folks are warning everyone that the bulbs that fit in many old fixtures will basically fail much sooner than an ordinary incandescent. --- End quote --- Because it depends on the fixture. If it has enough room or openings to keep the airflow keeping the bulb relative cool there is no problem. However many fixtures are closed at the fitting, and if upside down there is where the heat will be kept, ergo short lifetime. There are gazillions of different fixtures go try to explain to mrs Jones age 75 which fixtures are ok to upgrade and which not. --- Quote ---But you can hardly blame people for not wanting to replace a fixture with a new one that is essentially non-repairable and with no replaceable parts, especially given the failure rates reported in this thread and others. --- End quote --- If you are over 45 and use the dedicated led fixture for 8 hours a day and turn it down to 75% it will outlive you , perhaps the driver capacitor should be replaced sometime ;) --- Quote ---Personally, I have not replaced the fixtures in the bedrooms in my house because they are absurdly large and unless I want to get similarly large replacements, I would have to respackle and repaint around the fixture for it to look nice, a job I don't usually feel like doing. --- End quote --- I mentioned that above, but if it is much work I understand, if it is part of the architecture or you like the esthetic looks I also understand. The price might be to have to replace the bulbs sooner than expected due to lifetime issues. |
| djacobow:
--- Quote from: Kjelt on February 06, 2019, 10:40:20 pm ---If you are over 45 and use the dedicated led fixture for 8 hours a day and turn it down to 75% it will outlive you , perhaps the driver capacitor should be replaced sometime ;) --- End quote --- This is not quite right. If the 25 years is a guarantee, then great, when it fails ahead of that, you bring it back and get a new one for free, right? Or maybe for the pro-rata remaining expected lifetime? In reality this will be hard if the store or company is gone. But the real problem is that often no such warranty is provided. Instead, it is a "claim." Furthermore, it is really a 25 year MTTF, which, depending on the shape of the probability function, means that there is a significant chance of failure after only a few years. And if you have, say 20 of those fixtures and the probability curve is normal around the mean, the chance that one or more of them fail in a few years is actually very high. I don't dispute the rest of your response. Yeah, it would be hard for manufacturers to advise everyone on whether a bulb would work in a given fixture, but a simple acknowledgement that a bulb *will* fail early if in a fixture without free air flow would be nice. |
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