LED bulbs

[woodbutcher]

I replaced some burned-out squiggly bulbs with LED's. I like the brightness, but on one fixture which has three LED bulbs in it, I notice a buzzing noise and the bulbs seem to blink. I'm wondering if I bought some that were assembled after the inspector quit for the day.
Butch

 

[jniolon]

(quoted from post at 17:36:03 11/22/17) I replaced some burned-out squiggly bulbs with LED's. I like the brightness, but on one fixture which has three LED bulbs in it, I notice a buzzing noise and the bulbs seem to blink. I'm wondering if I bought some that were assembled after the inspector quit for the day.
Butch

I replaced all my incandescent bulbs in the house with LED. The bathroom has two 3 bulb fixtures over the mirror... Love the light but can definitely hear a high freq hum... not objectionable... but you can hear it... no blink or flutter on mine... try another bulb in that fixture to rule out connection problems and such


Hear lots of hams and radio people saying they get a lot of RF noise out of them when listening to their radios... Mine is in the garage so I don't get the noise... Thinking of changing out 4' flor. for LED but can't quite swallow the price yet.

john

 

[woodbutcher]

I posted too soon. When I unscrewed the bulb that seemed to be doing the blinking, it was not tight in the socket. But the socket would turn when I tried to tighten the bulb. So, I'll have to take the fixture apart to re-attach the socket to its base. It's mounted on a ceiling fan. Maybe those LED's are okay after all.
Butch

 

[stevob671]

Could be a dimmer that is not compatible with led bulbs....

 

[woodbutcher]

Yep, they are pricey.

 

[D beatty]

I have had several cheap LED bulbs blink and they were bad bulbs.

 

[Ivan in Mich]

I replaced all of the ones in our house with LED and I have one set in a ceiling fan theat wants to blink. What I found was this fan and light is on a remote and if I hold the on button down for a second longer when turning the light on the blinking goes away

 

[D beatty]

Our one bathroom has 5 globe LED bulbs over the mirror and no hum. My house is almost total LED and none of the fixtures hum. When LED bulbs go bad they
flicker.

 

[wfw]

I found 100, 60,and 40 watt equivalent LED bulbs at Dollar Tree for a dollar each. I have changed most all of our lights to LED. Have a ceiling fan that has a circuit monitoring for lights that pull too much current and the bulbs in it flicker at times. Regular bulbs do not so I figure the circuit does not like the LED lights. No way these bulbs are pulling too much current.

 

[D beatty]

I have 3 Feit LED bulbs in my Hunter ceiling for 3 years and they never flicker. But Feit LED bulbs are not cheap about $6.00 each . I bought 4 cheap LED bulbs and they didn't last a year.

 

[rustyfarmall]

(quoted from post at 15:36:03 11/22/17) I replaced some burned-out squiggly bulbs with LED's. I like the brightness, but on one fixture which has three LED bulbs in it, I notice a buzzing noise and the bulbs seem to blink. I'm wondering if I bought some that were assembled after the inspector quit for the day.
Butch

YEP! I've had more LEDs fail in that manner than what didn't. I won't buy any more.

 

[D beatty]

One thing that most people don't understand is not all LED bulbs are the same quality. Your cheap bulbs have poorer quality and have a much shorter life span. Not saying a expensive bulb can't fail. If a expensive bulb does fail its with in very few hours and they carry a 5-7 year warranty. So if you keep your sales slip you will get a free replacement.

 

[OldFarmTractor]

I have just about finished changing out all my standard base bulbs to LEDs. Luckily, in my state, the electric company subsidizes the purchase of the LED so they are half price or less.

My next activity is changing all the T-12s to either LED or T-8s. I found a hanging 4' LED fixture at Home Depot for $14.00. I am trying one now in a work area to see how it pans out.

No hums but if there is a dimmer, most bulbs don't like that.

As for throwing off RF interference, try changing the filament bulbs in your car to LED. Many of the cheap ones throw off so much RF the car computer gets confused. My dashboard came up with all kinds of error codes that were not even closely related to the bulbs. Put the filament ones back in and the world is good again. Problem codes vanished.

 

[D beatty]

They make dimmable LED bulbs.

 

[Texasmark1]

I just bought my first a few weeks ago. Will be converting all over time. Really nice and the efficiency.....wow!

 

[rustyfarmall]

For what it's worth--I changed nearly all of my lights over to compact flourescants a few years ago. The electric bill DID NOT change. Not even a little bit. I then began replacing those CFLs with LEDs. Still no change in the light bill. The CFLs did not last any longer than the incandescants, and neither do the LEDs, so what's the big deal?

 

[JGayman]

I've been replacing a lot of standard bulbs with Philips 100W and 60W LED replacements. No flickering or interference noticed so far. What is nice is you can literally put a 100W equivalent LED bulb in a fixtures which previously could only handle 40 watts or so. Our bathroom exhaust fan bulb was always limited to 60W and it was like being in a cave. Now we have a 100W LED bulb installed and it's like daylight in there - especially with daylight temperature bulbs.

 

[JDEM]

Are you claiming current draw was the same between your three different types of bulbs? Come on!

There is no question the CFLs and LEDs use less power. Overall savings down the road is a different issue.

I have had a lot of early burn-outs with CFLs. One huge gain with LEDs is their life is not shortened by constant cycling
like happens with CFLs. That and running cooler and using less electricity. Cost is a different issue.

I just put new LEDs on the interior lights of my truck. One of the plastic lenses started to melt from the original
incandescent bulb. It finally burnt out. New OEM type bulb cost $2.50 New LED was $6. I got the LED. Not hardy warm to the
touch when on.

 

[sotxbill]

For a lot of folks,, the lights dont use more then 1 or 2% of the total electric bill, as heating, cooking, hot water, dryer, tv's are consuming most of the electricity. So, while in fact the leds use less electricity, the total change in the bill is negligible for a lot of consumers.

Kind of like when the cfl's came out.. the high cost.. off set any savings for some folks, same with led's.... Now there are more and more higher quality leds out there for lower prices, so its starting to become more cost effective, or put another way, a shorter payback of the cost of the change out.

I had tried a couple of led's early on,,, and the light was so poor, so dim, and so off color that they simply did not provide enough light. It was last year that I noticed that they had improved to the point of equaling 60 watt bulbs and a bit more. I have not seen any yet that will replace a 100w bulb or equivalent of a 100 watt in a cfl. In fixtures with multiple bulbs, the led's do a nice job.. In single bulb fixtures I will have to stay with cfl's for a bit longer. In applications like the well house, a incandescent is still king, as its job is to keep things from freezing up.

 

[D beatty]

How long did you have LEDs before they went out? LED bulbs are Warrantied for 5 years and some longer. You take them back with your sales slip and get new
bulb.

 

[D beatty]

You know LED bulbs come in three light colors. One gives off a yellow tint, another is white and the other has a blue tint. In a single fixture that takes a 60
watt you could go 75 or 100 LED with no problems as LEDs don't get hot like incandescent bulbs..

 

[showcrop]

I recently did my first ballast bypass conversion to LED. It wasn't bad, but you have to be sure that the bulbs that you get are specifically for ballast bypass.

 

[rustyfarmall]

(quoted from post at 14:42:24 11/24/17) How long did you have LEDs before they went out? LED bulbs are Warrantied for 5 years and some longer. You take them back with your sales slip and get new
bulb.

Some of them went out in less than 2 days, and some of them began imitating a strobe light after just 2 hours. 80 miles back to the store where I bought them. Cheaper to just toss them in the trash and replace with incandescants.

 

[D beatty]

You should keep bulbs because your good LED bulbs carry a 5 year or moreyear warranty . You mean that in the next 5 years you won't return to that town and if
you bought from big box store you can return to any of their stores. I have over 90 fixtures that are now LED and the only bulbs that failed were 4 cheap bulbs
bought at Wally World. All my other bulbs are Feit, Phillips, and Sylvania and none have gone out, flicker, hum, or effect radios.

 

[RayP(MI)]

I did the same, cfl's did not reduce my electric usage significantly. Was not happy with cfl's anyway. Low light
output, far shorter life than advertised, poor cold weather performance. Have been replacing with LEDs, better light,
so far no failures, we'll see about electric usage. Have one application where I had 6 4' shop lights on 10 hours a
day. Led replacements much brighter, and half the electric use. If nothing else, if the LEDs have a longer life, it'll
be worth it. Was replacing a shop light about every 4 months. What a pain!

 

[D beatty]

My 40x60 shop was lite by 8 halogen fixtures totaling 4,250 watts and now with LEDs a total of about 300 watts. After having several halogen bulbs explode and blow the glass lens out of them I changed all fixtures to LED fixtures. They do save you money over the halogen fixtures. The CFLs I had in house had 2 go out and they both went out with smoke and one was sparks and smoke.

 

[jeffcat]

Yes that blueish tint is "daylite" . Colors of items just POP out as you work on stuff. Love em. You want 5200,5400 or 6000K kelvin color.

 

[sotxbill]

All of the so called 100w equiv. led are only 1500 lumens, same as a 75 watt bulb... it take 1600 lumens to make a 100 watt bulb. Am I missing somthing??