The Lemon Fool

I'm looking for some lighting for the new garage/workshop, and I can see a bewildering range.

However the one things that seems common is the poor light output of LEDs.

Please someone correct me on this, but a stabdard 5ft fluorescent is 58W and about 5000 lumens. However a lot of the LED are much lower output.
eg https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-single-5 ... 00lm/1079v

In fact, at 30W and 2700lm it seems the same efficiency as a standard Fluoroescent.

Am I missing something, or should I just save a tenner a fitting and go fluorescent, safe in the knowledge that I can buy spares for 3 quid a go rather than ditch the whole fitting when the integral LEDs fail?

Alternatively, are the LED tapes any good at lighting a workshop?

thanks

Paul

The LED Battens do seem to have a much lower output that the flourescent tube battens. For a garage/workshop, I think you will be better off with a square LED panel (600x600). I have one down in my cellar at it is brighter than the 4ft flourescent tube it replaced. They should last 20-50K hours, so basically a lifetime in residential use.

The ballasts of Fluorescent fittings also fail regularly, which is not unlike the LED driver failing. Also, who knows how long fluorescent tubes will continue to be available? Their use is waning.

I wouldn't immediately rate the use LED tapes for anything other than mood, under-unit, cupboard, or special-effect lighting. (Probably could be corrected on this I imagine.)

Maybe a much bigger LED fitting is the way to go? I can't quite get my head around the notion of a fluorescent being more efficient as they generate so much heat that they ultimately bake their innards (such that they are) to eventual death, whereas the LED run as cool as the proverbial cucumber in comparison.

The LED light does seem, er, crisper, which is not to everyone's taste.

Chris

I installed 5 of those Screwfix LAP battens in my garage last year and am very impressed with their operation. They provide very good dispersed light which you don't tend to get with the raw LED strips. (BTW the battens are just LED strips in a textured plastic tube). The batten to batten linking is a very useful feature.

If you are looking for cheaper illumination then I can recommend these https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/glimma-uns ... -50097995/

Consider not using battens. Instead using multiple smaller LED lights, such as integrated surface mount LED light fixtures or standard sockets.

With LEDs There's no longer an efficiency advantage to a single large light source. Smaller lights can be scattered to get light into the corners, onto workbenches, and prevent shadows. You can put them on different switches, using one bulb when you are trying to find your car and a dozen when trying to find an M1 screw

Note that there is at least a factor of two difference in the efficiency of fixtures, some do a much better job of putting the light generated by the bulb into the room. Integrated LED fixtures can be good at this. For integrated fixtures the lumens quoted should be light into the room, not light into the fixture, some of which is lost.

Another screwfix user. I've just replaced a couple of flourescent strips in the shed with 2 of these. I'm most impressed, much brighter (and quieter). The reviews match my own opinion of them. These are twin strip LED's rather than the single strip so are 43W & 4400lm.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-twin-4ft ... 00lm/6481v

if you do decide to use flourecent tubes, buy a few spares

there is a committee...or two! studying how to stop us having them
so at some point in the future (committees!!!!!) they will be harder to find...regardless of demand

it will save the world apparently!

I'm replacing rather than doing a new installation.

Something I'm not keen on is the idea of having to hard-wire things that will (sooner or later) fail.
Fluorescent battens are permanently fitted, but the "consumables" of the tube and the starter can be changed with relatively little effort / waste.
I have had several bayonet-cap LED bulbs fail, and I am not convinced I know what makes for a reliable system.

So right now, as-and-when fluorescent tube fail, I'm replacing them by LED-replacement tube+starter combinations, rather than replacing the entire batten. The cost is less than a LED batten (but significantly more than a replacement fluorescent tube), the benefit being near-instantaneous turn-on.
I am aware that there is an efficiency-saving if I were to bypass the ballast from the wiring, but I have not done so.

The replacement LEDs I have used so far are significantly brighter than very old (hence dusty) large-diameter tubes, although they are only rated to be as bright as the more-modern narrow-diameter tubes.

- Rover

Rover110 wrote:I have had several bayonet-cap LED bulbs fail, and I am not convinced I know what makes for a reliable system.
- Rover

Off topic, but LED "bulbs" fail for two reasons.
1) The increadibly cheap circuit allows a spike through which stresses the LED's and one of the multiple LED's that are in series fails.
2) Heat causes the electrolytic capacitors used to control the voltage and current in the LED's to fail early (they will fail with use anyway). Heat rises and bulbs used in ceiling fittings usually have the circuit above the LED's that produce the heat. Failing capacitors can also lead to the previous fault.

There are many Youtube vidios showing the construction and circuits used. Some showing such "bulbs" being repaired. Others looking at and modifying the circuit to reduce the power and hence heat.

Here are my thoughts on subjects raised.

Flourecents have easily replacable starters. While I have not used or investigated LED battons the control circuit could be designed to both be away from the heat caused by the LED's and easily replaced. The idea is not unknown with other LED lights.

Flourecent tubes are actually mercury discharge tubes. This is why there is a seperate place at the "tip" (Recycling center) to dispose of them. Mercury toxicity has been known for generations and it's no surprise that "commities" are considering if alternatives are not preferable. It's not the use, but disposal and accidental breakages that is the issue.

I'd go the LED route.

Urbandreamer wrote:Flourecent tubes are actually mercury discharge tubes. This is why there is a seperate place at the "tip" (Recycling center) to dispose of them. Mercury toxicity has been known for generations and it's no surprise that "commities" are considering if alternatives are not preferable. It's not the use, but disposal and accidental breakages that is the issue.

Many years ago I worked as a binman and dead fluorescent tubes were often left out with bins. We used to deliberately smash them in the hopper, face averted, rather than leave them laid whole in the hopper for the next guy to tip a bin and smash the tube facing into the hopper. Given the vapour pressure of mercury must be tiny, and we were outdoors, what danger do you suppose we were exposing ourselves to?

PhaseThree wrote:If you are looking for cheaper illumination then I can recommend these https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/glimma-uns ... -50097995/

Not cheap at all.

To be generous to the candles, they will be 20 lumen hours each so 100 candles will be something like 2000 lumen hour for 3 pounds.
666 lumen hour / pound.

To be very ungenerous to an LED, a 10 lumen LED night light will last 10,000 hours, cost 5 pounds and use 1W. At 50p per kWhr 10kWhr of electricity cost 5 pounds. so 100,000 lumen hour for 10 pounds.
10,000 lumen hour / pound.

I've got fluorescent tubes in my garage....they last 2 /3 years or more and are easy & dirt cheap to replace. Occasionally a starter goes, again easy & cheap.....just a few pennies. I don't understand why would you want to pay loads more for LED lighting!

Am I missing the point ?

Rover110 wrote:Something I'm not keen on is the idea of having to hard-wire things that will (sooner or later) fail.

... I am not convinced I know what makes for a reliable system.

I have an anglepoise lamp where I have replace the socket* three times with the same LED bulb. The thing that breaks is hard wired while the thing that does not break is easy to replace. An integrated design would be better, put the electronics in the base where the weight does not matter and there is good cooling and run low voltage to LEDs in the lamp head. That would not be (easily) field repairable, but it would not break, so it would not need repair.

What makes for a reliable system is good design. What makes for an unreliable system is cramming things into a retrofit. If you want an LED that will last 50,000 hours the way to go is purpose built integrated LED light fixture with no socket. The electronics be located for far better cooling and don't have to fit in a tight space. You also get rid of a lot of unnecessary and unreliable parts.

Hardwiring is fine if it only needs to be worked on every ten years. Sometimes welding is a perfectly good way of fastening an access plate.

* Sockets are designed for lighter incandescent bulbs. Heavier LED bulbs apply extra stress when you move the lamp.

DrFfybes wrote:Please someone correct me on this, but a stabdard 5ft fluorescent is 58W and about 5000 lumens. However a lot of the LED are much lower output.
eg https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-single-5 ... 00lm/1079v

In fact, at 30W and 2700lm it seems the same efficiency as a standard Fluoroescent.

When comparing efficiencies, bear in mind that a fluorescent fitting consumes power in addition to the wattage of the tube. This is more of an issue with fittings with magnetic ballasts (this includes all fittings with starters). I believe that all new fittings have the more efficient electronic ballasts.

4290lm, 37W LED batten:
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/GLBATS5.html

Batten fitting with a choice of 24W tubes (3200lm to 3350lm depending upon colour temperature):
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index ... index.html


Julian F. G. W.

The problem with LEDs is that the manufacturers will often push the brightness to the max. In which case they can get hot and their life span is greatly reduced.

There's nothing much wrong with fluorescents and you know what you are getting.

LED efficiency drops off with current. I would expect the more efficient LED tubes to have more chips but be driven less hard. They should, therefore, last longer than less efficient ones.

On this basis, I would expect that the ones from TLC that I linked to would last longer than the LAP one from Screwfix.


Julian F. G. W.

richlist wrote:I've got fluorescent tubes in my garage....they last 2 /3 years or more and are easy & dirt cheap to replace. Occasionally a starter goes, again easy & cheap.....just a few pennies. I don't understand why would you want to pay loads more for LED lighting!

Am I missing the point ?

No I don’t think you are at all. Fluorescents seem a bit scorned as old (mature) technology but they’re well on a par with LEDs for running cost and it will be a long time before any minor efficiency gain eclipses the capital cost of replacement to say nothing of the cost of replacing the inevitable ‘infant’ failures. The tubes in my garage cum workshop are around 10 years old at a dozen or 2 hours per week and I’ve yet to replace a ballast or even a starter (though one now occasionally needs a couple of switch clicks to fire it). I’ll replace the very occasional cheap tube so long as they’re available and meantime LED technology will presumably improve and cheapen. Incandescent lamps got the chop ages ago but they’re still readily and cheaply available. I think fluorescents will outlast me.

On moving in here, I found under-unit fluorescent tubes in the kitchen. The bulbs were long-gone: on the rare occasions they'd light up at all, it was too feeble to improve on the (also inadequate) ceiling lights.

I replaced lots of ceiling lights with LEDs (in the case of the kitchen, much brighter than the halogens they replaced). But when I came to those fluorescent tubes, I came to a different problem. There's a huge range of subtly-different sizes, without the level of standardisation we're accustomed to in other bulbs. Finding replacement bulbs that would fit is itself an issue.

I don't know if that's a risk for you, but worth bearing in mind!

As far as I can tell, there is no inherent reliability problem with LED lights.

I've had very poor reliability from the B&Q Dial GU10s and also "Interlux" brand.
Meanwhile, I've never had a failure of "Mini Sun" brand LED GU10s despite having about a dozen of them in the house for up to 8 years. I keep a record of what fails and "name and shame". These are very bright and near daylight tone.

So if I were looking for replacement garage lighting, I'd probably look for LEDs. If no suitable strip lights were available, I'd just put in more individual standard light bulbs.

jfgw wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:Please someone correct me on this, but a stabdard 5ft fluorescent is 58W and about 5000 lumens. However a lot of the LED are much lower output.
eg https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-single-5 ... 00lm/1079v

In fact, at 30W and 2700lm it seems the same efficiency as a standard Fluoroescent.

When comparing efficiencies, bear in mind that a fluorescent fitting consumes power in addition to the wattage of the tube. This is more of an issue with fittings with magnetic ballasts (this includes all fittings with starters). I believe that all new fittings have the more efficient electronic ballasts.

4290lm, 37W LED batten:
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/GLBATS5.html

Batten fitting with a choice of 24W tubes (3200lm to 3350lm depending upon colour temperature):
https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index ... index.html


Julian F. G. W.

Sorry if this is hijacking the thread
- but does anyone know if replacing the tube and starter with the available LED drop-ins will work if the magnetic ballast has all but given up the ghost
- the fitting is such that there's no replacement ballast I can find and the grumpy old sod who's complaining that it takes an age to come on doesn't want to change the whole fitting (new tubes and starters have not helped )

-sd