LED home lighting; not quite ready or ready for prime-time?

[Zathras]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset 3 years would be 13,140 hrs. About 13 old fashioned bulbs, so you saved the effort of changing the bulbs 12 times. Plus you saved money; I can buy LED's for $2.00 on sale, so that is still cheaper than 13 tungsten bulbs by a long shot, and you used a lot less electricity.

The three years is likely an outlier.
I'd actually check to see if the manufacturer will replace them.
Your point is also excellent though.

As for electricity, if they replaced 60W bulbs, each bulb saved about $60 over a regular incandescent bulb in those three years.

[folivier]

When I bought the majority of mine one of the requirements was at least a 5 year replacement warranty. Also bought the 5 year warranty from Earthled.com which was about $5 for the entire order. So if any go kaput and if Earthled.com is still around I should get new ones.

[Blueskies123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbieB Haven't noticed it attracting bugs.

LED light does not attract bugs like light regular bulbs. I was reading somewhere that LED light has a frequency that bugs do not see. No need for ugly yellow lights. One more reason to switch to LED bulbs.

[TrvlBug]

We replaced 7 outside lights Oct 2012 with LEDs and all are going strong. 3 are dusk to dawn and were previously replaced 3x/yr. The other 4 are dusk to 11:30pm and were replaced 2x/yr. No more hunting for dropped screws or wobbly ladders due to slope at two of the lights. At the time, LEDs were very expensive, but worth every $ in convenience.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blueskies123 LED light does not attract bugs like light regular bulbs. I was reading somewhere that LED light has a frequency that bugs do not see. No need for ugly yellow lights. One more reason to switch to LED bulbs.

I was wondering about that, since a 'white' LED is typically an Ultraviolet LED that lights up a white phosphor (similar to a tube style fluorescent). So white light has a range of frequenies.

This seems like a good source:

Do LED Lights Attract Bugs? — 1000Bulbs.com Lighting Blog

Quote:

So, why do some people claim that LEDs repel bugs and insects? For the same reason that bug lights do not attract insects. LED lights, specifically the bulbs typically used in residential lighting, emit very little light in the UV spectrum. LEDs also emit little heat from their light source, further reducing their attractiveness to bugs. But, it isn’t just UV that bugs are attracted to. Many types of insect see equally well in the blue-range (shorter than 500 nm) of the light spectrum. As you can see from the chart, typical LED bulbs light up quite nicely in that range, because it’s the range of “daylight” that we can see and enjoy. So, while an LED light bulb should attract fewer insects than a typical incandescent light, it can still attract quite a few bugs. Buying a warmer color temperature (which is what you should use for landscape lighting anyway) will also help, since a 2700K bulb contains less of the blue wavelength of light than a 3500K LED bulb would. However, using an LED light bulb is still not as good as using an actual bug light. LED bug lights are different from LED light bulbs (they’re simple to identify since they will both say “bug light” and typically feature a yellow color to the bulb, similar to incandescent bug lights. However, LEDS work far better than incandescent bug lights because if two bulbs are emitting the same wavelength of light, then the bulb with the lower heat emission will attract fewer bugs.

-ERD50

[JoeWras]

Then on the other side, they are producing LEDs specifically to grow plants. I like to grow my own annuals from seed, starting in February. I've switched to LED focused spectrum lights. They do wonders for the plants!

However, to my eye, they are, well, disturbing. I swear if you used these lights in an interrogation room, your prisoner would crack. The light is not dangerous, but feels bad to my eye. Plants love it though.

I have something similar to this product. The color is purplish:
https://www.amazon.com/Industrial-Gr.../dp/B01CLPVIF2