Cree LED bulbs from Home Depot

[Curt Harms]

I've never been taken with the CFL bulbs, they seem to promise more than they deliver. I recently read that Cree has LED bulbs that are dimmable with old style dimmers, they don't require LED/CFL compatible dimmers. The utilities around here are doing a promotion through Home Depot, 60 watt equivalent bulbs that normally cost $9.97 (2700k color) to $10.97 (5000k 'daylight' color) were selling for about $5 off. We have 2 3 bulb fixtures and replaced the CFLs with the daylight bulbs. BIG difference, they seem much brighter and 15 yr. old slide dimmers work just fine. I wish I had thought to check with amperage with 3 CFLs vs. the LEDs before replacing buttoning up the boxes up but didn't.

One thing I did learn - the way this circuit was wired the switched wired fed kitchen, dining room AND basement/shop fluorescent fixes w/ ballast. When I first installed the dimmer, the LED lights would slowly blink. What in the world? I thought perhaps the dimmer was sort of like a GFCI where there was a line and load side so switched the wires. No difference. The dimmer was also getting warm. I thought perhaps the Cree bulbs didn't really work with old style dimmers but there was a help line phone #. The tech figured out right away the problem - dimmer controlled LED bulbs can't be on the same circuit as ballast equipped fluorescents. It took me a bit to figure out what wire did what but I was able to pig tail the feed with one wire to the LED-dimmer circuit and one to the basement fluorescent fixtures. Problem solved. It looks to me like LED bulbs might finally be legitimate replacements for incandescents and they use a LOT less juice - about 80% less and don't get as hot. Most importantly, the light quantity and quality are what we want.

[Tom M King]

We've been replacing incandescents, as they burned out, with them since they first started selling them. Prices have come down several times since they first appeared, and just this week, I bought a box of 4 60w's 5000K's from HD for 22.something off the shelf.

[Jim Koepke]

The fast on of the LED has waiting for a florescent to 'warm up' beat all to heck and back.

Like Tom our incandescent & florescent bulbs are being replaced with the Crees as needed.

I do have a few boxes of the old 'hot wire' bulbs saved for our well shed. We leave it on during freeze season. A 60W incandescent generates enough heat to keep things from freezing in the small pump house.

jtk

[Steve Peterson]

I have been slowly replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs, especially when I see a sale or power company sponsored instant rebate. Most of my dimmers were built in the days before LED bulbs were around. I found a strange interaction where you could have 3 LEDs on a circuit, but 4 bulbs would cause flickering. Several different dimmer styles had the same effect. Most rooms in the house had 4 can lights to spread the light to all corners of the room. I ended up just putting 3 LEDs per room and leaving one old bulb.

Steve

[Lee Schierer]

I found a strange interaction where you could have 3 LEDs on a circuit, but 4 bulbs would cause flickering. Several different dimmer styles had the same effect.

Steve

Most dimmers work by clipping the sine wave so that it doesn't reach the peak voltage on each half cycle. Leds need a rectifier to work as they run on direct current. Some cheap LEDs (christmas lights) just use a single diode to create the DC voltage needed with the result that the lamp is off for half of each cycle. Some people can see this flicker. I imagine the delay caused by the clipping would produce the same result.

[Richard McComas]

In the end I wonder how much it is going to cost us to save on electricity.

Here in Anchorage our NG bill is going up 48% because we didn't use as much gas as predicted.

Story Here:

http://www.ktuu.com/news/news/gas-bi...rcent/26804642

[Tom M King]

Not only saving money in the long run, but incandescents and CFL's, not to mention halogens, have all reached such a sorry quality that they don't seem to last any time, and it's a pain to keep changing them so often.

[Brian Elfert]

In the end I wonder how much it is going to cost us to save on electricity.

Here in Anchorage our NG bill is going up 48% because we didn't use as much gas as predicted.

How does gas pricing work in Anchorage? Locally, the gas utilities sell the gas basically at cost, but they have a base fee and some other fees that they make their money on.

[Dennis McDonaugh]

We've changed our CFLs over to LED bulb and is it expensive to make the switch, but so far we've cut our electric bill and I'm not replacing CFL bulbs all the time like I was before. We do have an issue with the electric company through. We have a competitive market in Texas and get to pick the provider which offers the best rates. We use propane for hot water, cooking, the dryer and heating. The only thing we use electricity for is the lights and in the winter our bill is down to about 30 bucks a month to a high of $100 in August. We have to pay higher rates because of our low usage.

[Jim Becker]

HD has some new Phillips LED bulbs now, too...I picked up a couple 60w equivalents to try this morning. Under four bucks each, too. Dimmable. Interesting "flat" design that gives 360º light coverage.

I already replaced a 12v halogen in my office ceiling with a dimmable LED. It's noticeably brighter (so the room is a bit unbalanced right now light-wise) but I'd not hesitate to switch over as need be.

[paul cottingham]

The Phillips LED's (I use the ones that are yellow when unenergized) are fine bulbs. Not too expensive, and the energy savings are impressive. No mercury for my wife to freak out about, either.

[Curt Harms]

We've changed our CFLs over to LED bulb and is it expensive to make the switch, but so far we've cut our electric bill and I'm not replacing CFL bulbs all the time like I was before. We do have an issue with the electric company through. We have a competitive market in Texas and get to pick the provider which offers the best rates. We use propane for hot water, cooking, the dryer and heating. The only thing we use electricity for is the lights and in the winter our bill is down to about 30 bucks a month to a high of $100 in August. We have to pay higher rates because of our low usage.

The CFLs we replaced were installed when CFLs first became widely available. I don't recall replacing a burned-out CFL yet but we also didn't pay $2 each. I suspect the 'cheapification' of CFLs = short life.

[Brian Elfert]

I've replaced so many CFLs I have lost count. At least a dozen. I think the main issue is the light fixture was causing too much heat build up and causing CFLs to fail quickly. I ended up replacing the fixture because of the CFL issues. I used that light a lot and I noticed a change in my electric bill when I went to CFLs.

[David Weaver]

I've got one cree LED light, a 9.5 watt light that I put in a lamp to check them out last year when they were still about $13-$15. At that price, I wasn't in. Most of them make about the same lumens as CFL per watt (my 13 watt CFLs make a couple of hundred lumens more than the cree 9.5 watt bulb does) and we haven't had any problems with CFL, except very early on one of the bulbs we had gotten was scorched around the base.

Other than that, we've been able to get the 13 watt bulb, something I use two of in most of our ceiling fixtures, for 10 for $1.60, GE brand. I thought it was a typo, but they've been in the range of $2 for ten at our sams for a long time. I leave one in the post lamp 24 hours a day on, and have had to replace it twice in 8 years - an ideal situation for a CFL - little heat, in the winter fall and spring very little heat at all, no jarring, etc, and they seem to last about 20k hours or more out there. My wife has bumped two out of commission (by nailing the fixture with something and breaking the sconce and the bulb) in bathroom lights and in the BR light where they are on and off a lot, I probably replace one of the two each year - as in they only get a couple of thousand hours each and never meet their rating - it's expected.

Once the crees are down to about 3 bucks, I'll get them for everything.

The only other LED bulb I have is one I put in the fridge long ago - a 1 watt fridge bulb. Best bulb ever for a fridge. No more bumping drink containers into the specialty appliance bulb and knocking it out, no real sensitivity to on-off like or slow light CFL, it actually LIKES cold temperatures and it should outlast the fridge.

[Steve Peterson]

Most dimmers work by clipping the sine wave so that it doesn't reach the peak voltage on each half cycle. Leds need a rectifier to work as they run on direct current. Some cheap LEDs (christmas lights) just use a single diode to create the DC voltage needed with the result that the lamp is off for half of each cycle. Some people can see this flicker. I imagine the delay caused by the clipping would produce the same result.

There may have been some 60Hz flickering going on, but the 4 bulb phenomenon was more of a 2-3Hz flicker. Kind of like one bulb sucking all the current from the circuit, then another bulb, then another one. It is much more annoying than 60Hz flicker. Hopefully, the LED manufacturers have solved this issue since there are a lot of old style dimmers out there.

Steve