Was caught asleep at the wheel concerning the federal incandescent light bulb ban, and CFLs are next on the chopping block. Tungsten photography bulbs appear to be exempt from the ban?
Here in California LFL bans are on the near horizon, bringing into question the florescent tubes I use to light my layout and other home spaces. Do I stock-up on T-12s and 8s, or replace/retrofit the fixtures, a daunting and expensive task?
Regards, Peter
LEDs are your replacement. They are made to fit the existing fixtures with the same sizing system like t12 and such. Added bonus is the different light levels avaloable
I model the Transition Era and I generally prefer small incandescent bulbs for structure lighting because I prefer the warm yellow glow. I really hope common sense prevails and hobby manufacturers are allowed to keep making incandescent bulbs for our layouts.
For room lighting, I would switch to LEDs sooner rather than later. Eventually, all the traditional methods of home lighting will be unobtainable and you’ll be forced to upgrade anyway.
At some point, we had a “home energy audit” done for $50. It seemed like a lot for what they did, but it paid off because they replaced most of the light bulbs in the house for free, so it was worth it.
I retrofitted my layout fluorescent fixtures with LED tubes and never looked back. The fixtures themselves are thirty years old and I replaced the bulky and buzzy ballasts with high efficiency ballasts maybe fifteen years ago. Even with the electronic ballasts I could still hear a 60hz. buzz so I gutted the ballasts completely and rewired the tombstones to accept 120V-AC LED tubes. They weren’t all that expensive and have probably paid for themselves by now.
I forget the exact numbers but I think I went from something like 8,000 watts to somewhere around 1000 when everything is ‘lit up’ with the LED track lights and recessed mini-can lights.
I also installed some 2’ x 2’ side-lit LED troffers. My main savings was replacing about 50, 50W. incandescent PAR lamps with LED equivalents. These are all dimmable.
Regards, Ed
There’s so many exceptions to the incandescent regulation that there’s no need for concern. The primary bulbs affected are your common general household kind and virtually everything even close to “specialty” is excluded.
Years back I was initially skeptical about the positive reports regarding L.E.D’s. Now I’ve been gradually convering my home to LED’s with bulbs and rope-lights.
Inspite of our current “rocky” economy, the overall costs of conversion has dropped considerably over the years. I appreciate the WIDE variety of color temperatures that L.E.D’s are available in.
Most of us remember the controversy of model locomotives being factory equipped with L.E.D headlights that were too blue, green, or yellow (BLI comes to mind). Thankfully we’ve come a long way from that and realistic lighting for our scale models and layout rooms has improved.[:D]
Of course, the cool factor today is that we have the option of buying inexpensive L.E.D’s that emit specific color temperatures and can cutomize our motive power, rolling stock, and structures to our liking.
I’m nostalgic, but certainly don’t see myself returning to hot incandescent bulbs and “buzzing” T-12 / T-8 florecent ballasts.
Not sure what you have in your house or over your layout for lighting, but the conversion may not be that difficult or expensive. I just converted the fluorescent light fixture in the laundry room to LED. It’s a dual bulb, 48" recessed ceiling fixture. My neighbor discarded a 20 count box of 4 ft LED T8 tubes (PLED-T8DS18W5K), so it was a matter of bypassing the ballast and inserting the new LED tubes. Wire cutters/strippers, 2 wire nuts, electrical tape, screwdriver (to remove the ballast), less than 30 minutes work, and DONE…even the wife was impressed!
Now if I can find some 48" single bulb fixtures, I can retro-fit the layout. Don’t need bulbs, have plenty of those.
Terry
Eh… Layout room is an old classroom has two fixtures with two eight florescents each. The building manager will do what he will do. Mot my affair.
As for layout lighting I use LEDs wrenched from Christmas light sets, (do not forget to salvage the wire as well). Can control intensity of light by getting bigger resistors. Usually use 1000 ohm, but I sould try a 10,000 ohm to sea watt dat doze.
Test to see if reply function works.
It did. Weird situation here. See response in “Can’t Reply To Topic” thread for more information.
-Kevin
[Kevin - I copied & pasted your response here to see if I got the 403 error message. Seems to be working. [*-)] Will delete other response. ~Tom]
We have had incandescent bulbs on the shelf at Home Depot up until a few weeks ago.
Every so often, some smart alec would come in proclaiming that of he could only get incandescent bulbs he would buy the all. I would offer to bring down a pallet, then he would act astonished and run away.
We barely sold any. No one wanted them. The ban really doesn’t do anything the market had not done already. Our saled were near zero for them. Same for CFLs, barely any are sold at all.
LEDs are better in so many ways, and the good ones do not flicker at all. The cheap ones still do if the power flutters.
Some garage door openers cannot use LED bulbs because they interfere with the transmitter signal. I have a lifetime supply of CFL bulbs (3) for my garage door opener.
Halogen bulbs are on the way out too, again, they pretty much are already done for just by market preference.
I replaced the T12 bulbs in my garage fixtures with LEDs and got rid of the ballasts. I am very happy with them.
Every bulb in my house is LED daylight, 5,000K. I am very happy with them all.
-Kevin
I have been Led only for about 8 or 9 years except for one 3-way lamp I have which dose not like them, bought some extras on e-bay just in case for that one desk lamp. By the way the LED 3 way worked great on daughters 3 way lamp.
I am slowly replacing all bulbs while the old ones burn out.
One thing – the LED promise was that they would last a long time.
I’ve had two LEDs that were less than five-years-old which were in normal use, and they burned out. I’m wondering if I bought them at the same time and were in a bad batch.
By my count, I have 41 “60W” 5,000K LED bulbs in my house that have been installed at various times since 2017. Only one has failed completely, and another developed an intermittent flicker.
5% failure rate so far.
-Kevin
We have been LED only for 7.5 years, since we moved into our current house. The previous owner was CFL happy and put them everywhere. (Even in outdoor fixtures, which led to conversations that ran along the lines of: I heard a noise outside. Okay, I’ll turn the lights on and check back in 5 minutes.)
So far there has been a single LED failure, in a Cree bulb. None of the lower priced bulbs have failed. A few months ago a bulb burned out in the basement and I was irritated that another LED had failed. Until I unscrewed it and discovered it was an incandescent I had never replaced.
One of the outdoor bulbs is on sunset to sunrise every night, in a climate that can go from below 0F in the winter to 90+F in the summer.
I’m glad to be rid of the hassle of fluorescent tubes.
Why would there be an issue with CFLs in outdoor fixtures?
When I bought this house in 1999 everyone had them in outside fixtures. There was a story that they did not attract bugs as much. I do not know if that is true.
-Kevin
I’m sure there’s no problems with them in Florida. We had them outside in New Orleans with no problems.
I imagine the problem is a northern issue. I have some in my garage, and when the weather gets to be below 10°F, they have trouble lighting. They come on dim at that temperature, and when it’s below zero, they won’t come on at all.
‘Please don’t take my tungsten photo-floods away.’ Even as a photography hack I like the effects and color rendition shooting under tungsten. Maybe an entry level LED photo light kit rivals tungsten, especially shooting digital.
Glad to learn there’s ‘plug & play’ linear LED tube to LFL fixture options when my supply of LFL tubes are exhausted.
Regards, Peter
As noted, there are so many exceptions to the “ban”, that it really should not effect much. Photo-bulbs will still be available.
I use three massive “300W” 5,600K double tube twisted CFLs for my soft boxes. I love them.
-Kevin
I would like to use more LEDs, but my father-in-law bought us a lifetime supply of incadescent bulbs.
I have had lots of LED’s bulbs fail but they average about 1 $ per bulb and save at least that much in electricity in their lifetime.
$1 per bulb? I could probably get them at that price around here, but they would burn my fingers as I picked them up after they fell off the back of the truck.