Fluorescent Tubes v. LED's

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WoodyP

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LED's seem expensive and of varying quality. Fluorescents are cheap (and varying quality) and are pretty power effective. Why not use fluorescents for cabin lighting. I know they are a bit lacking in atmosphere, but they seem to do the job.

I am thinking of changing a few light units to save power and this seems a good way to go. Comments as always gratefully received, not always acknowledged and sometimes ignored ;)
Best wishes
 
WoodyP said:
LED's seem expensive and of varying quality. Fluorescents are cheap (and varying quality) and are pretty power effective. Why not use fluorescents for cabin lighting. I know they are a bit lacking in atmosphere, but they seem to do the job.

I am thinking of changing a few light units to save power and this seems a good way to go. Comments as always gratefully received, not always acknowledged and sometimes ignored ;)
Best wishes
Click to expand...

one reason is that cheap flouries are very radio noisy against not so cheap but very long lasting decent LEDs. A bit of research will get you relatively expensive but very high quality LEDs.
 
It is possible to convert fluorescents to LEDs ... all the electronics have to be removed or at lest disconnected .

One of the websites suggested for LEDs recently has the LED units to do it but at a price.
 
To be "radio noisy", how close do they have to be, or conversely how far away to be unaffecting of the radio?

Not much point in buying fluorescents and then converting them. Currently I have halogen spots and some ordinary filament lights.
 
WoodyP said:
To be "radio noisy", how close do they have to be, or conversely how far away to be unaffecting of the radio?

Not much point in buying fluorescents and then converting them. Currently I have halogen spots and some ordinary filament lights.
Click to expand...

On board I think is close enough.

A friend bought some expensive ones that were supposed not to interfere with the radio... they did!
 
I recently converted all 12 halogen 10W spots in our boat to 1W LEDs. I bought a mixture off ebay and found the ones with square yellow emitters to be the best and to almost match the light output of the halogens.

I left the 4 flourescent fittings unconverted on the basis that flouors are meant to be nearly as efficient as LEDs. I'm thinking of changing them now because of radio noise and the harshness of their light. With any flouro switched on, the AM band on the radio is useless and FM is noisy. The VHF needs the squelch turned up to the extent that you miss many transmissions.
 
All cheap low voltage fluorescent lights are of horrid design with regards to RF emissions. I'd choose LEDS any day.

I suspect that these units would fail modern EMC testing too.
 
We went LED the moment we bought (2004) and I have been watching the technology develop and improve. We have LED halogen spot replacements, LED festoons, LED anchor light and so on. The secret is to buy the latest generation LEDs. I've no experince of buying LEDs on ebay but I suspect there'll be a lot of **** on there. I've always bought through ultraleds and never been disappointed. When we were at anchor in Turkey our anchor light was easy to spot as it was always the brightest!

The advantage of LEDs is that you can have all your lights on and you'll still be using less power than a fluro and the light will be more even. If you get Warm Whites the lighting is quite natural, unlike a fluro. We still have a fluro above the galley but I'm replacing it with a self-adhesive 1m strip of LEDs complete with dimmer. It was a tenner a metre and a tenner for the dimmer and remote control. I can thoroughly recommend the self-adhesive LEDs, they are very sexy, cheap and throw a better light than fluros.
 
WoodyP said:
LED's seem expensive and of varying quality. Fluorescents are cheap (and varying quality) and are pretty power effective. Why not use fluorescents for cabin lighting. I know they are a bit lacking in atmosphere, but they seem to do the job.

I am thinking of changing a few light units to save power and this seems a good way to go. Comments as always gratefully received, not always acknowledged and sometimes ignored ;)
Best wishes
Click to expand...

i recently fitted one of these
http://www.furneauxriddall.com/acatalog/Traditional_LED_Lighting.html
the lower one with the double bank of LEDs.
it replaced a continental supply fluorescent that the tubes were hard to obtain.
the new lamp is very good
 
WoodyP said:
To be "radio noisy", how close do they have to be, or conversely how far away to be unaffecting of the radio?

Not much point in buying fluorescents and then converting them. Currently I have halogen spots and some ordinary filament lights.
Click to expand...

Why not just replace the bulbs for LED modules?

You can buy bulb bases that will go into your bulb sockets and then fit LED arrays.

I have done this and my entire cabin, four lights, only takes just over an amp!

Tony.
 
ytd said:
I recently converted all 12 halogen 10W spots in our boat to 1W LEDs. I bought a mixture off ebay and found the ones with square yellow emitters to be the best and to almost match the light output of the halogens.

I left the 4 flourescent fittings unconverted on the basis that flouors are meant to be nearly as efficient as LEDs. I'm thinking of changing them now because of radio noise and the harshness of their light. With any flouro switched on, the AM band on the radio is useless and FM is noisy. The VHF needs the squelch turned up to the extent that you miss many transmissions.
Click to expand...

You can get warm white fluorescent lights which have a much nicer light.

To the OP - Just convert your existing fittings to LED. I think that the latest LEDS give a lovely light - I have been an LED hater for years - I am now converted! Try Searolf - wonderful people to deal with.
http://www.searolf.com/


If you need a cockpit light I have these sown permanently into my bimini top and left out all the year.
http://www.searolf.com/page7.html
 
I have a double fluorescent tube light mounted centrally in my saloon. It is a big consumer, nearly 2 amps. The LED reading lights close by don't give as much light but their consumption is about 0.1 amp. At the galley we have a round, multi-LED light that is plenty bright, consumption 0.1 - 0.2 amps.

In my motorhome I replaced a fluorescent unit with a multi-LED one, it's just as bright and uses a fraction of the current.
 
Should you specifically want fluos, these fluocompact give a warm diffused light, with no interference whatsoever on the radio (and I do a lot of data on HF); not easy to find them in the shops though



P1040906.jpg
 
WoodyP said:
LED's seem expensive and of varying quality. Fluorescents are cheap (and varying quality) and are pretty power effective. Why not use fluorescents for cabin lighting. I know they are a bit lacking in atmosphere, but they seem to do the job.

I am thinking of changing a few light units to save power and this seems a good way to go. Comments as always gratefully received, not always acknowledged and sometimes ignored ;)
Best wishes
Click to expand...

A significant factor with any fluorescent lamp is the fact they contain highly poisonous mercury vapour. Breaking a tube inside a boat can cause contamination with mercury impregnated phosphors being strewn around the interior. Such contamination is very difficult to clear up.

LED lamps generally contain no appreciable harmful products and do not emit UV light which can fade materials. Good marine quality LEDs do not cause electro magnetic interference (EMI).

You can purchase LED retrofit lamps for interior use for under £10.00 with many popular lamps available for around £5/6. These are very cost effective given a published service life of 30-50,00 hours.

Regards
 
We had flourescent strips throughout and changed the majority to LED strips last year. The LEDs use about 10% of the power so we can have ten lights on for the price of one (not that we do!). We've fitted the LED strips behind the existing flourescent diffusers and the light is good, not too 'white'.
 
WoodyP said:
LED's seem expensive and of varying quality. Fluorescents are cheap (and varying quality) and are pretty power effective. Why not use fluorescents for cabin lighting. I know they are a bit lacking in atmosphere, but they seem to do the job.

I am thinking of changing a few light units to save power and this seems a good way to go. Comments as always gratefully received, not always acknowledged and sometimes ignored ;)
Best wishes
Click to expand...

I converted our internal lamps to LED two years ago. All came from EBAY exept one expensive marine one that I bought for comparison. I am very pleased with the "cheapo" EBAY ones so far. They equal the marine one in output and are warm white, so giving a pleasing ambiance. The main lamps use MR16 bulbs with 120 degree spread-£13.99 for a pack of four. Not affected by 14.6v charging as predicted by some posters. One of the best mods. so far.
 
Inside the boat, I agree with what's been said before - LEDs are the way to go.

Ironically, a fluorescent lamp would make an ideal all-round white, precisely because they radiate through 360 degrees. Unfortunately, they are also relatively fragile, and the RFI is a nuisance - although it can be eliminated with some jiggery-pokery.

Brent Swain used to use one at the masthead, and frequently got reports back over the radio that it was visible at 8 miles. But I believe he's gone over to LEDs now, for reasons of indestructability and lower power consumption.
 
BTW, here's the link to the adhesive, bendy strip lighting I mentioned in my previous post. Dispatched by Brightlightz.

LED-strip-12.jpg


I did quite a bit of research in to these and then decided they were so cheap, it was worth a punt anyway. You buy by the metre and can have either 60 or 120 leds per metre. I read a comment by an autohome enthusiast who claimed the 120 led version was too bright, so I went for the 60 led version. 24w for 5m for the 120 LED version so that's under half an amp for 1m of the 60 LED version. I imagine this reduces if you use the dimmer switch.

You can also get fully waterproof versions. I thought it would be fun to stick it under the boom to make a great cockpit light!

The dimmer switch is quite cheap but not sure it would cope with the marine environment if mounted in the wrong place. Still, controlling the lights via remote control is real luxury and saves me having to walk at least 2 metres ;)

The trick with these is to hide the strip. Cupboards is an obvious application. When it gets dark I'll try and take a photo of my current installation in my galley and around the chart table.

Being an Essex boy I thought I'd put a strip of the waterproof blue LEDs under the boat ;)
 
To the guys who think leds are more efficient than flouros, think again, a poor flouro light will have about 80 lumens per watt and while high end leds are getting over 150-180 lumens per watt, these leds are not in the lights you are buying, mostly they will be about 50 lumens per watt, about 5x as efficient as the bulbs you are replacing, but still far less efficient than flouro.
 
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