240V vs LV vs LED Downlighters. Please advise

[beduin]

Hello

As I finally near completion of my barn conversion, I am faced with some lighting choices. I have done a great deal of research but the more I discover the more issues are thrown up and therefore I would greatly appreciate suggestions and advice from forum members.

I am concentrating first on the ground floor, it is open plan, rectangular and roughly split into Kitchen at one end, dining room in centre, and sitting/AV area at other end.

The lighting is split into seven zones and each zone will have between 2 and 6 downlights, I plan to use the Clipsal Ulti range to control it all, the idea being to set scenes throughout.

The current issue I am faced with is the choice of downlights and bulbs, some of my thoughts so far are below:

240V – Easy fitting, cheap, dimmable, poor light, inefficent

LV – Bit more expensive, possible dimming issues, crisp white light, not efficient

LED – Expensive, Not easily dimmable, poor light output but nice light. Probably the future but not quite there yet. (I believe that LED lights will not be dimmable with the Ulti’s which probably rules them out)

Questions:

1. What produces the nicest light? (a bit subjective, but what are preferences/differences)

2. What will the Clipsal Ulti dimmers work best with?

3. I would love low energy bulbs but will any of the dimmable ones work with the Ulti dimmers? And are they best with 240 or LV?

4. Any recommendations for light fittings, low cost, high quality is always the holy grail.

5. Can one get away with the 35W rather than 50W bulbs with an LV system?


Thank you in advance for your advice, comments, sugestions.

[tonymccandless]

Richard

Will be interested to see how you go with this. We have just finished a 3700 sq ft house and have 8 rooms all with 240v halogen downlights and they are a complete and utter nightmare, I can guarantee that at least 5% of the GU10's go every week and they are a complete and utter pain to spring and replace never mid the cost.

I saw one of of the build programs a few weeks ago and they suggested looking at Fibre optic lighting which I have done. Basic theory is really simple in that you can feed up to 16 lights from 1 projector and bulb, have multiple colours / effects and do not ever have to change a ceiling item out. Expensive yes but I so wish I had gone for this originally. Now I face the cost of retro fitting and the time it will take to do so. Lesson learnt for the next build.

[beduin]

Hi tonymccandless

Interesting to hear your opinion of the 240V GU10's, it bears out my research and my conclusion has been to go with Low Voltage as while I think LED's will be the way to go in future, the technology is not quite there yet.

I would be interested to hear more about the fibre optics and any links to site you have found useful. I am at a stage where in theory I could still run wires to most places but although I like the sound of it, it may just be too expensive.

Cheers
Richard

[DaveChester]

Originally Posted by tonymccandless

Richard

Will be interested to see how you go with this. We have just finished a 3700 sq ft house and have 8 rooms all with 240v halogen downlights and they are a complete and utter nightmare, I can guarantee that at least 5% of the GU10's go every week and they are a complete and utter pain to spring and replace never mid the cost.

I saw one of of the build programs a few weeks ago and they suggested looking at Fibre optic lighting which I have done. Basic theory is really simple in that you can feed up to 16 lights from 1 projector and bulb, have multiple colours / effects and do not ever have to change a ceiling item out. Expensive yes but I so wish I had gone for this originally. Now I face the cost of retro fitting and the time it will take to do so. Lesson learnt for the next build.

Hi

An easy option to take might be to introduce a dimming solution in to the system. With something like a rako you can set a longish ramp time so they gradually come on. This will dramatically improve things. It tends to be the intial start up jolt which blows lamps.
Even if you dont want a dimming solution you can set a rako to come on a certain level after a power cut - install that in-line with your normal switch and you have a slow ramp.
Might be worth thinking about?

[fredd500]

Lighting should be measured in Lumens - i.e. amount of light output. Sadly its not and is typically measured in the number of watts of electricity it uses. Sadly with all incandescent bulbs, more watts are converted to heat than light so you simply cannot compare watts with watts between different bulbs (this is the exact reason why compact flourescents are marked as 11w equivalent to 100w or whatever).

If you are talking about pure efficiency, then LED's give the best lumen per watt output. The problem with LEDs is that they cannot be dimmed using conventional dimmers. Very little of the watts they consume are converted to heat hence they are more efficient. The colour of LEDs can also be a problem - cheap white LED's tend to be very cold (blue) and not at all pleasing to the eye. You can get warm white LED's but they are less common.

You can get compact flourescent GU10's, but they are larger than a standard GU10 and although they look OK when on, there is a very noticable delay between switch on and full brightness with the light going through pink before it reaches white. A CFL is also not dimmable and although dimmable CFL's are starting to come to market, they are not all they are hyped up to be. Because a CFL GU10 is larger than a standard GU10 they often won't fit into a standard downlighter. There are downlighters on the market however which are designed to hold the larger lamps.

LV gives a nice light and most electronic transformers these days can be dimmed. I don't know anything about the Clipsal Ulti dimmers, but assuming these are electronic dimmers, you shouldn't have a problem. LV lights also last much longer than GU10's

Finally, GU10's. OK light, fully dimmable with nice dimming curve but they are inefficient and run hot. They do offer more lumens per watt than a standard incandescent bulb due to being filled with halogen but because the pattern they give off is more focussed, you usually need more to fill the same space which negates any benefit gained.

In my opinion, there is no perfect solution yet. The UK goverment are about to start making standard incandescent bulbs illegal - I think 100W bulbs are due to be phased out next year or something like that. Whether this will also apply to halogens I don't know. CFL's are bad and LED's are not there yet so I don't yet know what the solution will be but my gut feeling is that CFL's are a lost cause and the future will be LED. As more and more companies come to market with newer technologies, the costs will drop and the quality improve. Until then, there is little we can do other than pick what looks good now and resign ourselves to having to replace it later.

Hope this helps a little.

[beduin]

Thanks for the input.

I think I will go with LV as it seems to be the best option at the moment. Fibre optics look very interesting but as I suspected would be rather expensive.

Any suggestions on brands and suppliers?

[Isco 3]

I have a Mode Lighting system in mine and I have never had a single bulb failing. They key is to drive them 95% as the maximum, and this was done in the programming part. 'Full On' is 95% really, and that helped a lot.
I am using low voltage downlights by the way. The old house had a buzzing Lutron Grafikeye, which was blowing some bulbs there and then. It started 'behaving' when I changed the transformers to Mode Lighting ones, and the buzz almost disappeared.

[davee]

Fred500 sums up the state of the market pretty well. 240v tungsten has already vanished from a lot of shelves and the price of cfl's has dropped like a stone in an attempt to promote their sale.
Bear in mind that with a new build installation you should already be installing a proportion of low energy lights to conform with Part L of the building regs.

what you ought to think about is what you want to light and how you want to light it. Its all very well investing in a scene setting system but if all your doing is controlling a rash of downlights you arent utilizing the capability of the control system.

Different lights and lamps can be used in conjunction to design a lighting scheme that combines for example, hidden cove lighting by led strip, table lights with tungsten, spotlights by lv, corridor lights by cfl and so on.

Low voltage lamps can have a habit of failing very quickly. Points to watch for to prevent this is, dont use the cheapy lamps ie packet of 10 for £2.50 use quality rated lamps. Ensure they are well ventilated so they dont overheat, use soft start dimmers on them and underate the circuit.

I would forget about fibre optics unless you want to create a specific effect with the fibres, the light generator is usually HQi and creates a great deal of heat and is expensive.

As far as your questions go, the best kind of light is that which is most appropriate to the task, it could be a candle it could be a 1w led or a 300w flood.
The Clipsal dimmers will work with any kind of lamp that can be dimmed though some fluoros require specialist dimming.
Er low cost high quality, not a term I understand
You can use 35w rather than 50w lv lamps but again ask yourself where you want to have 30% reduction in light. Better to have 50w dimmed by 30% unless you need to reduce the loading on the circuit.

You would benefit from going to a good lighting showroom where you can see the different kinds of lighting on display and controlled and talk through your requirements with them. Dont expect to get lighting design advice from an electrician.
Good luck