14th Dec 2007

I have a bit of a beef with companies who put out glossy sale brochures advertising stock they don't have. It's happened to me before and on the latest occasion a national lighting chain advertised a brand of stairway lights reduced by 25%.
When building we installed a number of 80mm square fittings just above floor level to light the stairwells and walkways at night. They were Superlux brand which took a 25w G9 lamp (230v). It wasn't too long before we realized that we'd made a bad mistake and the lamps which are quite expensive ($9 -$18 dependant on brand) were only lasting a few months because of generated heat. Even reducing the voltage with a dimmer didn't make the lamps last longer than 6 months. The choice was to replace them with 12v fittings or look to LED fittings which put out no heat and are a fraction of the cost to run. LED fittings are very expensive so when Lighting Plus advertised fittings reduced from $89 to $65 we thought here's our chance. Only two were available in stock from the store we visited and the balance of five were expected a few days later. We paid for all seven and left. Fortunately I didn't rush in and install the two and on calling back to the store 3 days later found that Oh!, it'll be two months before your five come in stock.

Well they did us a favour, as after receiving a credit I investigated over the internet how much LED lamps and drivers cost and found that for the cost of $15.90 per lamp I could retrofit them to LED. Details on how to do this is in an article in the technical section of my Blog.

LED fittings of this type shouldn't be as expensive as they are. I guess with new technology, some manufacturers are making hay while the sun shines, but as with CF energy efficient lamps, the extra cost is not assisting in moving people to embrace change to low energy lighting.

TC