Useless light bulbs

[lockhart flawse]

Like many people we have loads of downlighters with both GU10 and the other type with the 2 little pin bulbs. I dont think there is ever a time when the house has them all working because the bloody bulbs dont seem to last. I buy them in bulk on Ebay and am wondering whether that is part of the problem. Are all these bulbs crap or is there a make or spec you can buy that will last more than a few weeks?

[motco]

Change to LED equivalents...

[Alucidnation]

Buys cheap bulbs, then complains.

To be honest, very few people are even bothering these days.

Swap them all over for LED's.


And don't buy cheap st.

[Mammasaid]

Alucidnation said:

Buys cheap bulbs, then complains.

To be honest, very few people are even bothering these days.

Swap them all over for LED's.


And don't buy cheap st.

^^ This ^^

[Evoquative]

Buy Phillips LED (dimmable or not depending on placement. Enjoy the massive reduction in energy use, reliability and lack of heat generated by them. Yes they cost more, but they use 1/10th of the electricity. Had some in our house for three years in the heavily used kitchen light fitting and they have been faultless.

[andy43]

Bear in mind you might need to change the transformer for an led friendly version - just had to do this to get one of our ten year old light fittings (did have 10 x 2 pin 12v 10watt halogen bulbs) to take Philips 2watt leds without the whole lot flashing when warmed up. Annoying!

[E36GUY]

GU10s will only give you a 35W equivalent so watch that.

Don't bother with MR16s (the two pin thing you refer to) as they are really dire in LED

[C0ffin D0dger]

Think the main upshot is you should move with the times and swap to LED. I've done some of ours with the LAP LED bulbs from Screwfix, about £2 each, great value. If you've got them on dimmers though you'll need to change to a compatible dimmer.

When we had the halogen GU10s the ones on electronic soft start dimmers would never blow but the ones on cheapo inductive dimmers would blow often. Think that soft starting the bulb can increase its life quite a bit.

[SantaBarbara]

I would be incandescent with rage if this happened to me

[lockhart flawse]

Fanks all! So - don't buy cheap st: got it!

Could anyone be kind enough to provide a link to the type of Philips LED bulbs I should be buying and do I need 50w or will 35w be OK?

[andy43]

GU10 and the equivalent sized 2 pin bulbs (mr16?) we have loads of ikea bulbs and they seem decent enough and have been going for years so far. The really small capsule type jobbies I just struggled with are Philips 2w from screwfix.

[anonymous-user]

C0ffin D0dger said:

I've done some of ours with the LAP LED bulbs from Screwfix, about £2 each, great value.

Great value, but ste We had four out of eight fail within three months - normal domestic use in a kitchen. Wish I hadn't binned the receipt.

[buggalugs]

Evoquative said:

Buy Phillips LED (dimmable or not depending on placement. Enjoy the massive reduction in energy use, reliability and lack of heat generated by them. Yes they cost more, but they use 1/10th of the electricity. Had some in our house for three years in the heavily used kitchen light fitting and they have been faultless.

Definitely get the Phillips ones the light is so much nicer than the cheap ones, and if they last for 10 years + you're stuck with them!

[DodgeeDave]

280E said:

Great value, but ste We had four out of eight fail within three months - normal domestic use in a kitchen. Wish I hadn't binned the receipt.

I tink you were just unlucky. We've got 30 or so of these LAP bulbs around the house and not had one failure in the 18+ months we've had them. Good light quality too.

[Alucidnation]

Against my recommendations, a lot of my clients use the LAP ones and they have said they are shyte.

[ladderino]

I've got some LAP ones, they're not great - a few have failed (Screwfix have refunded me when they fail), but the bigger problem is the beam angle which is very small.

I'd started to use LED Hut instead, but have noticed the quality of them going downhill as well. You can claim on the warranty, but have to send them back at own expense.

I'll be using Philips for any new ones.