Ladies (and gentlemen) roll up your sleeves, because it's time to get energy efficient. I mention ladies, because, if you are like me, you hand these electrical projects off to someone else. I want to share with you ladies, who may be scared of electrical, this project can be accomplished easily and without fear!
Why switch to LED? A few simple answers:
1. Energy Efficiency: Energy savings equate to dollars in your pocket. LEDs can save up to 85 percent of the electricity used by incandescent bulbs, up to 50 percent of electricity used by Compact Fluorescent Light (CFLs), and up to 30 percent used by fluorescent tube lighting. To give you an idea of the savings, a 12 watt LED has a light output comparable to that of a 60 watt incandescent or halogen bulb, but uses 85% less energy than the incandescent light, and 50% less than a CFL.
2. Environmental/ Health: If you are using Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) as your bulb, they use different technology than LEDs. A CFL contains argon and mercury vapors inside a glass tube. Running an electrical current through these vapors creates visible light. CFLs contain a small amount of mercury, which is very harmful to both your health and the environment. That means it’s bad news to break one and it's a no-no to dispose it in your trash
3. Cobwebs: I am sick of cleaning cobwebs off the housing of our recessed lights. The LED recessed light is a one-piece face plate. There is no room or angle for the spider to build his web.
4. Ladder: I am tired of hauling the 6 foot ladder up the stairs to change burned out lightbulbs from our 1990s recessed lights. LEDs last longer, which means less moving the ladder up and down the steps. An LED bulb lasts an average of 50,000 hours compared to an incandescent bulb’s relatively sad 1,200 hour lifespan.
You've read the reasons for switching to LED, now on to the simple steps:
1. Turn off the lights
2. Unscrew the old bulb out of the socket
3. Remove the housing. For our recessed lights, this meant unhooking each of the 2 springs and then gently pulling out the old light housing.
4. Screw in the new bulb connection. You'll find a bulb-like end with a dangling wire. Screw the bulb-like end into the area where you previously screwed in light bulbs. Pay attention to the orange end because you'll need it next.
5. Next you'll connect the light housing. Find the wire with the orange end and connect it to the light housing and push the light securely into the ceiling.
Design. Renovate. Buy. Sell. Live.
Thanks to the following sites for a few of these stats written in this post: Green Fit Homes, The Simple Dollar, Lamps Plus
