Doldrums

You seriously need to think about changing those car bulbs (got to be at least 25w each) for an LED - - a 5w one would light up your whole van nicely. I might even have a spare 12v 5w LED floodlight head you can have - let me have a ratch about and if I can find it, I will send it to you.

 

I've replaced the fluorescent strips in my Kitchen with LED strips and they are great. Much less power consumption, and even brighter.

 

Believe it - I have changed as many bulbs in our house to LED that I possibly can - - outdoor light, 500w to 50w, and the light that is output is clearer and brighter; kitchen 3 x 50w halogen, over to 3 x 5w LED - better light output for less money; bathroom 4 x 50w halogen to 4 x 5w LED, same again.

They have a longer life span, use approximately a tenth of the power of a conventional bulb, and in many cases give a better light. Just think, 10x the time out of your lights in your camper.

 

If you are cooking using propane, then you should manage it neigh bother.....

 

I don't know about LED's but I can't use CFL's in my house. All CFL's emit a high pitched sound (supposedly reduces out of human hearing after a few minutes) and I have ultra-sensitive hearing and can hear it all the time.

I had a similar problem when we first had a burglar alarm installed. It combined PIR and Ultrasonic sensors and they installed it whilst I was at work. I had to call them back in an emergency when I arrived home as the ultrasonic sound was driving me nuts (now you know the reason why I'm like I am ). Apparently they had it set on a level for humans and had to change the settings so as not to bother dogs. I can hear dog whistles! . They had me doing a blind walk test to check it out.

I can also sense when fluorescent lights are starting to go.

So I'm rather reluctant to try LED's - apart from the fact that I have lots of incandescent bulbs in stock. Daytime use of bulbs doesn't matter as I have solar panels. Night time use is not a lot, apart from in the kitchen.

That's a pretty good deal

In the early days of low energy bulbs our electricity supplier sent us a box of 12 bulbs. They're still in the cupboard

 

Are you sure???

 

@shiney - I am exactly the same when it comes to CFL lights, or indeed any fluorescent light; indeed, more often than not I will foretell of the death of an electronic item as I can head 'singing' capacitors a mile off (in fact, our microwave is on borrowed time as I can hear it singing whenever I go into the kitchen.

The good news is that LED lights do not have this effect - - all fluorescent lights work in the same way, in that the voltage coming in is increased, its frequency is increased (I guess to about 10kHz for a magnetic ballast) and then passed through a choke to limit the current - in the bulb itself, it is essentially arc lighting (hence the current limiting) where the arc is drawn through a gas (argon and vaporised mercury, I think?) which in turn excites the phosphor coating on the inside of the glass which gives off light. CFL's or tubes with electronic ballasts are even worse, as they increase the frequency up to around 20kHz, and more often than not do so with cheap and nasty components (usually from China).

LED's require no such trickery - most of them operate on a simple capacitive dropper (basically a couple of resistors and a couple of capacitors) to reduce the voltage and current before passing it through the LED; indeed some of the cheap ones only have a resistor to limit current. LED's are, as their name suggests, diodes - a diode only passes electricity in one direction, so when the polarity changes as it does 50 times per second here in the UK, the LED switches off, so it is only lit 'half wave' - this causes flicker which some people can see with the naked eye, and can be seen by nearly all cameras. The more expensive LED bulbs get around this by having a small bridge rectifier and a smoothing capacitor which eradicates flicker.

The other way that they operate is as a low voltage string (fairy lights, or self-adhesive plinth lighting strips are two examples) - these have a switch mode power supply (the same as your laptop, TV, PC, and just about every electronic device you own), which drops the voltage to around 12v and smooths it to a nice DC output (essentially, the same as a car battery)

If you can hear an LED bulb in operation, it is either very cheap and nasty or it is faulty. Not only do they save energy and money, but they actually give off a much more usable light. Give them a try - you won't look back

 

We had an LED standard lamp (uplighter) which was quite good but I could see the flicker if we had no other lights on.

Thanks for the info. When we've run out of the stock we have for lights for our recessed ceiling lights (kitchen, utility, bathroom, hall and corridor) I'll try one of the more expensive LED's - although that will hurt