On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:35:31 -0800, dawoodseed wrote:

Hello,

I have around 14 GU10 bulbs in my house and was just looking at the
Tool station catalog, they have quite a few different types of GU10
bulbs.

Which one would be the best if after an energy saving alternative?

GU10 Halogen Xenon, Long life.
GU10 Cold Cathode Reflector lamp.
GU10 LED Lamp- 20 clusters.
GU10 Compact flouroscent.

The CF: I've a fitting with 4 of these in my kitchen. I prefer the warm
white to the cool white which is too cold for my taste. By comparison
halogens seem horribly yellow. The CFs give a wider spread than the
halogens so you don't get the effect of WW-II or 20th Century Fox type
searchlights cutting beams through the sky.

Be warned though, apart from the expense they don't seem to have the
longevity they promise, and they start up extremely slowly so are best
suited to being left on for long periods. Ours are in the kitchen where we
put them on when we get up on dark mornings and off again when we go off
(or it gets lighter) and on again for the evening. Thus the energy saving
will be less than if you had halogens and switched them off every 5
minutes (though in our household I'm the only person who'd do that anyway,
so in practice they'd probably stay on most of the time regardless of what
type of lamps were in them). Personally I loathe the little yellow pockets
of light you get from halogen spots (though I know it's very personal and
others feel the opposite) and would happily have an electronic ballast
'proper' fluorescent, but since the designs of fittings for these are so
industrial I would never be able to get one of these past SWMBO.

Another possible gotch with enegy-saving GU10s is that they're physically
bigger than halogens: I had to discard some of the trim bits from our
fitting to take them.

I've looked at a few recessed CF downlighters, like smaller relations of
the things you get in commercial lighting in offices etc (which are
generally too big to fit in domestic ceilings). I saw a nice one a while
back but the fluorescent tube bit was a special type which wasn't (at the
time) available as a spare for replacement!

--
John Stumbles

A: Because it messes up the order in which people read text.
Q: Why is top-posting a bad thing?