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.

Your views are greatly appreciated.

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.

Your views are greatly appreciated.

197mm. Well that's how long my bit of string is.

Seriously, it depends totally on your requirements.
The LED will look pretty if you like that sort of thing. It will use
very little power but give so little light as to be useless. Any
light it does give will likely be very blue and highly directional
which may or may not be what you want.
The CF will have its own colour characteristics and probably give a
good spread of light. You may like the way it looks, you may not. It
will be physically longer than normal bulbs and may require you modify
the fitting. Power use will be low though.
The Halogen will use more power but will give lots of crisp white
light.
I don't know about the Cold Cathode as I've not seen one in this
format but generally I would expect it to have characteristics similar
to the CF, maybe a little bluer.

You really need ot buy a sample of each and try them in the intended
use.

In article ,
writes:
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.

Your views are greatly appreciated.

Lowest power consumption will be LED, but you might not notice
much difference from leaving the bulbs out completely. Either
way, you'll need to buy torches so you can actually find your
way around the house.

Compact fluorescent is probably the next best, and might be
usable. You won't get same light output as filament, but the
wider beam spread may more than compensate by lighting walls
and other reflective surfaces better.

Best solution would be to replace the GU10 lighting with
something more suitable for general lighting. I've never
understood why people accept cheap unsuitable crap lighting,
which costs a fortune to run, or why it ever became so trendy.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 7 Nov, 23:42, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
In article ,
* * * * writes:

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.

Your views are greatly appreciated.

Lowest power consumption will be LED, but you might not notice
much difference from leaving the bulbs out completely. Either
way, you'll need to buy torches so you can actually find your
way around the house.

Compact fluorescent is probably the next best, and might be
usable. You won't get same light output as filament, but the
wider beam spread may more than compensate by lighting walls
and other reflective surfaces better.

Best solution would be to replace the GU10 lighting with
something more suitable for general lighting. I've never
understood why people accept cheap unsuitable crap lighting,
which costs a fortune to run, or why it ever became so trendy.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

The lights are in one bedroom and the Kitchen. I reckon it will be the
CF then.

On 8 Nov, 00:06, wrote:
On 7 Nov, 23:42, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:



In article ,
* * * * writes:

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.

Your views are greatly appreciated.

Lowest power consumption will be LED, but you might not notice
much difference from leaving the bulbs out completely. Either
way, you'll need to buy torches so you can actually find your
way around the house.

Compact fluorescent is probably the next best, and might be
usable. You won't get same light output as filament, but the
wider beam spread may more than compensate by lighting walls
and other reflective surfaces better.

Best solution would be to replace the GU10 lighting with
something more suitable for general lighting. I've never
understood why people accept cheap unsuitable crap lighting,
which costs a fortune to run, or why it ever became so trendy.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

The lights are in one bedroom and the Kitchen. I reckon it will be the
CF then.

A decent surface mounting fitting with your choice of decent CFL lamps
will cover the GU10 holes and give much better light spread.

GU10 CFLs and CCFLs are a joke, they aren`t efficient, tend like
they`re line volatge halogen cousins to be somewhat short lived, and
simply dont fit.

Cram cones of loads of small LEDs aren`t very good in general.

Adam

On 8 Nov, 00:20, Adam Aglionby wrote:
On 8 Nov, 00:06, wrote:



On 7 Nov, 23:42, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

In article ,
* * * * writes:

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.

Your views are greatly appreciated.

Lowest power consumption will be LED, but you might not notice
much difference from leaving the bulbs out completely. Either
way, you'll need to buy torches so you can actually find your
way around the house.

Compact fluorescent is probably the next best, and might be
usable. You won't get same light output as filament, but the
wider beam spread may more than compensate by lighting walls
and other reflective surfaces better.

Best solution would be to replace the GU10 lighting with
something more suitable for general lighting. I've never
understood why people accept cheap unsuitable crap lighting,
which costs a fortune to run, or why it ever became so trendy.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

The lights are in one bedroom and the Kitchen. I reckon it will be the
CF then.

A decent surface mounting fitting with your choice of decent CFL lamps
will cover the GU10 holes and give much better light spread.

GU10 CFLs and CCFLs are a joke, they aren`t efficient, tend like
they`re line volatge halogen cousins to be somewhat short lived, and
simply dont fit.

Cram cones of loads of small LEDs aren`t very good in general.

Adam

I found that whatever GU10's I used, their lifetime was crap and hence
they were expensive to run. I believe this is general experience. I
changed over to 12V lights and found that they very rarely have to be
replaced. In the end however 20W is 20W regardless of whether it is
at 240v or 12v.

Rob

On 8 Nov, 04:25, robgraham wrote:
On 8 Nov, 00:20, Adam Aglionby wrote:



On 8 Nov, 00:06, wrote:

On 7 Nov, 23:42, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:

In article ,
* * * * writes:

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.

Your views are greatly appreciated.

Lowest power consumption will be LED, but you might not notice
much difference from leaving the bulbs out completely. Either
way, you'll need to buy torches so you can actually find your
way around the house.

Compact fluorescent is probably the next best, and might be
usable. You won't get same light output as filament, but the
wider beam spread may more than compensate by lighting walls
and other reflective surfaces better.

Best solution would be to replace the GU10 lighting with
something more suitable for general lighting. I've never
understood why people accept cheap unsuitable crap lighting,
which costs a fortune to run, or why it ever became so trendy.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

The lights are in one bedroom and the Kitchen. I reckon it will be the
CF then.

A decent surface mounting fitting with your choice of decent CFL lamps
will cover the GU10 holes and give much better light spread.

GU10 CFLs and CCFLs are a joke, they aren`t efficient, tend like
they`re line volatge halogen cousins to be somewhat short lived, and
simply dont fit.

Cram cones of loads of small LEDs aren`t very good in general.

Adam

I found that whatever GU10's I used, their lifetime was crap and hence
they were expensive to run. I believe this is general experience. I
changed over to 12V lights and found that they very rarely have to be
replaced. *In the end however 20W is 20W regardless of whether it is
at 240v or 12v.

Rob

I have different experience, the standard GU10's that I have now are
nearly a year old. In the hallway and staircase I think we have light
with a transformer of some sort- I can't remember the last time we
changed any of those bulbs.

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?