My LEDs

AndyfromTucson wrote:

KendallP wrote:

Figure this...

In my experience they use about 1/5 the power of incandescent per roughly the same amount of light output.. Therefore one could surmise that an incandescent bulb is losing about 5 times the energy to heat as the comparable set of LEDs. I know that my 1141 incandescents will burn the living cr@p out of my fingers after being on for just a half minute or so. (Well... truthfully... I can't be 100% sure. An experiment is supposed to be repeatable... and I only tried this once!)

My LEDs will be very warm, but will not burn me after running several minutes or more.

So just how hot are we talking here?

I agree with your reasoning on the overall heat load on the fixture. I guess what I was worried about was if the circuit board they are mounted to would melt down, and/or the foam stickies that are used to stick them to the fixture would have problems.

I don't have any way to measure the actual temp, but after reading your reply I did a little test. After the LEDs being on for 30 minutes I could hold my finger directly on an LED for about 5 seconds before it got painful. I could hold my finger on the back of the circuit board indefinitely without it getting painful. Based on that unscientific test I am starting to think the temps are nothing to worry too much about.

Not ultra-scientific, but reasonably practical, IMO.

I HAVE heard of some issues regarding the sticky foam tape on some panels. I don't think it was these or the 36 versions. I haven't had the problem with the one I have in my range hood... and you would sure think it could get plenty hot up in there. I HAVE run the light and all burners at the same time for awhile. Was heating up a bunch of water.

Worst case, I think some guys have had to use a different glue to hold them on to the fixture. It wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on them.

And bear in mind that Dave-Sparky has been running his 36 LED units for 8 months for hours at a time with zero reported problems.