LED Light Conversion Done

[allen8106]

Good afternoon RV.net sports fans. Thought I would share my new LED experience with you for those that might be interested

Today I swapped out all indoor and outdoor light bulbs in my 5er with new LED's.

With all inside and outside lights on my amp draw went from 37.1 to 4.4. The lights are brighter and not even close to hot like the old incandescent bulbs. I'm very pleased with the brighter light as I prefer it.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

This is a "saner" product, albeit at the negative of having potential radiated noise.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Auto-RV-Boat-LED-Replacement-Bulb-G4-base-w-side-pins-70-LUM-12v-24v-606010...

[teetah]

I put the original bulbs back in all the sockets in the bedroom after one of the new led bulbs did a melt down in the socket. Lights flickered, then I saw smoke coming from the fixture. When I removed the lamp cover the top half of the light fell of onto the bed. Shut the power off and put the old bulbs back in. ??

[BFL13]

You can only get an advantage that matters by going LED if you leave your lights on for a long time. AH has amps and hours in it. So in winter, off grid, with long time darkness, yes you can do better.

In summer with long daylight hours plus all that solar time for the batteries anyway, you will probably get no AH advantage from going LED.

It is all situational. You should do some calculating first. However, with the lower LED prices, this could be less important.

[tenbear]

Yet another thought, or thoughts.

1. Measure the voltage at the light sockets, both good and bad.
2. Try one of the lights that worked in the other sockets into the socket that doesn't, see what happens, and vice versa.
3. Do all 3 of the remaining sockets blow the fuse? If so, it's the wiring, not the sockets.

[tenbear]

Another thought, maybe the polarity is reversed on these sockets. Usually this causes the LED lights to just not light, but I would check it anyway.

[teetah]

All the bulbs have 2 prongs. They don’t fit otherwise.

[tenbear]

Did you use the right bulbs? Some have one contact on the bottom and others have two. Of course it depends on the light bulb type.

[teetah]

working on doing this, but have hit a small snag. I've put new LED bulbs into the wall fixtures in the bedroom and when I hit the switch it pops the fuse to the lights... anyone else see this happen? Can't figure why since these LED's have lower power draw than the incandescents in the fixtures. LED's work everywhere but in those fixtures. I'm thinking I may have to just upgrade the entire fixture, eventually.

[beemerphile1]

Since some have mentioned LEDs for their home = Dollar Tree now sells LED replacements for 60w equivalent @ 800lm. I have purchased a few and they work great. The original LEDs I bought for the house were $10 each and that was only a few years ago.

[77rollalong]

i picked up these strips to replace mine to leds

[D_E_Bishop]

Things have changed so much since I tried those stick on square boards and now it's hard to remember what I have used in my conversion. The 18" Thinlines and the 12" Thinline tubes and balasts were removed and I used 5, 15" strips in the 18" fixtures and I don't remember the size in the 12" but there are 5 strips in there too. I used aluminum backed strips from Ebay, they come 10 to a set and they are fantastic when glued to the fixture housing. I soldered mine in series with a switch to change from 2 to five strips depending how much light I wanted.

I bought 6 spot lights at "Q" last year and they have two problems that we see. The spot is ringed with yellow and for some reason all of them seem to flicker when the base warms up. The incandescent's are #1383 BA15s bulbs.

Our bedroom is like a dungeon to me, very little light, two small fixtures with two bulbs each. I could replace with corncobs but strips are more efficient in delivering light downward as nothing goes up and reflects down. I'll probably buy to Thinlines when I find them in a salvage yard and convert to the aluminum backed strips.

The only fixtures that will continue with incandescent's are the two makeup fixtures in the bath. I hate them but the DW says it's not worth the money to replace the fixtures.

Now to do the outside.

[tenbear]

As others have mentioned I have replaced almost all the interior bulbs in the RV and the house with LEDs. Only a couple have failed, those due to mechanical problems that caused the connections to the LEDs to fail, the LEDs themselves did not fail.

I replaced the outside RV light with a rather dim bulb since we usually don't sit around outside at night, but it helps us find our way back when we go out at night without bothering our neighbors.

Oh yeah, I bought almost all the RV LEDs at eBay, most for the house at Costco.

[Harvey51]

Same for me. LEDs are terrific for RVs!

I'm working on the stick house now. I replaced all the bulb fixtures 30 years ago for fluorescent tube lights so I can't just screw in LED bulbs. I'm slowly replacing the fluorescent fixtures with Cloudraker brand LED fixtures from Costco. They are well designed to make the installation much easier than the fluorescent ones and are brighter than a pair of 4 foot fluorescent tubes despite lower lumin rating - probably because all the lumin are aimed down while fluorescents waste at least a quarter of the light.

[Sandia_Man]

Did our full conversion to LEDs over four years ago and it has been one of our favorite mods to date. Talk about a dramatic drop in amphours consumed daily, no more do we have to watch how many lights we have on as we once did with the incandescents, our rig can be lit up like Vegas if we choose all while drawing just a few amps and running significantly cooler.

We prefer dry camping and boondocking whenever possible, with the conversion to LEDs our pair of 6 volt GC2 batteries more than handle our daily requirements rarely discharging anywhere near 50% SOC. Purchased almost all of them from Ebay, in warm light and without voltage regulators. None have failed and they emit so much more light than the incandescents they replaced.