Help with Downlight choice- Pleeeaaasssseee

Hi,

We are trying to decide which downlights to get and when to do it. Your help would be very much appreciated.

First the contenders are...

The wattsaver ones I have read about on here. http://www.solarledlighting.com.au/viewitem.php?productid=72

LEDlux 15 w from B....n http://www.beaconlighting.com.au/ledlux-15w-900-lumen-dimmable-downlight-kit-in-brushed-chrome-with-cool-white-globes.html

Martec Shadowline http://www.martecceilingfans.com.au/shadowline_gimble_5k.html

Equinox 16w replaceable LED http://www.northernlighting.com.au/products/5817-equinox-16w-replaceable-led-downlight-md450-mercator-lighting.aspx

Then my next question is.....

Is it better to

A) get the builder electrician to wire extra provisions (as an outside contract job though) for the lights and pay to have my own installed (don't like the ones they are offering). Approx $35 a provision and $40 install for each light. Therefore $75 a light plus the cost of light

B) only get the above said electrician to do provision (as hole or batten) then get someone else to do fit after handover

C) wait until after handover and get it all done then

We need approx 28 lights
6 in each of lounge, dining, home theatre
3 in kitchen and rear hallway
4 in front hallway

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am finding this quite difficult to get best value with light and install.

with our downlights we purchased our own downlights and then getting the builders electrician to install
my house is a custom build and our builder has let us put in alot of our own items including the lights and switches also powerpoints.
here is a pic of the ones i are getting
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_trks ... &_from=R40
we put an electrical allowance in our contract with the builder to cover the installation
i have read on the forum where it depends on whether you are building two story or not on what to get your builder to do and what you can do after handover.
so i think it comes down to budget and personal choice.
for convience i would rather the builder electrician do it but then it can become expensive.
i would consider also asking for the holes to be made and fitting after handover
the led downlights i bought cost me $50 each (same price as ebay) from a electrical store in town

I don't know how the building/provision thing works but you need all the wiring done before the plaster board goes up.

I've recently retrofitted LED lights to our house and I went through a bit of trial and error which can get a bit expensive if you need an electrician every time you change you mind. Our place had the standard 50W halogen down lights with 90mm cutouts so I was limited to bulb only change or fixtures that used the same cutouts.

A 10W LED is roughly equal to a 50W halogen. In the lounge, dining, family room and bedrooms I have replaced the complete fixtures with 10W warm white fixtures with perspex covers which gives a softer appearance and broader spread of light. These were all in a 1X10W LED arrangement and I've found 10W to be plenty bright enough. 2 10W LEDs over the dining table was too bright for us so I used dimmable hear and in the lounge.

The kitchen has a high concentration of lights were 10W LED replacements would have been too bright. We went for a combination of 5W SMDs in the ceiling an 4W bright over the benches. We didn't need to go so bright in the hallways either. 5W SMDs worked fine and give a good even spread of light.

Colour spectrum can be a bit arbitrary. I'm not a fan of the yellow 'warm' light and 'bright' can be a bit in your face when its too bright. I found that the warm white in the LED lights tends to be a bit brighter and not as yellow as the fluorescents.

i would go to a lighting place and pick which lights you want
and get them to work out the locations, then get the builder to
just fit junction boxes in roof space so after hand over you can fit
your lights.
i stuffed up a bit and not wanting to change things now, i had
the builder fit 2 batons per room through the kitchen dinning lounge
are. i was going to use cfl downlights but know told that 2 per room
wont be enough so looks like im going with the beacon 15w LED
as they have a good light with a 155deg beam. all the other LED
only have 90deg so would need more of them.

I have done the same thing as you two baton per each of those rooms with hope of having 6 downlights eventually. You also have to look at lumens produced not just angles as they can still wash out near floor level if not enough light. I got to see the equinox ones in a room at delights and they had 6 in a 6m by maybe 3m room and it was sufficient. The Led chip is replaceable in these ones too. I am looking at the Beacon as well. They are 900lm compared to 1400 lms on the wattsaver though.

Can we actually install them ourselves into junction boxes?

oh ok, only started looking at LED the other day
will call wattsavers tomorrow for some advise

i think you still need electrician for junction boxes but what if you get them to fit normal power points in the roof space where you will fit the downlights? then you plug in diy no worries

We bought these ones:
http://www.lightingillusions.com.au/sho ... -downlight

13w led, dimmable, ip44, brushed aluminium. Which means we can use them outside/inside/bathroom without worrying about the chrome looking bad after a while etc. Should also mention that they are fairly big (a good thing) and very nice looking in our opinion. Our closest lighting illusion store (windsor, brisbane) has a completely dark room with downlights fitted so you can easily compare brightness etc, and we were surprised how bright they were (we were initially going for CFL, but there was jut no contest). For $44 it seems like very good value as well.

That said they have not been installed yet, so I can't really say too much about quality etc

EDIT: Actually, I now see that there is a silver and an "anodised aluminium" option.. we paid $44 so we have the silver option. We were told it was brushed aluminium (which we wanted as they will be used outside) but now I'm not sure. We were not told about this other option, which is probably what we wanted. The generic specs on the site says "cast aluminium" though, so maybe the other one has just been treated better.

i have gone back to cfl after finding these

http://micalighting.com.au/ceiling-ligh ... v-cfl.html

Sorry but you're comparing apples and oranges.

Good LED downlights are so much better.

I wish they weren't as I'd save thousands using these.

I've trialled CFL, halogen and a number of LED downlights. In the end I went with a combo of Wattsavers, generic 13w Cree LEDs, CFL pendant and LED strip lighting for my house.

Only reason I went for generic Cree LEDs was 4 x Wattsavers was going to be too bright for the smaller bedrooms.

nope! not comparing anything, just saying
obviously LED is tops in lighting but we all have different needs and I dont need daylight
in my house at night.
people have make do with one batton light per room for decades, I'm sure these CFLs will be
just fine for what I need.
sorry to OP probably shouldn't have posted as you didn't have CFLs on you list

Talk about advertising. 5 posts in a short time all plugging a "friends" store.

^^^ Dealt with now delatite..and thanks to the Forum member who reported this.

After doing some reading, I am also undecided on what I should get for a new house. Should I get the GU10 downlights which suffers from low brightness or one of those package unit like BrightGreen or Wattsaver? Only problem I see with Brightgreen or Wattsaver is that when it come the time to replace the bulb, you need to replace the whole fixture. What if you can no longer get the same fixture?

I think the wattsavers have lifetime or 10 years warranties.

In 10 years or so, you will be able buy better LEDs for $4.99

GU10s and their LED replacements are terrible compared to the good LEDs.

I am think it is