Rope light burning out? failing?
Have any of you ever got a complaint/call back about rope lighting failing or having burned out bulbs?
I was meeting with a HO and an Interior decorator (fun fun fun) and the decorator seconds after she reccomends rope lighting around dbl vanity bowls on onyx top says….
“but I understand that these rope light bulbs burn out and start looking bad and then you have to replace it all”
…in this particular application it would be a real pain to replace. I have never been called back to replace any so far was my first response…truth is most of it was in crown or boxed and hidden and doubt any of the HO would even have noticed a few of the small bulbs burning out.
-have to replace this stuff often? ever? Whats the warranty?
-Is there a best that you would reccomend? (price not a real issue)
-does it burn out as a unit (the entire length) or one bulb at a time?
– can anyone reccomend a better light source for this application?
I plan to call the sales rep at my local elec supply house tomorrow AM. But I would like to here from the guys who put it in and warranty it.
-Whay say you?
Replies
These are basically just high-class Christmas lights in a plastic tube. They will burn out eventually, but hard to say how quickly. Like xmas lights they should, for awhile, keep the string burning with several bulbs out, but eventually an entire segment will go out.
The mfgr should have specs on the expected lifetime of the bulbs. If they don't publish some decent specs then go somewhere else.
If they are like the christmas lights Ive been getting last few years I guess I'll be replacing them once a year. Two months burn time....ten months dust plug um in...toss um. Repeat.
reccomend a best brand? .....maybe I should use the rope lights on the tree!!! and give the H.O. my xmas lights with a disclaimer...No more than 6 months of down time...or warranty is void. Or better yet leave a bag of extra bulbs xmass bulbs in the vanity drawer.
Look at the specs on them.
I am not sure, but I think that I have seen 100,000 hours lifetime on some.
And you can get LED Linear lights.
Here is one source.
http://www.gelcore.com/index2.asp
More like 10,000 hrs I think, two years warranty.
If the light is turned on five hours everyday, you'll get about 5 years out of it on average which isn't too bad at all.
How bright are those linear LED's?
I don't know, but go through those pages, they are using some for sign backlighting and other are being used for emergcy exit signs.
If you do a google search on 'led rope light' you'll turn up quite a few products. Here's one of them: http://www.santaslites.com/ledropelight.htm. They claim a life of 100,000 hours.
In my work as an engineer I've been seeing more and more light fixtures with LEDs in them - exit lights for commercial buildings and traffic signals are probably the most common. I saw in a trade magazine not long ago they are starting to sell street lights with LEDs in them instead of sodium or metal halide lamps.
I think you can get LED puck lights, too, for use under shelves and in cabinets. I think that would be a great application as they generate very little heat.
Thanks for the link/s....I think I'll get some for the tree too.
Got any link for LED puck lights?
Do you know the color temperature and rendering of LED's?
"Got any link for LED puck lights?
Do you know the color temperature and rendering of LED's?"
No, I just did a google search on "LED puck lights" and got a number of hits. That's as far as I went with it.
Here's another source for LED rope lights, I just saw these in one of my trade journals: http://www.mulelighting.com/led-flex/. They also sell an interesting LED light bulb that screws into a regular socket.
LED rope lights are available, but they cost more ($8-$10 per foot) than the 110V lights with filament bulbs. The lifetime of LEDs is usually 50K to 100K hours.
When this stuff first hit the discount big boxes there was a small surge of people incorporating it into their remodeling and new construction. As with everything else, lacking any experience with the particular product but confirmed in our general belief that cheap knockoffs seldom give good performance and that the value is in the middle of the market, a lot of HOs went, despite out counseling otherwise, with the cheapest product available.
We didn't see any great number of failures of the lamps. What we found was much more disturbing. The end caps, which make the connections in the cheap models would loosen on their own and overheat. Sometimes melting the plastic of both the cap and the 'rope' itself. By luck or design, electricians seldom like to depend on luck to prevent such failures, there were no fires. Molten and scorched plastic and the acrid smell people with experience associate with electrical components going south was the worse it got.
Callbacks, particularly when in connection to components which seem to be trying to ignite the house, are problematic. Doesn't matter if the HOs supplied the rope lights and were warned not to buy the cheapest ones available. We put it in and our reputation still takes a hit. Sure we had signed forms showing the HO supplied the units. Save us from rampant lawyers, mostly. But public opinion is not so discriminating and by the numbers.
We had better performance with higher end units.
IMHO, as an electrician who works on mostly high-end residential...Rope light is junk.
when it burnsout, an 18in section goes. I've seen it in a mall in KC MO, some sections had obviously gotten so hot that they were causing the clear plastic to turn brown.
The only thing you can so with it then is replace the whole thing.
It has advantages:
Cheap
120v
dimmable
easy to install
I would look for other options if you need a long term, low maintenace, solution. They will all cost more though. Good luck