Lighting style hot – literally
Downlights are a popular lighting style – they’re sleek, practical and kick out a great level of light. But they have a dark side. If you’ve got downlights at home, your power bills will stubbornly resist your attempts to conserve energy around the house.
The reason is that incandescent and halogen downlights are dramatically inefficient.
Only 5 per cent of the electricity they use is turned into light. The other 95 per cent is converted into heat.
Each halogen consumes about 50 watts per hour.
If you have 40 downlights – about average for homes with downlights – you’ll be burning 2000 watts every hour.
That’s the same energy as leaving a large oil column heater on for eight hours every day.
The cost of your downlights could reach $120 a month.
Sadly the bad news doesn’t stop there.
‘‘Hot’’ downlights must not be insulated over because that would be a serious fire risk, given the heat they put out.
With up to 20 centimetres of insulation clearance around each downlight, your ceiling insulation will be full of gaps that allow all the warm air from the rooms below to escape.
A single downlight reduces the effectiveness of your insulation by 18 per cent, resulting in heat loss from a room.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. You can now replace the inefficient old downlight fittings with new LED fittings.
LED downlights are 90 per cent more efficient and produce very little heat.
That means they are safe to cover with insulation, but only if they have the right compliance.
Look out for the ‘‘IC’’ (insulation coverable) stamp on the back of the fitting.
LED downlights allow you to have a better- insulated, warmer home, with a 90 per cent reduction in lighting costs.
There’s also a cherry on top because many LED fittings can match a traditional bulb in colour and light output while lasting up to 93,000 hours.
That’s about 42 years.