Bath Fan Light
The main lights in the bathroom have been CFL's for quite some time now. And they work fine, but use too much energy, the hum, and they take a bit to warm up to full brightness. Time for more LEDs! I bought new fan/light fixtures since the old ones were both ugly and loud. I shopped around for one that would be easy to convert to LED. I needed something metal to glue the emitters to and a place to mount the Xitanium driver. For the unit shown here, I used six emitters (a mix of SSC and Cree) and put them in a string of three parallel pairs. They run from a 700 mA Xitanium, so they each see 350 mA. In our other (smaller) bath, I used just three emitters. The size of the room makes a HUGE difference, as those three emitters appear to offer as much light as the six I used for this one! Now I have very low energy consumption, instant on, and that warm, fuzzy feeling of having done something good without breaking too many expensive things. Measured consumption from this six-emitter unit is 6 W. That's less than a standard incandescent night-light bulb!
First I cut off the existing light fixture and
wired in a 700 mA Xitanium driver. Stuck the driver to the back of the reflector
with 3M foam tape.
Passed the driver wires up to the front and made
my string of emitters (they're random, only because they're what I had on
hand).
No real reason for this shot, but it shows that
the diffuser works. Doesn't look like much light, does it? That's the camera
doing its best work. I learned long ago that it is all but impossible to
take a picture of "light."
And just for fun, here's the bathroom light by
just the LEDs. The ladder isn't normally there. ;)
