In 1999, I went through the back service doors of Wolf Electric on King St. just West of Bathurst and fumbled my way along the poorly lit, uneven floors to drop $37+tax for one compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb made by Philips. It was the start of energy efficient lighting and quite possibly the apogee of CFLs given that store shelves today are littered with crappy CFL lights that aren’t dimmable, are filled with hazardous mercury and the ballast produces so much waste heat that the white plastic base quickly gets cooked to a yellow crisp as they sputter to an early death. So much for energy conservation.
But hang on… Is it just us, or did 2015 just usher in a new era of LED lighting? It seems LED’s have jumped out of the dark ages by offering dimmable features, lighting systems that tie into home automation to change hue from your smart phone, produce a truly beautiful light that doesn’t oscillate and one can read a book ( durable, sharable, battery-less device made of bound paper having stories printed in ink ) and lets not forget the fact that these lights “could” be substantially more durable than CFLs without mercury.
As you well know, pot lights installed through the top ceiling’s air barrier have been a big pet peeve of ours, not because we don’t like the lights, but because they kill home performance. The great news is that a series of new LED lights have flooded the market recently which might be able to significantly reduce heat-loss through air leakage.
Surrey BC company Lotus LED Lights has been retailing some exciting low profile pot lights that could substantially reduce the fussiness of installing pot lights. It should be noted that good quality LEDs typically have aluminum heat sinks and for good reason; the heat needs to dissipate so take this next sentence with a grain of salt. These new lights could potentially eliminate the need entirely for the large housing box that punctuates the air barrier system and projects into the attic to disturb uniform, continuous insulation and leak conditioned air like a sieve. Sadly, many electricians don’t get air sealing but these new faux-pot lights might be able to help them because many models install directly into a regular octagonal junction box*. That simple!
What’s really exciting is that there may be a retrofit opportunity to easily air seal 90% of air leakage that occurs through pot lights by simply installing a new type of LED. Coming from a guy who made a living by sending other guys into hot, itchy attics to air seal the backs of pot lights – this seems like a no-brainer retrofit solution:
If the flange assembly of this LED light is air tight and if it can be installed tight against the drywall, or existing metal flange, this might be the easiest retrofit for pot lights in the world and a steal at $35-$45 apiece when compared to sending a guy up into the attic to retrofit a drywall box or plastic VB boot around the leaky IC rated pot light box.
Dimmable and looks like it might form a better air seal at the ceiling flange than conventional light bulbs, plus it gets the ENERGY STAR logo!
I’m proud to say that the same Philips CFL light bulb I bought in 1999 has been on a motion sensor in my back yard – extremely exposed to the elements protecting us from marauding racoons – for the past 10 years and is still going strong. My money’s on Philips for their commitment to quality and durability in this next wave of LEDs.
*This blog was re-posted on GBA with some amazing reader comments. Further to this post, High Performance Builder Steven Dennison (Dennison Homes) tried out this Philips product and was really impressed by the light quality and the simplicity in that it DID fit into a regular octagonal box!