ELV LED Lamps

Lilyrose08 · Apr 13, 2013

Hi Everyone can any one recommend good quality ELV LED lamps that work in most transformers without flickering and have a good lumens output (bright). Also I have been changing a lot of spots recently - Just want to know what you do when you come across ELV halogen light fittings and need to change them to 240V GU10 and there is no provision in the fittings for an earth ?????????

SPARTYKUS · Apr 13, 2013

Hello Lilyrose08

what would you do?

(clue: "class 2")

lauriehurman · Apr 13, 2013

Hi Lilly Rose
Two things (just from my humble experience);

I think that the LEDs require an LED driver (transformer) this makes changing MR16 halogens to LEDs expensive. I always recommend changing to GU10 for this reason. You will find the old transformer has a minimum wattage which is likely to be too high for the LEDs. I think there is also a maximum length recommended for the ELV cable so you can't just gang hundreds of lamps to make up the load.

If you change the downlight then the new one has to be fire-rated. I would think that changing from MR16 to GU10 would probably be considered to be a new fitting (I may be wrong). For the price of a new downlight I can't see that it would be worth trying to cobble together the old one.

Be prepared to open out the hole to 72mm.

Hope that helps
Laurie

Engineer54 · Apr 13, 2013

lauriehurman said:
Hi Lilly Rose
Two things (just from my humble experience);

I think that the LEDs require an LED driver (transformer) this makes changing MR16 halogens to LEDs expensive. I always recommend changing to GU10 for this reason. You will find the old transformer has a minimum wattage which is likely to be too high for the LEDs. I think there is also a maximum length recommended for the ELV cable so you can't just gang hundreds of lamps to make up the load.

If you change the downlight then the new one has to be fire-rated. I would think that changing from MR16 to GU10 would probably be considered to be a new fitting (I may be wrong). For the price of a new downlight I can't see that it would be worth trying to cobble together the old one.

Be prepared to open out the hole to 72mm.

Hope that helps
Laurie

Your both right and wrong!! lol!! As far as i know, it's only the modern ELV halogen drivers/transformers that need a minimum wattage, the older variety of wired transformers will be fine. Trouble is, many of these ELV LED lamps are now specified as DC rather than AC.

I did help out a local shop owner friend last year, who had 8 ELV 4 X 50w halogen fittings, that he wanted to change for LED lamps. I converted these 8 fittings for him, over a couple of days. I supplied 2 lamps from one of the existing 4 60VA transformers (2 transformers used for each 4 lamp fitting). think the LED lamps wattage was around 7 or 10W. Anyway everything seems to be fine to date!! lol!!

Going to have to get my head round these newer LED lamps etc, this project will be the first for me, where LED lighting is going to play a major factor... lol!!