LED Outdoor Lanterns...good idea?

baby_frogmella

Hello Folks

I'm about to move into a new home and i want to get a pair of outdoor lanterns installed outside the garage. I had lanterns with low energy bulbs (20w) installed at my previous home and these were controlled by a 7 day digital security light switch see here and everything was lovely jubbly. Now instead of installing the old lanterns, i'm thinking of buying a pair of LED outdoor lanterns like these which not only look cool but should also help reduce the leccy bill. Some questions:

1) How much light will each LED lantern give out considering each lantern consists of 12 x 0.12W LED bulbs? Will i get at least the same amount of light as a 20w low energy bulb per lantern? Or are these just for decorative purposes?

2) If i decide to go ahead with the LED lanterns, how can these be automatically switched on-off? The 7 day digital timer i mentioned previously, CAN work with low wattage bulbs but they have to be at least 20w. All other timers on the market (AFAIK) don't work with low wattage bulbs...so what is the solution?

3) If decide to install my old 20w bulb lanterns, anyone know where i can find the cheapest 7 day digital timer? I forgot to remove it from my previous home...duh! Homebase have one for a fiver but are out of stock everywhere and tlc direct do one for about 28 pounds + delivery.

Thanks for your help

27col

12 x 1.2watt led's will only use less than 1.5 watts. Compared with your 20watt lantern. At this stage of development led's are mainly decorative. If you want to illuminate, say, the line of the edge of a path then they will do the job. But if you want any serious amount of lumens, I think that you will have to await further development of led's. However there are new and improved led's being announced on almost a weekly basis. No doubt someone will contradict me if I am wrong and we will all learn something.