replacing household lights with LED bulbs, advice sort please

Verdigris

It seems strange to me that a consumable, replaceable item, such as a light bulb, forms part of the EPC rating.

Indeed. As I alluded to, above, EPCs are really worth the pixels they're displayed on. They over-emphasise some things, suggest ridiculous remedial actions that you wouldn't see an ROI on in your lifetime, a suggest daft things like wind-turbines that most properties won't support and mark the rating down for having a heat-pump!

Not fit for purpose is an expression perfectly suited to EPCs. (However, it does allow you to pick up a bargain if you know a bit about energy conservation)

QrizB

Sea_Shell said:

It seems strange to me that a consumable, replaceable item, such as a light bulb, forms part of the EPC rating.

There is (or was, I don't know if it's been changed) a similar situation with cars, CO2 emissions and VED ("road tax") bands. Manufacturers could achieve lower CO2 emissions (and lower VED) by fitting lower rolling resistance tyres and low-viscosity engine oil.
Of course, at your first service and first tyre change you could lose all these benefits.

Verdigris

Car makers also took various trims off and taped over openings, to improve aerodynamic performance, for tests.

MattMattMattUK

Verdigris said:

Car makers also took various trims off and taped over openings, to improve aerodynamic performance, for tests.

In some cases they got very small women to drive the cars after taking out the passenger seats, spare tyres etc. having only enough petrol to complete the test, draining washer fluid to a minimum and pumping the tyres up to almost bursting point to reduce rolling resistance and that is before we get to the defeat devices for emissions and fuel consumption, the system was never fit for purpose

QrizB

Deleted_User said:

So did you all replace working non-LED bulbs, rather than just buying LED spares and using them when the old bulbs stopped working?

Incandescent lamps are such energy-hogs that yes, it's cheaper to throw them away.

CFLs are a matter of opinion. I know some people say to throw them away too, but personally I'm letting them expire naturally before replacing them with LEDs.

Example:A 60-watt incandescent lamp might have a life of 1000 hours. In that time it will use 60kWh of electricity, costing about £12. Even if it's brand-new, it's cheaper to throw it out, spend £10 on a really fancy 9W LED lamp and run that for 1000 hours instead (£1.80 for electricity, total cost £11.80) .

Verdigris

I just "trickle down" CFLs to places where I only occasionally switch the light on. LEDs in all the mainly lit areas but I still switch them off when I leave the room for any length of time.

lesley2020

What works for us is the Ikea Tradfri system - you buy bulbs and various cheap kit and can then do things such as use their Room Sensors to turn lights on when someone is present in a room then turn off when they leave and no motion is sensed.

You can get plug adaptors which can turn appliances on and off automatically/remotely.

coffeehound

CFLs were a bit of an environmental disaster really.  We were forced into buying them as the incandescents were no longer permitted to be sold.  The PRC predictably churned out huge quantities of substandard product, and then a couple of years later, LEDs became much better and rendered the CFLs redundant so many/most went straight into landfill, mercury and all

MattMattMattUK

coffeehound said:

CFLs were a bit of an environmental disaster really.  We were forced into buying them as the incandescents were no longer permitted to be sold.  The PRC predictably churned out huge quantities of substandard product, and then a couple of years later, LEDs became much better and rendered the CFLs redundant so many/most went straight into landfill, mercury and all

I remember the early ones, took several minutes to get up to full brightness, they were undimmable, many of the cheap ones had noticeable flicker, even some of the more expensive ones had a noticeable flicker for many people, they really were a technology that should have been skipped. 

MWT

Sea_Shell said:

If you take out all the bulbs, does that get you even higher up the scale 😉🤔

"No bulb" is even more energy efficient, after all 😉

With the way they produce the rating not having any LED bulbs would get you the same score as having halogen bulbs everywhere... it really is a very poor rating system.