Switching to LED Bulbs in Your RV Saves You Time and Money
Light The Way
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When it comes to interior lighting in your motorhome or your traditional home, LED lights are all the rage. If you aren’t familiar with them, they use a different technology called Light Emitting Diodes to generate light. When compared to old fashion incandescent or fluorescent bulbs LEDs have a lot to offer. If you have them in your traditional home and like the advantages there, wait until you see what they can do for you in a motorhome. Unlike your house, a motorhome has a somewhat limited power supply therefore, power management is very important. The way you light your coach has a significant impact on your power and cooling needs, so it only makes sense to use the most efficient lights possible.
The Future Looks Bright
Traditional fluorescent bulbs are getting hard to find, so you might as well plan on replacing all of them with modern LED bulbs soon. One reason for the demise of old-fashioned fluorescent bulbs is they contain mercury. Disposable and manufacturing of these bulbs are getting more difficult so even if your old-style bulbs are working, finding replacements in the future is going to be hard. Rather than wait, we made the upgrade now.
Once we decided to upgrade our coach to LEDs, we contacted M4LED and there we found every bulb we needed and in the color we wanted. All light bulbs aren’t the same color so make sure you know the difference in warm white, which is 3,000k usually, natural white which is about 4,500k, and cool white which is about 6,000k. We wanted natural balanced light, so we picked the 4,500k natural light color for all of our bulbs. We have used M4LED in the past and know their product quality and most importantly their customer service and support is second to none. If you order at other places you don’t always get a real live person to answer your emails on topics like how to remove the ballast from the wiring before installing the new bulbs. We admit that we had to send a question or two in during our project and we always got our answers back quickly. This business is operated by its owner and he personally takes care of any question or concern you have. So, if you want a first quality conversion with support, M4LED is our first choice.
Benefits of LEDs
The 2008 Tiffin Phaeton and originally it came with all incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. When looking at a traditional fluorescent stick light like the ones used in the ceiling of this coach, it has full-size fixtures that hold two 18 inch T8 bulbs. The old bulbs consumed 18 watts each or 36 watts per fixture and the new M4LED bulbs only consume 8 watts each. That’s less than half the wattage. When you add up the total amount of power consumed in an entire motorhome it really makes a difference to switch to LED bulbs. If you spend any time off the grid running on batteries or a generator you should notice a real difference with LED bulbs.
Another big advantage that comes along with the lower power consumption is heat. I was shocked at how hot the fluorescent bulbs were when I removed them to start the installation. In fact, I retrieved a non-contact pyrometer and was able to find bulb temperatures in the range of 110-120F. If you are inside a motorhome with 4-6-8 light fixtures on with two bulbs each you can really feel the heat from them. Of course, this heat causes a demand for more air conditioning in the summer months and if you are in a very hot area, it can mean the difference between a 75F degree inside and a more comfortable 70-72F degree coach.
Longevity is also a characteristic of LED light bulbs. An incandescent bulb usually lasts around 800-1200 hours, and a fluorescent bulb can last up to an impressive 8000 hours. However, most LED bulbs are rated at 25,000 hours so there is no contest in life among the bulb types. Although LEDs are the most expensive in initial cost, if you factor in the lifetime cost including energy savings the LED bulbs are always the big winner.
The Choice Is Yours
So far, we have mostly discussed fluorescent bulb replacement but M4LED has bulbs for most fixtures in your coach so we changed all of ours. Some had a 2-pin base, while others had a single pin round base and then some were a push in wedge style. Your coach likely has a mixture of all types so if you are going to make the change make sure you get one of each bulb type you need and look up the replacements like we did and get them on the way. Most of the replacements are very easy to change. You simply pull or twist out the old bulb and install a new one.
Fluorescent fixtures are a little more difficult because they come with a ballast that is no longer needed when using a LED bulb. Each fixture is a little different and depending on how yours is made you may or may not have to remove the ballast from the fixture. But you must not leave it in the wiring circuit even if you physically leave it in the fixture. In our case, we were able to figure out a way to just clip all the old wires leading in and out of the ballast and after removing the fixture from the ceiling, we pulled new wires through the back of the fixture and connected them to the tube holders on each end. The tube bulbs that M4LED supplies (except for the smaller ones) have a built-in driver and they are non-polarity. The benefit of a non-polarity bulb means that it can go in the fixture either way. These bulbs only require one of the two pins on each end of the bulb to receive either positive or negative wires which make re-wiring the fixtures very easy.
The first fixture that you re-wire may take you a few minutes of reading the excellent directions but after you do one of them, the others only take about 10 minutes each assuming you have to remove them from the ceiling as we did. After you get your coach converted over to LED you will be amazed at how much better they look, and you will not be plagued with the chore of trying to find old fashion ballasts and fluorescent bulbs and replacing one every few trips. Inspecting interior light bulbs should not be a maintenance item on your pre-drive checklist, and if you change over to LED bulbs, it won’t be.
