Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Solar Tubes in a Gardenia?
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Old 08-04-2014, 07:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by villagetinker View Post
I changed out existing lights for LEDs, these provide more light than the original lamps, cost MUCH less than solar tubes, and they have a less than 10% thermal load on the AC system from the original lamps. The cost to relamp my entire Gardenia was less than 1/2 the price of 1 solar tube.
Please do not get me wrong, I have neighbors that have installed these and they are quite nice, but I could not justify the cost.
Just my thoughts, please do not beat me up.
Exactly what I did. Wasn't so much the money saving aspect vs. solar, I don't like the light on ALL THE TIME during the day and you still need the lights at night anyway. I know that they have some with turn on/ turn off levers but that did seem worth it. You'll never make your money back. I probably won't make the money back going with LED's either but with the very low thermal load of the new LED's it was a very good choice. And I was able to mix soft white LED's with Daylight white LED's.

FYI: I used new Cree lights available at HD.