Hey all, I would like to pick your brains. Barn I’m at is fairly new-built (~3 years). Owner installed LED shop lights throughout. Well, they are all failing. And all at once too. I was discussing with my hubby the ‘why’ of this and he says they were never meant to be used around humidity. I’m in the PNW, so wet is just how things are.
Anyway, I’m wondering what better options are out there? Cost-wise, what’s most affordable and likely to last? LED is fabulous because it’s so bright. But if they are going to fail within a year or so of installation, that’s no good.
TIA!
I would check the barn’s power, if all of these lights are failing at the same time the incoming power could be over voltage which causes LEDs to overheat and fail
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Okay. Does this make any difference - there are 4 separate light switches for 4 rows of lights…??
Is this an indoor or covered arena? Are the new lights replacements for fluorescent tube fixtures, or some other type of LED’s?
It doesn’t get much more humid than Alabama and all we have is LED lights.
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Agree with clanter that something is frying them. Use a meter to verify that you have 120v at the switch and at the fixture.
Without real diagnostics, we don’t know enough.
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the incoming electrical power can be measured at the panel, at the outlets the reading may be less. An expected reading is between 115 Vac and 125Vac … over-voltage becomes an issue when there is 130 plus
This is an indoor arena. These are LED shop lights that were installed at building, not replacements for something else.
I’ll bring this up to the BO, ask if they’ve checked the electrical situation. If I had to guess, I’d bet that’s where the problem is.
Otherwise I’m thinking the lights were “too cheap” which also might be true.
I converted my barn and shop and tack room from fluorescents to LED’s, doing the work myself (120 total bulbs). I saw pretty significant quality control issues. It was typical to have 10 percent of LED bulbs in a sealed manufacturer crate arrive DOA, and another 10 percent to go belly up within a few weeks.
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I ordered both my aisle and arena lights through Pro Lighting. They’re vapor tight and well made. We’ve been very happy w performance too. No issues after two years or regular use.
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Someone isn’t a master electrician.
There could be a loose neutral in a junction box. There could be daisy chains from fixture to fixture.
She didn’t mention barn-wide issues.
It’s the entire barn. It’s ALL the lights. There are 4 rows of 10 (I think). Each row has its own switch. BO is replacing them a handful at a time. There are 15 more to go. Some aren’t completely out but there is maybe 5 little “bulbs” in the fixture that sort of come on.
Can you share a photo of what he installed? We don’t know if these are amazon specials or the real deal.
By ‘barn wide issues’ I mean other electrical issues beyond these lights.
Random thought from someone who is not an electrician, electrical engineer, or anything to do with electricity and does not play any of those things on TV and has not stayed in a hotel of any type in ages - Could it simply be that since all the lights were installed at the same time, used about the same amount, that they are all failing at about the same time?
That is what happens in my little barn. Building built all the bulbs put in. When they started to fail it was like every day we were replacing a bulb (except in the one row of lights that is on about half the time the other two rows of lights are on).
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Well sure. Except these are LED and are supposed to last for years. Not fail miserably within a couple.
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I have normal screw in bulb type LED lights in my barn and in my house and I have yet to have any of them last anywhere near as long as the package proclaims them to last.
I think looking into the electrical is a great idea…
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During a consultation with a professional lighting designer, he told us that “LEDs are being oversold” as to the possible length of life (the promised supposedly 20 years), and that he was hearing from homeowners that bulbs were failing within a couple of years.
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This is exactly my experience.
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Same here!
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