Common Inefficiencies of Downlights

For a detailed explanation of this post click here to see the Electrical Solutions Magazine article.

Here is a brief explanation on how downlights make your ceiling into Swiss CHEESE, while also exposing your insulation to risk of fire.

CHEESE

Convection Currents

When your lights are turned on, heat from your halogen lamp encourages air from your living area to shoot up into your roof area.

Heated Air pressure

During cold days, opening around your downlights and gaps in your insulation enable hot air to freely pass into your roof space from your living area.  Hot air wants to go up.

Expansion of Heated Air

During hot days, the sun creates extremely hot air in your roof area(70˚+ C), this air expands and pushes down into your living area through ventilated downlight fittings.  This effect is especially undesirable when you have LED recessed light fittings installed.  LED lamps can be damaged by operating in temperatures of 70˚ Celcius.

Excessive Air Drop

During cold nights, downlight fittings enable cold air to freely drop into your house avoiding the R-value from insulation completely.  Our house gets cooler quicker, with ventilated downlight fittings.

Spread of Draughts

During windy days, your roof can become quite windy, these draughts freely move into your living area with ventilated downlight fittings.

Exposure to Fire damage

Anything can get stuck in recessed lighting, to ignite into a flame, should insulation or debris get too close to a standard halogen dichroic Lamp(300˚ + Celcius).

The root cause of these inefficiencies is the way standard dichroic lamps operate.

• They produce light downwards and
• they try to force the majority of their heat and a good portion of the light backwards up into the roof.

“So effectively they create connectivity of your living area to your roof area.”

Halogen Mitt Downlight Cover Features include:

• Installable without an Electricians Licence.
• Includes Transformer Holder.
• Downlight covers can be Installed from beneath or above the ceiling.
• Our 35W SilverBack lamp provides equal brightness to a 50W Dichroic Halogen Lamp, but radiates most of its heat downwards and wastes no light upwards.
• Our 20W SilverBack globe can effectively compete  against Compact Fluoro Downlights by producing brighter light output than most CFL globes, while consuming only 20W of energy.  With the Downlight Mitt this retrofit effectively fixes the major problems associated with recessed lighting by enabling a downlight cover with an R-value and fire Rating which completely covers the back of the fitting to protect against insulation fire.

The 35W Efficiency Matrix Energy saver downlight produces superior spread of light with much less heat radiating and zero light output from the back of the Lamp.

Lux output readings were completed by EcoMad. Raw data available