Friday, November 18, 2011

About This Site


This blog is for sharing concepts about LEDs as they pertain to the RV industry. I hope to share strategies for outfitting your RV/camper and why you may or may not want to.

One of the main reasons (and the most popular reason) why people want to switch to LEDs in their RV/camper is power. In a completely out-fitted LED RV the power consumption can be as little as 12% that of incandescent bulbs. That is not to say your unit will last 5 days on one battery charge, when you normally to have to charge your unit every day, but it could. That would largely be determined by the power being used by other things in your unit like appliances. And tided to the idea of saving power is saving money. You can save lots of money if you dry camp or if you go to camp sites that do not have hook-ups. If you go to a camp ground that has hook-ups and no hook-ups, you could save as much as 40% to 80%.

The next most popular reason why campers switch to LEDs is safety. If designed right, LEDs can put out more light on the highway at night, and allow greater visibility to other travelers. Also, LEDs offer a greater safety factor because one fixture is made up with many LEDs; where as regular incandescent bulbs have a single point of light. If there is a failure with an incandescent bulb, you have no light. It is always pretty hard to change a bulb at night when you need that light the most. If you have a failure with an LED light it can be as small as 1/40th loss of light.

The third most popular reason to go to LED lights is heat. LED lights produce far less heat and can be quite comforting on those hot summer days. They can make a very big difference if your camp site does not have shade on all or just part of the day. Some of the most common lights in campers/RVs are the 1141 and 1156 bulbs. They can degrade their light lens and even melt the lens in some cases. Then there is the biggest offender, that 10 watt halogen. If you have that bulb in a reading light you just about need to put a sweat suit on before sitting down with a relaxing book. Some people who don't care about LEDs for any other reason like the C12WWSpot for those hot halogen reading lights.
I plan to cover more about these ideas in other posts but just wanted to get the main ideas behind the popularity of LED lights in the RV/camping industry.