Waymar
I can answer your questions for you as I have been trying different kinds of LED
lighting on Quietly for the past three years.
First, don't confuse todays LED's with those of even a year ago! Huge improvements have been made. Your questions:
1. The color of the light produced by the SensiBulbs is very "warm." It reminds me of the light that comes from a kerosene lanturn.
2. We have several (11) SensiBulb's on our boat having replaced all of our dome
lighting with them. We used two SensiBulbs in each fixture in the salon, and one in all the other dome
lights. We are very pleased with the results. We find that we can turn on as many
lights as we want in the evenings and still draw less power than one of our old
lights. This has made living aboard much more like home.
However, I would not recommend the SensiBulb LED's as replacements for your reading
lights. The SensiBulb LED are a little too warm!
Instead, we found Magnum Ring
lights from DR LED (http://www.doctorled.com/p2.htm) that make wonderful reading
lights. They are bright and more like a standard incondecent light in color. We use two sizes of the
lights from Dr.Led. For reading
lights in our bunks, we use the MR11
lights in both the Bayonett and G4 mountings as required by our fixtures. In the salon we used the MR16
lights to go in our larger reading light fixtures providing more light for the larger area. We like these light so much that we installed six of them under the cabinets in our galley. Four might have been good, but we wanted lots of light when working in the galley. Just like home!
3. All together we have 11 SensiBulb overhead
lights, four MR11 readings
lights for the bunks, three MR16 reading
lights in the salon and six MR16 light for the galley. We also have an LED Tri-Color/Anchor Light and LED Running
Lights. The only incondecent
lights on the boat are the spreader
lights.
We are very please and our typical energy consumption in the evenings is now only 2.9 Amps with the boat as bright as back home!
Doing this was not inexpensive. However we use far less electricity and our home is bright and inviting in the evenings.
Dalton Williams
SV Quietly Cruising in the Caribbean
Currently in Trinidad for Carnival