Stupid LED's

CIE Standard Illuminant D65
Spectral power distribution

The future is stupid. Used to be, back in the bad old days, you could go to any grocery store and pick up a light bulb. They had a complete selection from a low of 40 watts to a high of 100 watts. The selection was complete because that was all there was. Now light bulbs have gone the way of nuts and bolts: there is a different bulb for every application. 

Chromaticity diagram by David MacAdam
also known as the CIE 1960 Color Space
D65 appears near the 8000K line
Note sure what this means, but it makes a pretty picture.

They don't just come in a different power (watts) ratings, there are different sizes, mountings, technologies, and CRI-s (Color Rendering Indexes). Remember the Wall of Diapers at Toys R Us? That's what the light bulb display at Home Depot looks like now. I spent ten minutes there the other day looking for a Halogen bulb for a work light and I could not find it. I finally had to ask someone. Took him a minute but there it was, right in the area I had been looking. Confused by the packaging I was. Must be getting old, starting to talk like Yoda I am.

Old fixture: Broan 9427P 500 Watt, 4.0 Sones, 70 CFM

We just replaced the light fixture / exhaust fan in the master bath with a new one. Nothing wrong with old one other than it was noisy. Didn't bother us when we built the house 25 years ago, but now my wife is at war with the mold growing on the ceiling (see those itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny black spots on the ceiling?) and she wants a new exhaust fan. Normally this would be a simple fix, there are a wide variety of exhaust fans available as long as you want the standard size, which is about a foot square. Ours is not, it is a fancy-schmantzy one with two flood lights so it's about a foot by fifteen inches. We could have replaced it with a standard one, but that would have meant patching the drywall which would have turned a day long project into a week long one. Effing drywall.

New Fixture: Utilitech 7123-02-L 1300W, 1.5 Sones, 80 CFM

Looked around and found one the right size that should be quieter, but it only has room for one 60 watt light bulb and it is like turning on the dark. So I got a 100 watt equivalent LED and plugged that in. Doesn't really help, it is like turning on the dim and it's still that ugly 'cool white color'. Next step might be to replace the light fixture with a pair of LED fixtures designed for mounting in the ceiling. That's going to require some chopping and hacking to make them fit and considerable finesse so it doesn't look like a hack job.

LED 100 Watt Equivalent

After we got the fixture installed we discovered that the fan wouldn't run. Seems that the old fan had an old timey motor and it worked fine with the electronic timer, but new the fan has a fancy new motor and it required a different kind of timer. The essential difference is that the old timer did not require a neutral wire connection and the new one did.

TORK In-Wall Countdown Lighting Timer

P.S. On every other exhaust fan in the world, the bezel / grill is attached with springs so all you need to do to remove it is pull it down a bit and then reach in and disconnect the springs. The bezel on the new Utilitech exhaust fan is attached with a screw, a screw that is hidden behind the light bulb. So in order to remove the grill, you must first remove the lens, the light bulb and the screw. Now that the grill is loose, you can reach up and unplug the wire to the bulb. Now it is finally free. Bah, double bah and humbug.

P.P.S. Does the heater in the new unit work? I can't tell. I could definitely tell when the heat lamp in the old fixture was on.