Star lights: my energy saving solution

These new lights in the hallway of our bungalow delight us with their starry glow. The old lighting had four bulbs like car headlights recessed into the hall ceiling. Together they took 440 watts and cost £5 each to replace. It seemed such a waste! How could we save this energy? Now we have 24 tiny star-lights also recessed into the same ceiling. It gives plenty of light using a total of less than three watts. A single LED as purchased

Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are the light source of the future. Nothing gets hot! The light is made by electrons literally falling over an energy gap and emitting their energy directly as light. LEDs improve all the time. Now they can be pure white, seriously bright and a tiny 3 mm diameter. A single one can give enough light to read by. They cost from 5 pence to £1.20 each depending on the colour and brightness. They are easily available over the web. The single node of the lighting circuit

Installation was a nice little project. The worst part was having to clear the junk from the loft boards that lay over the part of the hall ceiling that I would have to cover. The second worst bit was pulling back the fibreglass insulation. But then it was easy. The tiny 3 mm holes were easy to drill in the plasterboard ceiling. The recessed lights are hardly visible in daylight. The lights in position in the loft

To fit them I bought some electrical connecting strips and cut them into pairs of two connectors. On one side I screwed the LED connections directly. The other side had electrical leads connected in a network of a few volts Direct Current powered by an old 5 Volt transformer. I did build in a mains switch, but this is now redundant. The lights turn on automatically using a timer-switch