LED bulbs

[jcummins]

I bought these at Costco...like their output and color. I put one in a garage door opener. Worked fine for several days, then problems. Hit or miss if it works. I thought because of vibration led would be better to use there than a filament bulb. Anyone else experience t his?

 

[coolreinfarm]

I have cfl bulbs in my garage door openers for about 6 years no problems yet. Haven't gone the led route, bulbs seem over priced. I mean it's just a light bulb, when the prices go down I'll consider them.

 

[k0ua]

I have LED, in all of the high usage areas of the house, and like them. I chose the Cree brand for it cleanliness of RFI emissions. Not all LEDs are Radio Frequency clean.

BUT in the garage door opener, I worried about vibration of all the "guts" of the power supply components inside the LED's and the fact that the garage door opener is only on for a minute or two at the most a couple of times a day, you will never recover your cost over a simple incandescent light bulb. The same reason I don't have LED's in the closets, I will never live long enough to recover their costs.

 

[Bird]

We have a LiftMaster Model 3280M garage door opener that was installed on 11/21/2012. The manual says to only use incandescent bulbs of 100 watt or less. But somewhere I read that LED bulbs might or might not work. Since I've replaced most of our light bulbs inside and out of the house, I tried LED bulbs in the garage door opener; nothing, would not work at all. The only other complaint I have had with LED bulbs is that we have 4 lamps with 3-way bulbs. Three of those lamps are rarely used. But one is usually on about 16 hours a day, always on the brightest setting, and that bulb won't last a year before I have to replace it.

 

[TractorGuy]

I have only installed a few led bulbs as the incandescent or florescent bulbs failed. My garage door opener has only needed the incandescent bulbs replaced once in 24 years. If a cheap incandescent replacement is still available when they go I will replace with those.

A little off topic but relevant to LEDs and vibration. I replaced the headlight bulb in my motorcycle with an LED. You can't get much more vibration and it continues to work fine. However, the LED replacement bulb does not have the same beam pattern and there is very little difference between the high and low settings. I ended up just aiming the low beam down so it won't blind people and left it in as it's much brighter and makes me more visible even in the daytime.

 

[RNeumann]

I have LED in my openers without any issues. I believe they were the cheap Fiat brand from HD. It's been about a year.

 

[rekees4300]

Anyone else experience this?

I tried to use LEDs in the garage door opener but they wouldn't screw in far enough (because of their shape) to make a connection.

 

[JRobyn]

I use my 2 GDOs as "path lights" so that I don't have to switch on all of the 16 or so fluorescent fixtures just to navigate through the basement. I even added a LED 4ft shop light (Costco) on each one on about a 10ft extension cord with one of these



The combined length of the bulb and "adapter" was so long that I needed to leave the lamp cover off. No problem. Since I often leave these on for extended periods (overnight), I wanted the low power consumption of LED bulbs in the GDOs also. I think I used the cheapest available at Lowes (Utilitech).

This setup has worked perfectly for several years now. The GDOs are Liftmaster.

 

[Oldoak]

Good topic.

I have been using LED bulbs for the past year in my 5 year old garage door opener (LiftMaster) without a problem. (Philips 14w, 100w equivalent from Home Depot)

A month ago, I had the sliding doors on my utility pole building replaced with two overhead doors and LiftMaster openers. The installers told me not to use LED bulbs because the LED bulbs could interfere with the door opener electronics. They also told me of customers calling them about erratic behavior of their openers. And after finding that they had installed LED bulbs, told them to change back to incandescent or florescent bulbs, the problems stopped.

So for now my new door openers have florescent bulbs in them but I am going to try the same Philips LED bulbs in them as I have in my basement garage door opener. The manuals that came with the openers do say to use incandescent or florescent bulbs, no mention of LEDs. :confused3:

 

[jcummins]

Actually be having a bit of issue of it opening right after shutting it....going to switch back.