Convert a Ceiling fan to LED lighting...

Most ceiling fans come with candelabra bulb sockets.  These sockets make it very difficult to use LED bulbs because as of 12/2012 I can't find a good candelabra LED bulb.  There is a reason for companies to ship ceiling fans with candelabra bulb sockets:  US regulations.  To make a long story short, in 2005 a regulation was published that forced companies to use them.  That is a simplification of course, but now we are stuck with it.

We built a house in 2005 and I bought three identical ceiling fans for our 3 bedrooms.  Two had candelabra sockets:

And one had standard sockets:

Funny, eh?  I have read that the companies had several years to comply so there was some of the standard socket ones in the sales channel.  Anyway, I want to use these:

That, my friends, is a Philips 60w equivalent bulb...

These babys are sweet and expensive.  I have a daughter that is paying rent and she has been buying them for me!  They are exactly like the normal 60w bulb but they use 12 watts.  Quite a saving but, for this post, they do NOT come in candelabra bulbs.  Hence the change.

Shut off the power before you try any of this!  Remove the screws that hold the light kit and you get this:

There is a black and white wire that connects the lights to the fan.  Those go down through the base of the light (they are sticking out the the left above).  Disconnect or cut them.  They usually have connectors because you can change light kits.   You need to remove the candelabra light fixture. It is the center picture below.  They unscrew pretty easily (usually).

The replacement is the top fixture above.  I bought it on the web, but found it at a local store a week later.  It sports two standard size sockets but is noticeably shorter.  We will need to add some length to the hollow screw at the bottom.  These hollow screws can be bought from a hardware store or you can cannibalize another light in the house to get one.  There are also connectors to affix two together. You will need to remove the hollow screw from the candelabra base fixture and add it to the standard fixture. Now doing this conversion will remove the switch that is at the bottom of the fan.  I have two switches on my wall:  one for the fan and one for the light.  So I don't need the switch.  YMMV.  Here is my finished fixture:

I removed the hollow screw from the candelabra fixture, connected it to another one of the same length that i had from another lamp, and screwed it all together.  Perfect length.  Screw it into the cover:

and then do the electrical connections:

Always use the correct sized wire nuts for this.  When this is done, reattach the entire fixture and add the bulbs:

Finally add the bottom globe holders and such and you get this:

This light will use 25 watts and give off 1600 lumens.  The old lights were using 120 watts and 1200 lumens.  Pretty good deal.  Now one thing to consider.  These LED lights are expensive so we only put the in one room with a ceiling fan.  My son plays video games in his room so the light is on a significant amount of time.  However,  our bedroom and my daughters are not used much, so we actually put regular 60 watt standard size bulbs in those fans.  They still give off more light than the candelabra bulbs, but use more electricity.  CFLs are slow to light up and my wife does not like them. 

LED Lighting

We are making an apartment above our garage and I have wanted to fiddle with LED lighting for a while.  I have a friend, Deryl, who used LED strip lights under his cabinets and they look great.  After a few discussions with him, I decided to try it out.  Deryl used 31k lights bought from Amazon and of course, since he is an engineer and I am way smarter then he, I decided to use the 27k lights because they are 400 warmer than Deryls.  However, after putting them all up my wife and best friend's first words were, "Why are they green?"

27k LED lights from Amazon.  Don't get these.

Tip #1.  Use the 31k lights.  I am actually buying some 31k and 50k lights and hoping to give them a try.  More on that later.

This is what comes in the package.  There is a connector at one end (I didn't recognize it) and two bare black/red wires on the other end.  There is also some 3M tape on the bottom of the lights.  I hooked it up right away and they all seemed to work.  I have read places where sometimes some of the lights are out.  Might want to check.

Here is where they are going.  We have some rafters across an open ceiling and I am going to stick the lights on top of the rafters.

So how do we power all this?  Where, this is where Deryl is the expert.  His job has something to do with extra PC power supplies, so he gave me the skinny on those.  All computer power supplies have several different voltages and one of them is 12v.  Now these lights use 12v and 2 amps a piece and I am installing 3 sets of them so I need around 6 amps.  I went over to the local junk pc shop (I don't know how they stay in business) and bought a 300w Antec power supply for $10.  The picture below shows all the extra wires cut off.  This power supply has a 17amp 12v rail so I have plenty of power.  I would look around the web to figure out the wiring.  Also, I did not know that you have to jump a wire on the big connector (You can see the paperclip below) to get the power supply to work. This actually caused me $10 to figure out as I went and bought a different power supply to replace this one and they guy filled me in on the missing info.  So now I have an extra power supply and complete information.  Good Trade...

So I climbed the ladder and stuck the lights to the top of the rafters and wired them up. Below is a shot of  wire nuts I used.

 Below is the power supply hooked up.  On this (and maybe all) power supplies, the black and yellow wires are the 12volt ones.  LEDs have a specific +/- so be careful there.  I also used 18 gauge speaker wire for the runs to the lights.  They were short:

Finally, here is the final product.

Final Thoughts.  They look great but are not bright enough. The lights I used were 300 for 16 meters, but you can get 600 for 16 meters.  I however can add another strand of lights which is what I will do.  I think they look great....