Elemental LEDIY 1: Mike's LED Cove Lighting

Part 1 of our LEDIY series, Mike of Minneapolis tells us how he replaced his hot, old incandescent LED cove lighting with LED strip lights. This slideshow gives a detailed explanation on how you can install LED cove lights yourself.

See more LED lights at www.elementalled.com.

Captions:
Elemental LED presents
LED DIY
A series where our customers tell us their LED success stories.
Mike N. or Minneapolis, Minnesota recently told us about replacing old, inefficient lights in his house.
This is one side of two coves in a bedroom, with two fixtures in each cove. Each fixture is populated with eight 40 Watt incandescent bulbs.
Eight 40 watt bulbs in 4 fixtures combined consumes 1280 watts of energy! Plus, the light was not great and the bedroom felt warm and stuff when the lights were on.
What was my solution?
12 volt 1.4 watt per foot LED light strips sold by the foot
at www.elementalled.com, along with a dimmable power supply
Start with 3 ½ inch PVC pipe in 10 foot sections, with a 2 foot extension and a coupling.
Cut all the sections in half lengthwise with a handheld electric saber saw.
One section at a time, use spray glue and aluminum foil to create a reflective backing that kind of looks like silver leaf.
Glue the 2 foot sections onto the 10 foot sections for the 12 foot cove.
Then simply peel off the adhesive backing from the LED light strips and hook the strips up to the 12 volt power supply for a test.
SHA-WING!
The result?
An efficient, dimmable, uninterrupted length of very low heat lighting that uses 67.2 watts of electricity instead of my old 1280 watt setup!
Thanks to the folks at www.elementalled.com. My month of research found them to be the most knowledgeable, friendly and helpful of all LED lighting vendors I contacted.
(This is not Mike, but another enthused guy.)
Thanks for your story and pictures, Mike!
Music by Conrad Schnitzler
www.elementalled.com

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• DIY
• led cove
• led cove lighting
• cover light

[yaryar033]

Thanks for the video. One suggestion: Insteading of glueing on the foil. It would be much easier to just use a sliver reflective spray paint on the tubes.

[ponnu1984]

thats cool!

[menelfloss]

Now that I have had the lights installed for about a year, I am really happy with them. They work flawlessly and this summer our room was much cooler. I would do it again.

Mike