£30 and a bit of soldering....

Got these fully installed today - well, the ones on this side of the room anyway. Not bad for around £30 and a bit of soldering; remote controlled too!

 

Very nice, FC.....................I'll stick with my Oil Lanterns and candles

 

Amazon - 5m waterproof LED strip including remote and PSU

The price has gone up a tad since we got ours, but still not deadly. The strip itself is self adhesive, so just sticks on under any lip (such as the right hand side of our stairs), or can be stuck on to whatever surface you want. For the left hand side of the stairs, there was no overhang I simply stuck on a couple of lengths (trimmed to fit) of this stuf with the 90º angle facing 'in' to the wall, and then sticking the LED strip on the upright of the plastic strip.

Strips can be daisy-chained (I wouldn't do more than two runs of 5m to one PSU however), and each strip is cut-able every three LED's - - - with a bit of careful soldering, you can introduce a wire 'gap' between sections of cable, almost as long as you need. The critical part is ensuring that you connect each section of cable correctly; these strips rely on switched negatives, so the conatacts are as follows:

12v + (supply)
R - (red, negative)
G - (green, negative)
B - (blue, negative)

I used bell wire (solid core cable is much easier to work with for this application) and soldered onto the trim pads between sections. All joints were lagged with self-amalgamating tape (thought about using heat shrink but it was more expensive and not as effective in application).

The bell wire is thin enough to tuck down behind carpets etc so you have a virtually wireless look.

One word of caution - - - the 12v DC PSU's supplied are of the el-cheapo Chinese variety. They work perfectly well, however it is worth being aware that they are effectively capacitative droppers that are referenced to mains (half wave rectified); in layman's terms, they put out 12v DC, but you can still get a nasty nip from the contacts of the mains adaptor (I got a bit of a tickle from the DC plug on mine, however I have a near-immunity to electricity, so that tickle could easily be a bit of a jolt to others. I would also advise ensuring that the PSU's are un-plugged overnight/unattended. Don't panic, they are not necessarily unsafe, I just believe in exercising due levels of caution.

I haven't measured the power consumption, however the absolute maximum of the PSU is 24w, therefore a year's approximate running costs (assuming full 24/7 operation) is:

24w/1000 = 0.024kWh

24hrs x 365 days = 8760

8760 x 0.024kWh = 210.24kWh

Average UK cost per kWh is around 14p, therefore:

0.14 x 210.24 = £29.34

Given that the usage is more likely to be around 6 hours per day as a maximum, I would suggest that the running costs were in the region of £6 to £8 per year.

 

If I put that around our TV, would it change it from black and white to colour?

 

It would probably be good for me to change our downlighters (about 35-40 throughout the house but some of them aren't as much as 50w) but the cost for an electrician to do it (I'm useless at DIY) would outweigh the savings. Obviously, it would be an eventual, substantial, saving if those lights were on all the time but they're in the hall, corridor, kitchen and bathroom.