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I had a perplexingly issue with changing a light bulb, after working myself up, I got to the conclusion that replacing the whole shebang (housing transformer ect) at £10a go would be the best rational way forward ... [or possibly an adapter at ~£7 a go]... However I made it to such a thing - that I really couldn't be arsed/cope with that the lovely mrs blue just popped to Robert dyer's and just bought a bulb that fitted and worked - I could not for the life of me, had seen that as possible
bluehuw
Getting very confused trying to settle on what to do about about 35 halogen (MR16 - the ones with two thin pins) downlighters needing changed to LEDs.
I've changed almost all of the bulbs already but several of them started flickering which resulted in my removing them. Weirdly it only seems to happen to about a third of them about a third of the time but i'me fed up with the issue and want it sorted.
Googleresearch tells me that its due to the (magnetic) transformers between the 240v AC mains cables and the 12v fitting , which have a minimum rating of 20w. So a 3-5w LED isn't enough load which causes the transformer to continually cut out and re-start which causes flicker.
Solutions seem to be, replace all of the transformers with suitably rated LED drivers, which involves disconecting wires either side of the transforer and wiring a new one, or replace the whole fittings with ones with pre-wired driver. This might halve the amount of wiring work as i'd only have to disconnect the mains connection and rewire the new one which is attractive when there's so many to do. The price for either of these solutions looks to be similar at around £8 per light. It's a chunk of money either way.
All of which seems like a massive ballache and considerable expense. All i really need is an efficient LED bulb that (somehow?) shows the transformer more than a 20w load? Am I missing anything obvious here? Does such a thing exist?