Halogen ceiling lights

[Biko]

I am unable to remove the blown bulbs from the small Phillips 12V halogen ceiling lights in my house. The reason being that the previous owner glued the surround on when relacing the bulb presumably because the crude spring clips holding the bulb surround in place had weakened causing them to fall out. It looks as if I’m going to have to replace the complete fittings. There are 50 of them so I want to get it right!<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
It seems to me the best type are those with twist in type bulb surrounds and the main body held in the ceiling by a right angle type clip which actually sits on the top of the plasterboard (the present ones are held by just a pressure clip on the edge of the board which tends to damage to the edge of the board). <o></o>
Any advice as to type or brand would be much appreciated.<o></o>
Thanks Biko

[Bloss]

If you are going to replace 50 do yourself a favour and get rid of all the halogen ones - use efficient compact fluorescent ones. They can't be dimmed, but I recently had this done and simply added a few more switches.

If you really must have dimmers then keep just those halogens where you want the dimming. There are dimmable energy efficient fittings, but they are still way too costly. Within a couple of years we will have affordable LED dimmables, but not yet.

Bunnings have Compton energy efficient downlights (4-pack for around $45 including energy efficient 15w reflector globes which equals 60W). The cut-out hole diameter is slightly larger than most halogens.

So - no transformers needed, bulbs last 6-8 times as long, bulbs are simple edison screw fitting and you save money (use less than 25% of the energy of your halogen ones).

On top of all that you reduce greenhouse gas emissions too!

No-brainer.

[Biko]

Thanks for all your help.
Have decided to replace the non dimmable halogen downlights with CFC fittings. The old fittings have spring clips which hold the fittings against the Edge of the plasterboard. These damaged the board when they were fitted as the springs pushed up the top edge of the board. Any ideas how to avoid damage to the bottom edge of the board when they are removed? I carefully removed a couple whilst holding in the spring clips but in both cases the bottom edge of the board was damaged. (The new fittings have ‘up and over’ springs which hold the fitting from the top of the board, a much better solution)

[Bloss]

Sounds crude, but I have used wire cutters and cut the fixing when I wasn't planning on re-using the fitting. Access can be hard depending on design.

The new CF fittings use a slightly larger cut-out diameter so perhaps the damage caused on removal will be removed when you saw out the new hole?

[woodcutta]

Thanks for all your help.
The old fittings have spring clips which hold the fittings against the Edge of the plasterboard. These damaged the board when they were fitted as the springs pushed up the top edge of the board. Any ideas how to avoid damage to the bottom edge of the board when they are removed?

Biko

I did just that some time back. I used the Crompton ones from bunnings and all the damage around the old fittings were covered with the new ones.

I used a hole saw (110mm from memory) to make the new holes. Get a piece of 12mm MDF about 150mm square an cut a hole in the center of it with the hole saw. Put some small 25mm nails in about 10mm out from the hole - use about 6. You can then put the mdf on the ceiling centering the hole over the original hole and push the nails into the ceiling to hold the mdf in place. This then becomes the template to hold the holesaw from wandering over the ceiling.

woodcutta