Down lights provide great light and look elegant, BUT, they cause many problems.
They are very inefficient with regards to power consumption, are a fire risk, cause heating and cooling problems in your home, and you need lots of them just to get the equivalent light output of a surface mount light. The worst of thedownlights is the gimble downlight (one that can be swivelled) as you not only have the expensive to run and inefficient lamp itself, but you have a draught area for every one of these downlights. This causes heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer, roof dust is often transferred into the room below, and the air coming in is not exactly clean.
Ideally you would remove your downlights altogether - this is the ideal situation - but, this can be costly as it requires an electrician, a plasterer to patch up the holes and a painter although the competent DIYer could save by doing the plastering and painting. Find about more about the halogen downlight here.
Whats the next best thing that will make a difference? Covering your downlight with a downlight cover such as the Halogen Mitt from Efficiency Matrix. Doing this will stop the draughts caused by your downlight fittings, reduce your fire risk, give you an insulating factor, and better still, allow ceiling insulation to be placed up to or onto the cover itself further reducing the downlights impact and helping the ceiling insulation do its intended job. Note these can ONLY be placed over a gimble downlight fitting. If insulating around the mitt a small space is also required to be left around the transformer which hangs from the downlight mitt itself.
The Halogen Mitt has an R-value of .514 which enables youto overcome many downlight issues saving you up to 25% of your energy expenses. The Halogen Mitt is a product with a fire rating of up to 2 hours which is CSIRO certified, capable of containing a fire, as opposed to most other products in the market place which are only fire resistant and do not insulate.
These would most rate as one of the safest covers for the halogen downlight.
Installation of the Downlight Mitt can be done from above or below the Ceiling. Ideally a fire rated mastic should be used when installing from above. Ecomad recommends the mitt be installed from above - when installing from underneath, you cannot fit the downlight mitt correctly if there are ceiling joists, ceiling battens or other obstacles near the fitting.
The Halogen Mitt product is designed for Gimble fittings which have large gaps for ventilation. One requirement when fitting the halogen mitt is remove the existing 50 watt lamp and replace with either the 20 watt or 35 watt silverback halogen lamps. These lamps are more energy efficient and also includes a silver backing which forces light and most of the heat downwards away from the roof and the back of the light fitting.
Alternatively, you could replace the existing 50 watt lamp with a highly efficient LED replacement.
