... so since our communal aerial went phut, I've been messing about with aerial positioning to get the best signal (we're in a valley) and cursing Mr Plod as tetra-type interference pops up on the screen every evening. Today I was trying to work out what was wrong with my son's computer, and suddenly SWMBO calls up that the interference has just come on - did you just turn anything on?
We had.
The landing light.
It appears the OSRAM CFL is shoving out significant quantities of broadband RF!
But then a tungsten filament lamp hasn't got a fundamentally dirty switchmode power supply made from the crappiest 'just about adequate when new' components, jammed into an unventilated base enclosure, guaranteed to fry the main filter cap ...
Go take a look at
formatting link
an interesting insight into these hateful pieces of eco-crap.
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:16:16 +0100 someone who may be "Arfa Daily" wrote this:-
The first sentence of which is, "Compact fluorescent lamps have some benefits in comparison with classic light bulbs. It is lower power consumption (to 80%) and much longer lifetime (5 to 15 times). Disadvantages are longer starts mainly at more expensive types, impossibility to use darker and price."
Of the disadvantages, the first is no longer a problem as many lamps start rapidly enough to be used anywhere. The second disadvantage is, I assume, impossibility to dim. That is no longer a problem as dimmable lamps are now being put on the market. That just leaves the price, which is not a problem if one considers life cycle costs, they are cheaper to buy and operate than the equivalent classic light bulbs.
Thanks for pointing out that page. It demolishes your assertion.
There is also the point that the light produced is appalling in terms of quality and that the claimed equivalent outputs are woefully over optimistic. The so called energy savings (even assuming that that were necessary in the first place) can therefore not be what is claimed by the manufacturers.
Alternatively, "hateful pieces of eco-crap" is a way of summarising it very well without the technical detail.
I notice that the Chinese are opening another four coal power stations this month.
In the meantime, let's all nuke the disabled gay baby whales for Jesus.
you to look at the mass of electronics crammed into the base of these things, and to look at the fundamentally unfiltered front end of the circuitry. Obviously, as you understand diddly squat about electronics, this went right over your head ...
The eco-advantages of these things are extremely questionable, given that they use multiple manufacturing processes compared to incandescents. This involves many more factories and workers, much more shipping around the globe of an item which is heavier than an incandescent, and is also bulkier due to the additional packaging required (which also has to be disposed of). Then throw in the fact that they use toxic mercury compounds, and need to be disposed of properly. The claimed lifetimes for them are seldom achieved in practice, due to the inverter in the base failing from heat stress. This is especially true when they are fitted to enclosed luminaires or other similar fittings. Some actually warn against this on the box. The theory of the manufacturing and shipping energy budgets being more than offset by the lifetime of them, and their reduced power consumption, then doesn't work out quite so cleverly ...
With the best will in the world, these things do not start instantly as an incandescent does, nor do they produce properly useable light for the first
15 seconds at least, and longer in the cold. The quality of the light is is such that reading under them is at best uncomfortable, and with the CRI that some of them have, near impossible. I have a good quality one in one of my toilets. For the first 20 seconds, the light it produces is like a candle shining through a bottle of piss, after which, it ramps up until it is like standing on Venus with the sun at your back.
They are not a replacement for incandescents. They are a substitute - and not a very good one at that. The promotion of them to the point where they are supposedly going to be mandated, is as much political as practical. Everyone in euro-politics is trying to make their mark by jumping on the eco-bollocks bandwagon, and these lamps are as good an example as you will find.
Herein is the problem. Matters like these very often lead to invective instead of listening and thinking.
Very few topics are completely black and white. The environment is very, very grey, partly because it is so new we have not had the chance to develop common-sense and experience and partly because it is highly complex. Things that seem right turn out to be wrong. The law of unforeseen consequences. For example bio-fuel. Though, in fact, very often the consequences were foreseen by the informed and clever but they were ignored or shouted down. I was teaching about global warming and the greenhouse effect decades ago.
Lamps are a good example. 'They are a good thing and we must all be forced to use them.' Well not quite. The lamps are not as efficient as made out. You cannot use a lamp with one-fifth the power rating and get the same light output. The light from high colour-temperature lamps is harsh and horrible and the warm ones do not produce as much light. Turning them on and off is not a good idea so you leave them on.
The fitting are really bad. I made the mistake of buying some wall-lights with the new square bases. Discovered too late that I couldn't buy lower rated lamps for them so they are too bright. These are the only types so far that can be dimmed (not mine though). Dimming is going to be a key matter to be solved.
That said, I have now changed all my lamps to LE apart from bathroom ones which are switched on and off frequently. My electricity bill has gone down despite price rises. Of course we must all use less energy and lighting is one way of many. People should not be forced, and they should be informed of both the good and bad points. When someone tries to force me to do something I dig my heels in and I do the opposite. This hateful government has forced much too much on us already. I don't want to see people becoming antagonistic towards energy saving because of government intrusion. They will do it because they can see the sense in it.
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:51:11 +0100 someone who may be Peter Scott wrote this:-
No longer true, though there was something to be said for it with the earliest such lamps. Not just because of the possibility of failure but also because of the long warming up time.
Some of my energy saving lamps have been turned on and off for short periods for something like a decade. No sign of them flagging yet.
New lamps became available, I guess, towards the end of last year which are continuously dimmable.
That's a feature not a bug. When you stagger out to the toilet in the middle of the night, your lamp gives your eyes time to adjust to the light, instead of that painful instant brightness of incandescent lamps.
light bulb. And I love the translation (from Chinese?); it's like poetry, or a form of Unwinese. You know what it's saying but the words are just different enough to keep you on your toes.
"When the pipe serve out, electronics is usually destroyed too".
"Lamp is usually compounded of two parts. One is plastic cover with holes for pipe and bills. Tube is agglutinated to it".
"Both plastic parts are clicked to himself and sometimes glued".
Hansen the trains-potting, eco-w*nker, is talking about himself again...
What do you NOT understand about the *facts* that these CHLs are MORE polluting than any incandescent are (we are talking about *whole of life* here and not just running costs). How many people, once the eco-vote seekers in HMG/politics make CFLs mandatory, are going to dispose of these CFLs correctly and not just dump them in the house-hold waste or out of a car window in the countryside, after all the FL tube (strip) light has been around for decades but the vast majority of people still dispose of them in general rubbish (some even break them up to do so...) so what chance for the correct disposal of the CFL?... :~(
I haven't reused the control gear from a CFL for some time now as discrete electronic control gear units have become more readily available at half-way reasonable prices, and I've switched to using those as you'll see from the second (more recent) web page.
However, I just had a 7 year old IKEA CFL die (an ES version of the 20W IKEA one shown in the first picture). It was one of many I bought at the same time. They've all lasted ages in heavy use, except for one very early electronics failure. I transplanted the almost unused tube from that early failure into the one whose tube just died, and it's working again! It was a kind of challenge, having saved away the dead lamp for just this purpose many years back. The cost of CFL's now certainly doesn't merit this though!
But I thought they either needed fittings with control gear built-in or required a rather clumsy operation of the on-off switch. I rejected these because I have four wall-lights off one switch and didn't see them all dimming to the same brightness. Is there any indication of whether dimming them reduces their consumption significantly, unlike tunsten?
Yes, you are a boring old fart Hansen, it's also obvious that you have no 'eco-answer' for the truth about CFLs and their real damage to the environment.
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:52:48 +0100 someone who may be Peter Scott wrote this:-
The first dimmable ones without separate control gear could be dimmed to one of four levels with a standard dimmer. The next ones were continuously dimmable, but by flicking the switch on and off in a particular way. From memory one got the thing rising or falling and then flicked the switch to stop it. The lamp then remembered the last setting and would come on at that brightness the next time.
Neither design was particularly appealing, but they showed the way. The latest lamps are continuously dimmable from a standard dimmer, though are only available in some types at the moment.
No idea about that. The consumption is already low so there may not be much scope to reduce it further.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.