We wanted to be able to vary the brightness of the lights in the dining room depending whether we were having visitors or trying to work in there. I replaced the switch with a dimmer switch and it meets our needs perfectly. But, even when I was fitting it I did wonder if I was wasting my money given that we won't be able to get incadescent bulbs for much longer, so will I need to remove it again when we're forced to use CFL bulbs or is there an alternative that will still work with the dimmer?
CFLs are not the problem - Megaman and Varilight both make dimmable CFLs
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are three categories of dimmers IME:
a) Brain dead knob, diac and triac. These are fairly simple and *can* work OK with the above.
b) Smart dimmers - ones with buttons, IR receivers, radio receivers. These can be more finnicky as they need to draw a tiny amount of power when "off" to keep the circuitry ticking. This residual current can cause CFLs (even dimmable ones) to flash occasionally. The dimmable CFLs try to cope with this, buy YMMV
c) "LV" dimmers. Designed for small loads and dimmable SELV PSUs. Obviously the best choice, but you are usually back to a knob dimmer with not smart features.
The dimmable CFLs are getting better. Otherwise, just buy loads of tungsten bulbs and stockpile them.
Apart from previously mentioned Varilight and Megaman CFLs which don`t dim to zero very well.
Expanding range of halogen, which is a type of incandescent, GLS alternatives from Halogena style to the Osram GLS style halogens, 42W halogen in 60w GLS Pearl style envelope. These are likely to be around for the forseeable future, at least until something better than current crop of CFLs and LED arrives.
Switching does not give the same versatilty as dimming but there is a lot to commend more than one lighting circuit per room if your starting with open walls.
If enough people bulk buy, then the inflated sales figures will convince the manufactures there is enough demand that cares about bulb type to carry on making them. Profit will always win out against the greenwash.
On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:26:32 +0000 someone who may be John Rumm wrote this:-
You mean the manufacturers will break the law?
It is always good when the best people can do is "sloganise".
Manufacturers may try and get the law changed, they do have a lot of power in the undemocratic halls of the EU. However, I doubt if they have the power to change this particular and very sensible law.
They will - however they won't need to really since the laws bend. You make them in areas without controls - import them for "specialist purposes" - high temperature lamps, heating lamps, rough handling lamps etc.
Its not the best I can do - I could give you many detailed and reasoned arguments as to why current alternative technologies are not *yet* adequate replacements for incandescent bulbs in a broad range of applications. However there is no need, since they have been well rehearsed here in the past. The fact that an inappropriate and immature technology is being mandated over another would seem to come down to politics without much in the way of sound scientific foundation, and this is being promulgated and excused under a "green" agenda. Hence greenwash seems to be an appropriate description.
As is usually the case, the law will do whatever they lobby it to do ultimately. Even assuming we can move to the point where there is a viable replacement that works in a range of applications, there will still be some ongoing specialist demand that can't be met from alternative technologies. While that exists, a grey market for traditional bulbs[1] will exist with it.
[1] Even if that means halogen based alternatives.
That's what I'm doing. Well, 4 boxes, one per corner to avoid massive cable runs. It will give me some possibilities to stick relays in later to do funky stuff (like turn off the kids' lights after only being left on for 3 weeks and 23 minutes).
On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:54:46 +0000 someone who may be John Rumm wrote this:-
They have certainly been well rehearsed and shown to be invalid here in the past.
We must wait for the best, instead of going ahead with the good enough, has been an argument for inaction for a long time. However, other than in a few circumstances it is not a convincing argument.
There are indeed some applications where compact fluorescent lamps are not the best choice at the moment, but engineering continues to advance. For instance, the earliest "glass jar" lamps were no use on stairways, due to the long start time. However, for the past decade or so lamps have been available which start rapidly enough for people not to break their limbs on stairs. Many of the arguments rehearsed here might have been valid 20 years ago, but are not now.
Compact fluorescent lamps will probably never be suitable for all uses and even better lamps will undoubtedly come into use. However, that is not an argument for slowly banning inefficient old lamps, which is what is happening.
Is the problem that they can't sell them - or that they can't make them? If the former, maybe they could continue production and just trade bulbs for chocolate bars or something.
The law is supposed to be no manufacture or import into the EU. Selling remains perfectly legal.
However, I caught the tail-end of the reports a few weeks back about the legislation having been wrongly enacted in the UK and currently being unenforceable. Didn't catch any details of what they got wrong though.
Around me, Waitrose was still sticking to the ban, but pretty much everyone else had 100W light bulbs back on the shelves again (although having no use for them myself, it's not something I normally notice at all).
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