Megaman bulbs

[John]

As a follow up on the problems with GU10 Megaman bulbs I have found in the packaging is a leaflet, this changes the claim yet again. In one part you are again wrongly told a life of 15.000 but hunt about with a magnifying glass and you find ?up to15,000 hrs?. So in this they are not even saying your average life may be 15,000 but that this is the maximum you can expect. This latter is in my experience the reality.

I was very keen to adopt low energy bulbs, but am now very concerned that they are to be hoisted on everyone when they are not any thing like what is claimed for them. The ?low? cost is on the bases of using cheep Chinese labour with low levels of heath and safety and wages. The energy costs are being reduced at the expense of China building coal fuelled generators so the pollution is merely being exported else where. And the actual savings don?t really exist any way as the live claimed is at best doubtful and possibly dishonest.

As for the bulbs I have those I have receipts for I am now keeping a log and as soon as they fail within there clamed life they will go back to the retailer they came from for a refund or replacement. On current experience that means every single one of nearly 30 we have in the house will at some point be sent back. One they are finished with, its back to ?normal? bulbs for as long as we are able to get them, or the fraudulent low energy bulb is performing as claimed.

[Ian_m]

I meant to chip last time you posted as I have friends who changed most of the light bulbs to low energy bulbs and experience disasterously short lifetimes, so much so they have switched back to normal GLS and halogen bulbs.

This was probably due to the fact they live in the country and suffer numerous brown-outs/surges. They were used to odd power flickers quite often, but one of the power flickers took out quite a few of their low energy bulbs. They put is down to "one of those one off things", changed the bulbs and couple of months later suffered similar failures including the new bulbs.

Anyway they switched back to GLS/halogens and not suffered blown bulbs since.

So I suspect the low energy bulbs are supseptible to bown-outs/power surges.

They did have the power company install a monitor at one time, after complaining to their power company, and due to the results the power company changed something (transformer tap ???) but they haven't felt like risking more low energy bulbs since as at couple a quid a pop worked out very expensive.

[John]

[Mike Barnes]

My experience is the opposite. Fed up with replacing GLS bulbs at a rate that seemed like about once a week, I replaced the lot with CFLs, buying a couple of new fittings where necessary. There are about 50 CFLs installed here and the big switch-over was in 2001. I think since then I've replaced about six (OK, maybe twelve) bulbs. The improvement in lifetime was dramatic. We live in a semi-rural area with an overhead supply.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I have replaced just 5 of my newey and eyre 12v halogens in 5 years.

All areas that are heavily used.

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:22:59 +0000 someone who may be Mike Barnes wrote this:-

The usual suspects will no doubt claim that you are lying, as they claim compact fluorescent bulbs fail almost as soon as they are installed.

I know how to regard such claims, having one such bulb that is about

25 years old and many that are about 10 years old.

[Andy Hall]

Which rather suggests that there is a quality (as in the sense of consistency) problem.

At £7-10 for products that might be getting towards usability, this is not really good enough.

[Andy Hall]

So why isn't there bettr consistency and minimum standards of performance?

From what I'm reading so far, the lifetime figures are all over the show and what figures there are are obfuscated with specmanship that doesn't convey a true picture.

Therefore the alleged saving in capital cost is really off the table and the only remaining comparison is on energy consumption. Even those figures are fiddled because they ignore the heat contribution to the building.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well I hae just about every light known to man - or rather woman - here. SHE waned dimmers and this lamp and that lamp..

So i've got a fair selection of LV spots - made sure mains were off the map. They are by and large very stable now that all the bulbs in the 'track lights' have been replaced with newey and eyre. I estimate about

10,000 hours. More like 3000 on what the tracks came with.

Of the first 6 or so CFLS I put in 4 went within a year. At best they saved about 40% of electricity. They are dim..the so called '100W equivalents' are about the same s a 40W bulb.

ive got 8 or so now..and seem to have found reliability, if not brightness.

Candle bulbs pop every day or so in winter. Got about 30 in all..at least one per week to be honest so that's 30 weeks life on average, I bulk buy cheap ones now - they are better than supermarket ones anyway.

Whats my best lamps? the three 25W striplights in the loft. Then the 12v Halogens then the CFLS and worst is the candle bulbs.

The CFLs look horribly dingy, and haven't lasted that well. The candle bulbs are dingy and don't last at all, but I can buy ten for the price of a CFL at least.

The stars are the 12v halogens really. OK they do go eventually, but the light quality s excellent, and the running cost in bulbs is low.

[OG]

Using electric lighting to provide space heating, is about as sensible as using a hammer to drive screws.

[Andy Dingley]

You have a CFL from 1982? What sort is it?

[Derek Geldard]

Probably a Philips "Jamjar" lamp with an inductive ballast and a glow switch starter, the predecessor to one of these.

they say on that site best suited for sheds / chicken houses.

Or perhaps an early Thorn 2D lamp like one of these coruscating specimens, (2 years old BTW) Note the tube ends don't go black, they dont darken with age the starters don't fail & they *DO* last 25 years

repeating :

The earth *is* flat.

The tube ends don't go black, they don't darken with age, the starters don't fail, they *DO* last 25 years

The earth *is* flat.

The tube ends don't go black, they don't darken with age, the starters don't fail, they *DO* last 25 years

The earth *is* flat.

The tube ends don't go black, they don't darken with age, the starters don't fail they *DO* last 25 years

The earth *is* flat.

The tube ends don't go black, they don't darken with age, the starters don't fail, they *DO* last 25 years

[Derek Geldard]

Not me, merely that he is perhaps a little over enthusiastic about them. The fact that he is unsure whether he has had 6 or 12 (sure it's not 24 ?) failures doesn't inspire confidence.

Sell it back to Philip (or Thorn) to be dissected. If they could make them all like that they could make a fortune. Alternatively maybe you don't use it perhaps because it's light is too nauseous and miserable.

Meanwhile in a different thread ...

From: "Vortex" Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y Subject: Converting fluorescent light fitting to "quick start" Message-ID:

Posted a URL to a source depicting the dire state of a compact fluorescent lamp after only 2 years service. This is the URL.

the familiar deterioration and failings

You are the only one who's CFL's aren't 33% dimmer than they say to start with, who's CFL's don't suffer from tube end blackening, don't take 3 minutes to get to Ca. 90% output, don't suffer from the phosphor getting scoured away where the tube bends, don't produce a poor light with a nasty discontinuous spectrum, don't deteriorate over 12 months service (48% in my case), and have an average life longer than 6 - 18 months.

You are flat-earthing against facts that have been placed before you.

DG

[Andy Hall]

Nobody suggested that that should be its *primary* function; however it is not true to say that the energy is wasted, because it is not.

This, along with the misleading lifetime, is yet another reason why the justification for these bilious things is bogus. That's all before one considers that the amount of energy involved is like a teaspoon of water out of a bucketful.

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:14:19 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

I don't recall similar calls for GLS lamps. I have had these fail far more rapidly than the alleged lifetime.

As has been said before, heat a ceiling height is not particularly useful in keeping people warm.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:33:30 +0000 someone who may be Andy Dingley wrote this:-

No, it is from late 1981.

One of the original Phillips ones with a black base.

The others of the same era failed years ago, but this one continues to work. It just goes to show that they don't all fail long before their stated life, as the usual suspects claim.

[Andy Hall]

I don't care about the lifetime of GLS lamps. They cost practically nothing and are not sold on the basis of lifetime

It is to the people upstairs. Since most houses have the living space downstairs and bedrooms upstairs, and lights tend to be on downstairs for more hours, it follows that the heat is added to that for the bedrooms.

Your turn.

[Mike Barnes]

Since you don't seem to believe what I'm telling you, it's presumably not worth troubling you with some actual facts. But here they are anyway, after checking my order history with CPC (I haven't bought any CFLs from anywhere else):

Original order: 47 lamps, including 3 spares. Subsequent orders: 18 lamps. Current stock: 16 lamps.

Therefore I've actually replaced *five*. And there's one in a three-lamp fitting that failed a couple of months ago and I haven't been arsed to replace it so that makes a total of exactly six failures. However I now see that the period is slightly shorter than I original stated, the change-over actually being in January 2003, not 2001 as I originally estimated.

So, no, I'm not being over-enthusiastic. I'm simply reporting my experiences, having no reason to do otherwise. But, as David Hansen predicted, some people simply won't believe.

[Terry Fields]

I put one of these (25W) in the standard lamp in the lounge. It lasted as far as I can tell for 25 years. It never dimmed noticeably over its lifetime, merely being reluctant to start in the weeks before it finally died. It must have saved megawatt-hours over its lifespan, being used six hours a day on average. The modern stuff is rubbish by comparison.

I've still got a 9W version somewhere.

[John Rumm]

Just as well they radiate much of their heat then...