New low energy light fittings

While not wanting to make a sales pitch at the moment, the company that I work for - tp24 has released a new range of Low energy lighting:

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uses a new dedicated low energy lamp cap called L1 based on GU10 - there is a new range of CFL lamps to match. The fittings have been designed to be astetically pleasing as well as meeting part L of the current regulations.

There is a low energy reccessed downlighter too! -

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Reply to
Andrew
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anglo-saxon for spamming so I'll leave that task to him :-)

Presumably the idea of things like the pendant set on

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is to comply with part L by having something the householder can't replace with an incandescent lamp. Surely, however, they _could_ stick a GU10 halogen in the socket, couldn't they? (Admittedly the light distribution probably wouldn't be very satisfactory but the point is wouldn't it defeat the object Part-L-wise?). In all other respects the pendant and batten sets are very expensive alternatives to BNC pendant/battens and low-energy lamps: £15 for your product compared to about £5 for the BNC alternative. As for the safety aspect there are BNC lampholders which don't present live terminals when the lamp is unplugged.

What sort of lamps do fittings like the 'Cairo' use?

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says 3 x 9W - surely these aren't the GU10-like spots?

And what lamps do you do that are suitable for bathroom locations (and what zones)? I have a client who would really like some zone 2 and 3 rated bathroom lighting in attractive modern styles.

What's the highest-output lamp you do? There are many locations in which a

58W fluorescent strip light can easily provide the quantity of light required, but can't meet the aesthetic requirements of the users. If someone designs good-looking fittings for fluoro strip lights, in modern and traditional styles, they're welcome to post them onto uk.d-i-y as far as I'm concerned!
Reply to
John Stumbles

Trough fittings are the usual answer, those no good for you? Shelf fittings also work.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

A number of points...

It looks like you can plug in a standard GU10 bulb, in which case it does not meet Part L of the building regulations.

If you are designing a new lighting range for compact fluorescents, why on earth use integral ballasted compact fluorescent lamps? The whole point of these is retrofitting into existing fittings. The resulting disadvantages of larger lamps, and cost/disposal of the control gear with every lamp change, should not have to be borne in a newly designed lighting range.

You seem to have designed a system which uses single sourced expensive lamps. That may have been deliberate in order to generate continuous income from consumables, but as far as I'm concerned, single sourced lamps which are not available in standard retail outlets rules the product out for domestic lighting. (Comment doesn't apply to reflector versions if they are interchangable with the standard GU10 compact fluorescents.)

So in summary, whilst I applaud anyone trying to design compact fluorescent luminares for domestic use, your design seems to include a number of bad design decisions.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Do you have some pictures of what you mean?

They need to be good looking (SWMBO-friendly) in a domestic environment. All the fittings I've seen would only work if you're into the industrial look, which may be OK for the in-yer-face modern style but aren't going to get anywhere near the halogen track/down light market.

Reply to
John Stumbles

No you can't do this. L1 is based on GU10, but it's not the same. The L1 lamp holder has a small pin in the middle that prevents a GU10 lamp being fitted. All the L1 lamps have a hold for the pin to fit into.

If you could just stick a normal GU10 lamp in the system wouldn't meet part L.

Is that =A35 for the set i.e. pendant and lamp? all the L1 products are sold as a set. These are also the recommended retail prices. There is nothing to stop a distributor making the products available at a lower price.

The Cairo uses 3 x 9w L1 candle lamps :

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And what lamps do you do that are suitable for bathroom locations (and

The highest output lamp is the 18w GLS shape lamp. But most of the fittings use multiple lamps, so provide a higher output.

As a replacement for strip lights, the best option is probably a spot light fittings such as the Bern

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which uses

4 x 9w spot lamps. These lamps have a wide angle beam (118 degrees off the top of my head), so they will not produce dark areas as much as most halogen lamps.
Reply to
Andrew

There were a few reasons for using CFLs. It's partly to do with public acceptance. When a lamp stops working you just have to replace a light bulb. Just like a normal bulb.

The CFLs also mean that the light fitting will last practically for ever. If the ballast was built into the fittings, the entire fitting would have to be replaced if the ballast failed. With an L1 fitting you just replace the lamps as and when required.

The lamps are only single source at the moment. We have no intention of keeping it this way, as this wouldn't help us much in the long term.

tp24 mainly deal with the building trade, and the people that we have spoken to so far, (Barratts, Wimpey, Persimmon etc) have been very interested in using L1 fittings instead of their existing low energy fittings.

Because L1 is a brand new fitting, replacement lamps won't make it into the retail stores until there is a high enough demand for it. It's a catch 22 situation sometimes, as there are other people that won't consider using a product that's not available in the local retail store.

Once the L1 fittings make it into new houses, demand will grow, and replacement lamps etc will start to make it into the retail chains.

Reply to
Andrew

Sounds ideal, no need to change fittings, just snip the pin off 10 mins after the BCO hands you the completion certificate. ;-)

Reply to
John Rumm

From Screwfix, for example, a traditional light-bulb shape low energy lamp (like those in your pendant sets) is £3.25 and a pendant set costs from £1.

Sorry that page can not be found. Please check the URL and try again.

So nothing for bathrooms then?

Reply to
John Stumbles

Yes, but that wouldn't be a dedicated low energy solution, and wouldn't meet part L of the regulations. The L1 pendant set is dedicated, and so does meet the regulations.

Strange - it seems to work for me. The code for the L1 candle lamp is

2310, you can enter this in the search box at the top to find it easily, if the URL still isn't working.

Sorry - I missed that bit.

Some of the L1 fittings are IP44 rated, so the can be used in some areas of bathrooms. I'll list the product numbers, presuming everything is working you should be able to enter

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to see the details.

New York range - Pendants with tall, white glass shades.

2005, 2003, 2001

Bern - Chrome spotlights

2133, 2134 (Although for some reason you are right, 2134 doesn't seem to be on the website - I'll look in to that!)

Lima - Round flush fitting

2171

Yes, you're right about that. I'll see if I can get that fixed - try again in few hours.

Andrew Davis

Reply to
Andrew Davis

As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong) an IP44 rated fitting can be used in zone 2, and pretty much anything can be used in zone 3.

Andrew

Reply to
Andrew Davis

What I said earlier was "In all other respects [than Part L] the pendant and batten sets are very expensive alternatives to BNC pendant/battens and low-energy lamps:"

I also questioned whether your set was Part L compliant, which you've answered (assuming you, Andrew Davis are the same as Andrew ).

(I don't think your GU10 with a plastic tit which is supposed to stop people pluggijg in an incandescent lamp is a very good solution, any more than I think integrated lamp+ballasts like BNC replacement CFs are a good solution. I wish someone out there were innovating attractive ecological lighting rather than pushing passe and inappropriate technology past

2-shags' bureaucrats and architects with more of their clients' money than sense.)
Reply to
John Stumbles

Yes that's both me - it seems to depend which computer I'm using. Just to confirm - L1 is part L compliant.

OK, so you don't appear to like any of the low energy lighting solutions available to you at the moment. What would you like to see being made available.

We firmly believe that we have come up with a much more attractive range of dedicated low energy fittings that anything else that is currently available. The current products are the first of their type. There are more products in the pipeline, all of which use the L1 lamp cap.

The pin in the lamp holder is actually quite hard to remove without breaking the entire lamp holder.

Even if you did manage to remove the pin to use a none low energy lamp, there are not many lamps except spot lamps that use a GU10 fitting. A halogen spot lamp wouldn't be much use in most of the L1 fittings.

Andrew

Reply to
Andrew Davis

Attractive and reasonably priced fluorescent lamps in which you can replace the tube part when it is clapped out without chucking away perfectly good electronics (probably made by some poor wage slave in a third world sweat shop (incidentally where are yours made?)). Earlier in this thread you said something about using integrated lamps so you can replace the electronics when they fail but that seems to be a King Wastalot approach. An engineering approach might be to have the electronic ballast built into the lampholder (like the early 2D ballasts with a BC connector, but with a wire-in connection instead of BC) or as a plug-in module in the ceiling rose (like plug-in pendant sets). The latter particularly would allow you to have quite elegant and minimal light sources unencumbered by a lump of electronics, e.g. an almost perfect illuminated globe, or a zany tangle of glowing tube, which could be attractive enough to use without lampshades reducing their efficiency (and collecting crud).

Well that might not be hard to do, but ecologically they're as crap as CF incandescent-replacement lamps and don't even have the saving grace of the latter that they allow Joe public to install more energy efficient lights in their home. Foisting such wasteful technology on householders when they could be given a more environmentally friendly alternative sucks and your product deserves to bomb, for the sake of all our children. However the pessimist in me thinks that won't happen and we'll end up with another VHS instead of Beta technology.

Reply to
John Stumbles

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