Looking at Part L regs they seem to require that lightfittings are provided which cannot take conventional screw or bayonet fittings but only a CFT (or fitting limited to xxlumens/watt).
It didnt appear to me that these had to be the *only* light fiitings but that there had to be enough to light the room.
I have never seen or heard of such fittings. Have I got this right and if so where do you get them and what sort of bulbs are available?
IIRC all bulbs will have to be 'low energy'/ higher efficiency anyway by 2012 (or something like), what is the point of this requirement?
There's a company pushing their own lamp base which is a modified GU10 or fluorescent starter base, with an extra bump on it to make it incompatible with GU10 bulbs. Needless to say, the bulbs are very much more expensive than identical ES or BC compact fluorescents, and only available mail-order from themselves, making their lights pretty useless. In the US, there's a similar lamp base which is 1" in diameter being pushed.
The other stupid thing about both these schemes is that if you are designing a light fitting to take a compact fluorescent, it's nuts to design a new integral ballasted CLF bulb. The only reason for integral ballasted CLF bulbs is to retrofit in place of filament lamps. If you design a CLF light fitting, incorporate a separate ballast which isn't chucked out each time the bulb dies, and use one of the very many standard
4-pin CFLs (or 2-pin CLFs with integral starter, at a pinch).
I have seen the pendants for 4-pin PL lamps used quite often (see link posted by "auctions"). Research has shown most have been removed within 6 months because people don't want to use the lampshades available. It has been mentioned here that some electricians keep a set of these which they install just to get BCO approval, and then take back for their next job, knowing the householder doesn't want them.
The problem is the very limited choice of well designed lights designed to natively use compact fluorescents. Since I do want to use CLF's, this has caused me to design and make many of my own light fittings.
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:01:11 -0800 (PST) someone who may be " snipped-for-privacy@sheldononline.co.uk" wrote this:-
Most of my CFLs reach a sensible brightness almost immediately, and don't flicker on start up. They are all fitted to BC and ES fittings of various sizes.
Ah, they're the new improved imaginary sort of CFL. That explains a great deal. Meanwhile in a world where the sky is sometimes blue and has a notable absence of pink and yellow polka dots CFL continue to take around 15 minutes to reach "sensible" brightness.
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:44:10 GMT, a particular chimpanzee, Nick Holmes randomly hit the keyboard and produced:
The requirement is for 1 in 4 such fittings, or at least 1 per 25m² whichever is greater.
In practice, I suspect it might vary from BCS to BCS. This particular BCS wouldn't normally give a stuff if they were normal bayonet fittings or not on the basis that compact fluorescent bulbs are dirt cheap, and that if special fittings were present when the completion certificate was issued, that's no guarantee that a trip to B & Q and a box of half-a-dozen ceiling roses wouldn't alter that situation within hours of the ink drying.
They generally have different 'bayonet' fittings with three prongs instead of two, or other such variations.
You may well ask that, I couldn't possibly comment.
AIUI, "Philip" found his "Gloeilampenfabriek" was losing money for him so he shut it.
Noticing that he could make loadsamoney by importing CFL's made cheaply in China he "used his influence" in the EU to have filament lamps made illegal so that all the other "Gloeilampenfabrieks" in the EU (his erstwhile competitors) would also have to shut and would not be able to compete with his Chinese CFL's. Cool - Eh?
Damn, I've just noticed I answered a different question to the one asked. However the actual answer wouldn't be much different. The names and institutions might be different but the processes involved would be the same.
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