(S)ES lamps

[Fred]

Hi,

Just a little rant! Why do all table lamps now seem to come with SES or ES fittings? Don't the shops realise we use BC fittings here in the UK?

I'm sure until a few years ago everything was BC and screw types were exotic and strange things. Now (in my experience at least, YMMV, etc) it seems impossible to find a bathroom light that does not have an ES fitting and many of the outdoor lamps seem to be ES too.

Is it a ploy to make us buy three times as many light bulbs? I seem to need to keep BC bulbs for ceiling lights, SES bulbs for table lamps, and ES the bathroom and outdoor lights.

TIA

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

Probably economics of scale so they can sell them across more countries with one fitting. I remember cheap bulkhead lights being sold with screw fittings a very long time ago.

Not sure of safety of changing bulbs in permanently wired screw lights because of the possible risk of the outer being live because the neutral is switched. I see that convertors are available both ways between BC and ES. If you convert a BC socket to take an ES bulb there is a 50% chance of the outer being live when turned on. Seems slightly risky to me.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Shops realised that most people won't pay for things made in the UK, so you are stuck with what's made elsewhere in the world.

My parent's house is pretty much all BC, because their lights are quite old and were good quality british ones in their day (excellent quality compared with what you can buy today). I bought them an outside light recently which had an ES holder, which I changed for a BC so they don't need another set of spares.

OTOH, my brother's house is virtually all IKEA lighting, so he only uses ES/SES.

I tend to make my own lights, and don't tend to use lamps which go in BC or ES holders, so I only have a very small number of each type of these in the house.

No. It's a side effect we get by wanting to buy cheap, and having lost the industry which manufactured BC lights.

[Brian Gaff]

What happened to those clever bc lights with three pins slightly offset so the connections could only go in one way around. Rad bulbs for fire effects tended to use them. Brian

[Jim Hawkins]

My 30' long kitchen+office was fitted with recessed ES ceiling light fittings. It was only 18 months ago I discovered some decent lamps -I Philips Master

33W E27 WW 827. 'm hoping their life will prove as good as the illumination they provide - which is excellent.

[Mike Clarke]

All the recent ES lampholders I've seen have a non conducting thread with a small brass side contact near the bottom of the thread . By the time the cap becomes live it should be screwed in too far for your fingers to reach it.

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

Thanks. Sounds a lot safer than the old ones I've met

[Fred]

Thanks. The last time I saw these adaptors, you could only get BC to ES; the ES to BC had been discontinued. At that time I was looking at TLC and CPC. However, I have just looked and TLC lists both again:

the ES to BC, which is probably the more useful, costs twice the BC to ES one!

That doesn't help with SES ones. However on another reply, it was mentioned touching the side of the screw and getting a shock, so I suppose the SES make that more difficult.

[Fred]

I forgot to say, one possible disadvantage of an adaptor is that it will "lift" the bulb, so may not be suitable where space is limited or if it would make the bulb stick out of the lamp shade.

[Fred]

Hi. I have seen those on car bulbs but never domestic ones. What was the advantage of that?

Thanks.

[Fred]

Is that done for safety or is it to save brass and make them cheaper to produce I wonder?

[GMM]

I went into B&Q a while back looking for bulbs to go into a batten holder I was about to fit and the only ones they had were ES. Fair enough, I thought, I'll get an ES batten holder. 'Oh no - we don't do them' was the response. Hmm....so you can get one kind of bulb and another kind of fitting. Being paranoid, of course, I'll put it down to a master plan to make everyone buy fittings they don't need to match the the bulbs available.

Of course, the real answer is probably not to go to B&Q.....for anything (!)

[Fred]

I appreciate that it is better for the manufacturers to have one fitting to sell to all of the world, rather than different fittings for different countries, but don't they do that for plugs, so why not for light fittings?

Next they'll be wanting us to use brown and blue cable to match the rest of the world ;)

That's a good idea if you can get to and change the fitting.

Ikea is a good hour or so from here, so I don't go too often. I was thinking that there was more variety in BC light bulbs: different brightness, etc. Not wanting to start another war about cfls, but I suppose Ikea might be a good place to look for low energy SES bulbs, I seem to remember Ikea championing CFLs. Arguments about saving the planet aside, low wattage bulbs can be good if you want low lighting levels (night lights, etc)

I was going to ask if you had a lathe and turned your own lamp sticks (is that what they are called?) and ask where you might be ES fittings but then I remembered that some time ago you posted some links to halogen lights you had made.

[Part Timer]

MEM Eaton BC3? There were lots of unhappy people especially those in social housing who didn't take kindly to the cost of the replacement CFLs they were 'forced' to use. Anyone else would have just swapped the pendant holder for a normal one and used whatever lamp they liked.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's deliberate to try and improve safety.

[NT]

care to tell us more? piccies?

NT

[Tony Bryer]

Yes, save that they are making UK-specific gear because of the requirement for a factory-fitted plug. But that's non-optional, whilst substituting a BC holder would be.

[Chris J Dixon]

Much like that here, and I have to say that I find them a great improvement on BC. I've never had a holder fail, a bulb stuck, nor a shade ring cross-threaded.

Chris