Andy
Why hasn't the ASA stepped in? Just looked at the lamps in the cupboard =
the 60W incandescents that have a lumen rating are 700 odd. The "60W equivalent" 11W CFL's are 600 lumen.
If your run them 'till they die rather than for their rated life.
Early ones I agree were horrible and there still are some nasty ones out= there. But you can get ones now that are very close to tungsten. Flicker= I'm not aware of.
I find the opposite
Longevity is not the only saving they do consume less power, even if you= uprate the "equivalence". I did the maths when replacing the 6 x 40W candle lamps with 6 x 9W CFLs in the lounge. The extra capital was "paid= back" by the power saving in about 6 months, well within the rated life = of the CFL lamps and that was paying =A38.98 for each CFL and 10p for a can= dle bulb.
Just FYI BTUs are not in common use in the UK any more.
Andy
We recently put a CFL in the WC (well, in the lamp fitting in the room that contains the WC), and it works quite well. The old incandescent lamp was blinding when used in the dark. The CFL starts at a much more modest (but acceptable) brightness and slowly brightens ready for hand washing.
If I could design a perfect lighting profile for the purpose, it would probably be close to what the CFL is actually doing. (Maybe adjusted by ambient light so if used in the day it is brighter more quickly.) Just wish the colour was a touch whiter/hotter.
Perhaps when it has been in there for a year or two it will become annoyingly slow at brightening up? We'll see. Or not.
So use a 60W/100W halogen lamp, they are available to fit where GLS fits and are better.
I hope not. Dimming incandescent lamps waste even more energy. What you need is separately switched lamps so you can switch on as many as needed. If you frequently use a dimmer you have the wrong lamps.
The frequency is academic with LCD TVs. You get zero advantage by having a 100Hz LCD TV.
They are :-( . Which is why I get so annoyed with the likes of B&Q selling them. Actually it's not so much that - if the proles want to buy a lamp which will be out of bulbs in a weeks time, let them. It's more the fact that's *all* they sell ... so no chance to get a dimmable CFL lamp.
It still is.. the limits for old cars are extremely high. They couldn't met the limits set for a cat equipped car for more than 10 seconds after being tuned.
While reducing oil consumption is a good thing please don't confuse it with reducing CO2. Time will show that the world is getting colder ATM.
What is more, the more elaborate and over the top the claims made for the things, the more public hostility they engender. Ultimately the OTT marketing makes it harder to sell the stuff rather than easier.
If they understated the benefits - low energy floodlight - suitable replacement for 100 or 150W linear halogen etc, there is a fair chance people would find they perform better than claimed and be left with a positive opinion rather than feeling they have been sold a dummy.
What bad things actually happen if you DIY in Aus?
(i.e. is it something people in general take seriously (using closed shop labour), or more generally ignored?)
There are some CFLs (quite expensive) that are dimmable by conventional dimmer switches. However they tend to dim at a fixed colour temperature which is quite unlike a dimmed tungsten lamp.
I don't think so. I have three dimmable lamps in various places that allow me to get exactly what I want at the time, I dont want a whole load of duplicated lamps. The one over the dining table either replaces the candles or backs them up a bit depending on what i'm eating/doing. My car has dimmable instrument lights for the same reason, to fine tune to conditions.
All good fun for the journos:
do you think that will cover my custom made 20+ year old dimmer switches? Or have dimmers changed in the recent past?
Probably because they compare them to the so called "soft tone" bulb rather than the GLS lamp that everyone actually uses.
There is quite a drop off after just a few hundred hours with some of them I have noticed. I put one in our en-suite since it tends to be left on all night (SWMBO does not like being in a totally dark room). The first I tried was supposed to be a 60W equivalent, and that was deemed too dim. So I upped it to a 100W equivalent. At first that was not too bad - reasonable whiteness to the light and bright enough. After about a months usage however it has lost quite a bit of brightness and the colour is back to being a rather unpleasant greeny/yellow.
(the lower power ones seem better in this respect - I have a 7W candle bulb that is in a fitting along with some 40W filament lamps. That has managed to stay at about the same light output and colour temperature for quite some time now. That was a Megaman ultra miniture candle[1]. Shame they are about £6 or £7 each.
[1] "Ultra miniature" as in about the same size as a bog standard large filament candle bulb.See above - matching 40W tungsten seems quite easy, 60W not too hard, but beyond that they seem to do progressively less well. Flicker is an issue that affects some people vastly more than others. To be fair, I have not noticed it being a big problem with CFLs (and I am very sensitive to flicker on CRTs or LED displays for example)
Much depends on usage and the enclosure. One that are switched often and in cold environments fare badly, as do ones that get too hot in their enclosures.
While true in many cases, it can still be quite a sting in the wallet if you need to by half a dozen for a large fitting!
John Rumm coughed up some electrons that declared:
I was out there last April and asked a Melbournian what they did about DIY electrics. He said he just bought the parts and did it anyway.
You probably get transported - to England.
I actually meant that the CO from a Moggy was such that it could have passed the CO limit for catted cars. I don't beleive it's now true. Are there now limits for old cars? It used to be based purely on smoke.
Burning oil and producing CO2 tend to go hand in glove. I accept that a proportion of oil doesn't get burnt.
Yes I also recall the scare of 30 years ago promoting the concept that the Earth was cooling and we were on the edge of an ice age.
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