Are energy-saving light bulbs now a thing of the past already?

I suspect their CFLs dated from the 50p give away era. My dad could never resist a bargain. There are still some of CFLs in a drawer as well as various paints from the very last days of Woolworths.

Reply to
Martin Brown
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I got some of the non-dimmable Philips warm white LED spots as they were remaindered after the introduction of dimmables. They are indistinguishable from the filament bulbs apart from being very slightly more tightly focussed onto the bench. Very nicely engineered with a substantial finned aluminium heatsink behind them.

Only had one LED unit fail so far in about two years. MTBF No different to CFLs except they tend to stop completely rather than fade out into oblivion or blacken one end electrode and fail to start properly.

The failure was of a particularly cheap and nasty Chinese rectified mains series connected 60 ish surface mount LED ones on poxy pcb.

I took it apart after failure - one LED defunct.

Reply to
Martin Brown

We have a landing light using a doubleD fluorescent which I must have fitted over 30 years ago. I changed the tube for the second time last summer.

Reply to
charles

It was a cheap way to provide "Mood Lighting" from existing room luminaires (saved on the cost of two or three Lava Lamps per room :-)

In all honesty, very very little.

Whilst it's true that you never miss what you never had, I suspect most, like me, when the dimmer switch blows, will simply say TFFT! and fit a normal switch. :-) It was a 70's thing more often than not to be found in a "Bachelor Pad" rather than a family home - nuff said?

Reply to
Johny B Good

That's assuming all you had was a dimmer controlling a central light.

If, however, you have a variety of lighting in, say, a living area, dimmers on each can be very useful.

But won't be of interest to those who simply want the cheapest possible illumination. :-)

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I mentioned "Bachelor Pad" since it _was_ a cheap and cost effective way to make "A Good First Impression" on any late night female guests invited in for "A Coffee". :-)

Reply to
Johny B Good

Scented candles have a better effect:-)

Reply to
ARW

GU10 lamps do not use transformers.

Reply to
ARW

I've got some halogen and some similar light output LED's in ceiling fittings in the hallway (upward facing frost glass shades. I can't tell the difference between them.

I had one LED bulb die in

Reply to
Chris French

Sorry, I wrote the wrong number down. They're GU5.3.

MM

Reply to
MM

Because the rest of the house has the GU5.3 downlighters. Not my choice. That's how all the houses on this estate of 40 were equipped and I had had no previous experience of any other kind of lighting than filament. (The very first thing I noticed after moving in was that the downlighters never come on instantly like filament bulbs do. This annoyed me considerably and I was cursing the builder for not sticking to traditional pendant lamps as I had grown up with and which I still prefer. The kitchen, for example, has 10 or 11 of these ruddy GU5.3 downlighters and they're like the landing lights at Heathrow when they come on. Ridiculously bright for a KITCHEN! I could understand it, say, in an undertaker's embalming room or in a hospital operating theatre. But for preparing food or doing the washing up, is so much bright light REALLY that necessary?)

MM

Reply to
MM

I have two in the corner like that which are very awkward to get to, and so far they've lasted over 10 years (GU5.3). Dunno how I'm going to reach them when they finally do blow.

MM

Reply to
MM

Yesterday I went back to Wilko's, armed with my new knowledge courtesy of this thread, and saw these various lamps in a new light. So... Wilko's own brand 60W 810 lumen LED bulb with bayonet fitting was £7. The Philips equivalent on the next shelf was £8.

MM

Reply to
MM

Well, weren't we all "encouraged" to do just that? Using tungsten bulbs was made out to be as bad as driving without a seatbelt.

MM

Reply to
MM

I feel for you. I re-wired this old house myself, so got exactly the lighting I wanted. Which could explain why simply changing a bulb for another type doesn't give the results I want.

Even my kitchen/breakfast room has four lighting circuits all on dimmers. So can be changed from excellent illumination for working in to something more taseful for the odd evening when eating in there.

I consider lighting to be as much a part of the decor as the colour of the walls, etc.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Quite. When the major thing 'they' should have been doing was to provide/encourage decent home insulation.

And having so called low energy lighting just encourages many to leave it on when not needed.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

====snip====

Just out of curiousity, was that a 10W/810 lumen LED lamp?

FYI, the "60W" figure of filament lamp equivilence is based on the more efficient American 810 lumen 60 watt incandescent (120v 750 hour) lamp rather than the UK/European 240/220v 75W 1000 hour 810 lumen lamp.

I'm pretty certain, when electronic CFLs were first marketed in the UK, the headline figure for a 13W CFL was an equivilency of 60W (240v

1000 hour) tungsten filament GLS lamp (no mention of the all important lumen output figures back then) since it supported the claims of "Savings of 80% on your electricity bill!".

Now that the actual lumen output figures must be shown alongside any wattage equivilency figures, there is a tendency by e-tailers to use the yank wattage ratings indiscriminate of which region they're selling into. For regions where 220/240v 1000 hour lamps are standard, this means an even greater improvement of efficiency from the use of LED lamps.

At the current efficiency level of LED lamps on the shop shelves today, circa 80L/W, any existing luminaires designed to take a

75W/810L tungsten filament lamp need to be quite well ventilated, particularly with "cap up" orientation, if you wish to avoid overheating issues.

Most of the "waste heat" (about 50% or so) from a tungsten bulb is removed by IR radiation. Modern LED lamps rely largely on convection to dissipate their "waste heat" and will fail if their electronic ballasts go over 100 deg C, unlike the tungsten filament lamps which canl cheerfully run at 200 deg C or more (they only have to last 1000 hours or so anyway).

The new 200L/W 'wonder lamps' promised in about another years time will not only reduce electrical consumption, they'll also become usable in existing fittings deemed unsuited for the current crop of LEDs. For example, a 'modern' 243L/W 810L LED will only use one third the energy of an existing 10W/810 lumen lamp of which an even smaller fraction of that energy input will appear as unwanted heat.

IOW, if you can take your time over upgrading your existing lamps to LED, you'll be able to avoid the need to spend additional money on upgrading existing luminaires to better ventillated versions required for the current LEDs. The promised higher efficiency LED lamps have more to offer than a mere reduction in energy consumption.

Reply to
Johny B Good

You can dim the light(s) for watching TV. Plus save a bit of electricity.

Reply to
harryagain

Scented with cannabis?

Reply to
harryagain

Yes. It's this "Wilko LED Round Bulb Warm White BC B22 10W/810lu"

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I can't recall all the blurb that was spread about at the time. I was just attracted by the 50p price!

Initially, I was somewhat irritated by the way the CFL bulb didn't produce a good light till it had warmed up, but I got used to it over time. And I got into the habit of switching the light on a couple of minutes before actually using the room. F'rinstance, I'd go up to bed and immediately switch on the bedroom light before final ablutions in the bathroom, whereas when filament bulbs were exclusively used I only switched the light on when I actually entered the room.

Well, I want to buy ONE LED light bulb to begin with (in the next week or two), even though no bulbs in the house are "out" at the moment. I'd just like to get used to the idea of LED. I'll probably go for that Wilko product at £7 unless I can find a cheaper one at the same spec.

NB: Aldi are selling CFLs at £1.99 each. I believe they were 11W =

55W.

MM

Reply to
MM

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