bulb fittings ES or BC

In the light of the thread about the LAP 60W equiv LED bulbs at Screwfix, a ll the BC versions were sold out so I got some ES versions. Then I realised the adapters I got off ebay are all the other way round. But it got me thi nking - should I change my pendants to ES fittings ? The adapters are small er that way round, since the BC connector nestles inside the ES screw. The big question. Are ES bulbs becoming more common than BC ? Any reason no t to change my fittings ? Simon.

Reply to
sm_jamieson
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Wouldn't it be a lot easier to buy the right thing in the first place?

ES has become slightly more common in the UK as European chains like Ikea and Olson tend to stock kit that is Edison screw. I have a mixture of ES and BC in both sizes having lived overseas at various times.

I generally benefit from the unpopularity of ES as they are often remaindered half price in Aldi/Lidl and work perfectly well enough. They don't seem to have spotted that UK is mostly BC.

I see no merit making work changing light fittings for the sake of it.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Also the normal lampshades will not fit as the ES outer diameter (+ insulation?) is greater. There don't seem to be easy ES equivalents for the normal British pendant lampholder, it is better suited to purpose designed light fitting/lamps where the different dimensions are designed in.

Seems to me ES is OK in enclosed fittings, particularly where the lamp is base down but is a PITA for normal pendant fittings.

Chris K

Reply to
ChrisK

Good luck in finding pendant ES bulb holders. You'd think it would be simple.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

ISTM there's some such evidence - as in "today IKEA, tomorrow the world".

Reply to
Robin

Not the prettiest things, but:

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Reply to
RJH

My guess would be that, as lighting becomes increasingly globalised, bayonet is going to occupy more of a backwater and there will be a shift towards ES in the UK.

Mains plugs is a similar example, albeit restricted by legislation (is there any relevant regulations relating to BC v ES?). For instance it's not unheard of to get a low-power appliance with a two-pin European plug, and then a Euro to UK adaptor (eg a permanent-fit, clamp-on one) in the box.

Since it's rather ungainly to adapt BC to ES, I'd expect the 'Ikea effect' to mean that portable lamps end up being ES, and maybe only fixed installations BC.

Presumably ES pendant lampholders are common on the Continent? In which case, is it contrary to wiring regs to import and fit them?

(One advantage of ES is you can be sure of polarity, which is something the UK seems to care more about than other regimes)

Maybe this will all be moot if the concept of a removable 'bulb' disappears in the brave new world of portable LED lighting... I can't say I've seen any LED cycle lamps (for instance) with removable LEDs.

Theo

Reply to
Theo

Going back to that type of plug in the UK would be a retrograde step - and how. We are fairly unique in having only the one plug which covers pretty well all domestic requirements. We used to have multiple standards of plugs. Thank gawd those days have gone.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

+1
Reply to
Tim Streater

I don't know if they are becoming more common, but they seem to me to be a much better system.

By contrast, the British 3-pin plug and socket appear to me to be far safer and more reliable than their 2- and 3-pin continental counterparts.

Reply to
Timothy Murphy

Really? Are the European and US plugs not rated up to 13 A (or similar)? Are there heavier-duty plugs/sockets in those countries for big appliances like electric fires, kettles, tumble driers etc.

Are US and European plugs capable of having a fuse fitted in them, or do their appliances always blow the circuit (eg downstairs ring main) fuse in the event of an appliance fault? I wonder whether RCDs and MCBs will ever become so cheap that they are fitted to each appliance plug so a faulty appliance disrupts only that appliance rather than taking out the whole house.

Another advantage of our plug is that polarity is guaranteed: there's no live/neutral ambiguity. And all appliances can be earthed (assuming that the appliance is fitted with a three-core cable and the plug has a metal rather than plastic earth pin!).

I wish the bayonet blub had become a world standard, because it is *much* less likely to corrode in place than the ES bulb, and it is faster to change - it only requires a flick of the wrist through about 10 degrees rather than several turns.

Until I went to Ikea, I'd thought that ES was confined to the US, and that Europe used the BC like us - a nice clear BC=240V / ES=120V distinction. But no. Do 240V and 120V bulbs have identical-sized screw threads, or are they deliberately incompatible sizes to avoid putting a 120V bulb in a 240V fitting?

Reply to
NY

Agreed. However there is market pressure for 'one global SKU'.

There are plenty of ways around that: Equipping the item with an IEC socket and then supplying the appropriate cable as a extra Equipping the item with a micro USB socket and not shipping any kind of charger Equipping the item with a wall wart with removable face plates Equipping the item with a US/Euro plug and adding a clamp-on adaptor Shipping a 'travel adaptor' (I think this is forbidden in the UK, but may be allowed elsewhere)

I suggest that, if ES in table lamps isn't prohibited by code, globalised supply will mean it'll become the de-facto standard. That is, if they don't go all LED and abandon removable fittings altogether.

Theo

Reply to
Theo

In what way is ES better than BC. I'd have said BC is far better because it is quicker to change. It's a shame that there isn't a single standard for all bulbs of the same voltage, to avoid the need to keep in small ES, large ES, small BC, large BC bulbs for all the different fittings. My old house was a show house and came with various light fittings in different rooms. They'd used all hour different types of fittings (SES, LES, SBC, LBC) in different rooms, even though all bulbs were the same size of glass (standard candle bulb).

I wish someone would outlaw light fittings which expose the bare bulb - the glare from a frosted bulb is bad enough but the glare from the cheapo clear bulbs, where you can see the filament, is even worse.

I wish I could persuade my wife that I prefer to read in bed by a light behind (or at one side of) the bed head, rather than by an overhead light beyond the foot of the bed, where it's right in your field of vision when you are looking at a book: rather than illuminating the page more brightly than the rest of the room, you get the opposite :-(

Reply to
NY

We do not. We have one type of plug (shavers and mantel-clocks apart) whic h must be used for all plug-in domestic purposes, and we generally have too few wall-sockets. The 13A plug is too big for all ordinary purposes excep t for heaters and domestic appliances.

For new-build, we should have another type of ring main, rated for half of the current, and with plentiful 230V AC wall sockets similar to IEC C13/C14 (cf. kettle and computer monitor leads). The plugs, when shrouded by resi lient plastic, are strong enough for being trodden on. They would, of cour se, be fused.

We should also have a smaller and even more plentiful type of socket, diffe rent from any in current use for any different purpose, supplying say 12V 1 A (AC xor DC), for small electronic equipment.

That should be done by way of a pan-European Standard.

But it will not happen in our time. |

Reply to
dr.s.lartius

Can only speak for Germany. Larger plugs are rated for (I think) 16A. The smaller Euro two-pin (no earth) plug are lower 2.5A.

Yes. Also for anything that needs an earth.

What ring main? Everything is wired as (chained) radials. But yes, the only fuse is in the consumer unit.

Yes. We have a some light that switch on or off by a capacitive effect. They don't work if plugged in the wrong way round - the plug has to be rotated 180 degrees.

No idea, but I would guess from the name ("Edison") that they are identical.

Reply to
Martin Bonner

Two words: Kindle Paperwhite. ;-)

My Mrs had a Kindle 3 for a long time and it was perfect for her,

*except* if she wanted to read in bed when I wanted to sleep, when she would go downstairs. She had considered the Paperwhite but was going to hang on till the K3 broke. As it was discounted just before Xmyth we (daughter and I) got her one and she's really happy with it.

With the backlight turned right down (it can be pretty bright) I really don't notice if she's reading it as I fall asleep or if she wakes up in the night and has a quick read.

But then I guess a Kindle (or any eReader / tablet) would only be a solution if what you want to read is available in electronic form.

It's funny, the eReaders are what many people who bought laptops in the early days actually wanted ... 'to have recipes in the kitchen' or 'read manuals in the garage', but few ever used laptops for either of course.

Do they do the HBOL in Kindle format?

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

That is becoming USB style sockets

However, they cant take the punishment.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

You can get adaptors, but they're not really legal or altogether safe. It's 50/50 whether the outer screw thread is live or not, and I wouldn't want to put 100w in one.

no

BC are safer, more reliable and more common

It's been globalised for many decades. That hasn't happened.

any relevant regulations relating to BC v ES?).

not afaik

it depends if they meet our legal requirements. From what I saw of foreign electrics years ago, very little did. That might have changed since.

which has no effect on lightbulbs. In fact ES has a downside, namely that if polarity isn't right you've got an exposed live outer screw thread. The outer base of BC lamps is insulated.

IIRC euro are 16A, US 10A 110v = 1.1kW.

electric fires, kettles, tumble driers etc.

In US, those run on 220v. I think TDs tend to be 5kW.

not as is. Redesigning them to would leave lots of unfused plugs about

yes

For now fuses are cheap & good enough. In the distant future I expect we'll see little load characterisation computers that will pick up on a whole range of abnormalities.

no

yes - but it doesn't work. You can still put a 120v in the slightly bigger 240v socket. Edison screw standards are as ancient as the name suggests.

Personally I'm tired of all the outlawing of perfectly good things. Can't we have some basic freedoms back?

so don't buy them.

But no satisfactory solution to that minor issue

it hasn't though. We were buying empire made electrics half a century ago.

Yes. We ought to have a 2 pin version of it for moulded plugs only. Then you can fit 2 or 3 where one 3 pin goes now. And full compatibility is retained.

Similar to? Not yet another standard! Just use IEC C13s. They need fusing at 10A. An easy way to achieve this is simply to make sockets with BS1362s and IEC C13s on. Or far better use 2 pin 13A plugs.

Actually it is. USB is now shifting from 5v only to 5-24v at at least 2A.

E26 in US, E27 here

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Are ring mains mainly a UK innovation, then? I hadn't realised that.

Either way, if an appliance develops a fault, it is normal that everything fed by the same fuse or circuit breaker will fail, rather than (hopefully) only that appliance failing and everything else staying on. Now THAT is a colossal retrograde step: the thought that a short in a table lamp or a PC power supply could disable my deep freeze when I was out and unable to replace the fuse doesn't bear thinking about. I'm surprised that when we in the UK went from unfused to fused plugs, other countries didn't see that advantage and make the same change.

One of the few places where old unfused round-pin plugs are still used today is in theatre/TV lighting where it's much easier to change a fuse on the lighting board rather than one up above the stage where each light is plugged into its circuit.

I think there are various different diameters of ES (maybe all with the same pitch of thread) but I wonder if this is enforced so that bulbs that are rated for different voltages can never be interchanged in the same light fitting (ie to prevent you accidentally using a US bulb in European mains). The real problem arises if you bring a US table lamp back to Europe and simply change its mains plug - now you wouldn't be protected by the diameter/voltage restirctions!

Reply to
NY
[Snip]

Since most of our sockets are shuttered, requiring an earth pin to open the shutter, how is this going to work?

[Snip]

Oh dear, another botched standard. Put your 5v phone charging lead into

24v socket and goes the phone
Reply to
charles

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