Energy saving lamps

[Huge]

Hear, hear. I agree with every point you make, and I am doing likewise; as they fail, I'm going back to filament bulbs.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mmm. I have to agree with EVERYONE.

The early CFLS I got - mainly to avoid constant bulb changes in awkward outside lights - were very low output, very slow to come up and failed bloody quickly. And had awful color spectra.

Subsequent replacements have been somewhat better in all respects.

However even so called '100W equivalents' fail to really match up to the

60W standard bulb.

Given the cost and fragility of these things, and the rather poor output, I really do NOT think they represent much of a saving whatsoever.

Especially as the heat loss when they are in use vis a vis incandescent

- mainly winter - still has to be made good by a boiler burning oil (or gas) somewhere.

I do feel that in the context of global warming it's all a bit like telling a grossly obese person that they will look better and lose weight if they pluck their eyebrows..

[David in Normandy]

I bought them mainly from Wilkos and Ikea in England for the house there, replacing most of the filament bulbs in the house in one go. I kept all the "old" filament bulbs in a box and brought those to France with us. At the moment we are using a mix of both sorts of bulbs, but my experience so far, in both England and France has been that the low energy bulbs just aren't as good as the hype. They may be "greener" and better for the environment but that is all.

I don't find the "quality/warmth" of the light as good either. I suspect they don't give off such a wide range of frequencies of visible light as filaments. The light seems a bit "cold" or "monochromatic" somehow.

[Mary Fisher]

Isn't that enough? Isn't that why the promotion (what you call hype) is about?

As I've said, I'm not keen on the quality of the light but it's certainly not important enough to make it worth reverting to tungsten. We'll move more and more to leds.

Mary

[Derek Geldard]

Quite some years ago, and the technology has changed out of all recognition.

FWIR generic Chinese tat. Same as GE CFL's and the supermarket own brands.

Osram AIUI are still made in Europe.

DG

[Derek Geldard]

The delay is the time taken to get all the Hg into the vapour phase.

It has been made worse by the requirement to reduce the Hg content of tubes in recent years for environmental reasons.

It is a function of the way fluorescent lamps work. A tube can be made to be passable over a limited range of particular applications, and a tube made differently might cover some others, but they are never used to do colour matching where the object of the exercise is to match colours as they will be seen under natural daylight.

DG

[Derek Geldard]

Do you have a lot of *Really Ugly* guests for dinner ?

DG

[<me9]

Don't the french use ES caps, whilst UK uses predominantly BC? Did you have to change the lampholders?

I much preferred the colour (greenish, but nearer daylight) of the old gas lights. Incandescents were always too red. I wish the common or garden CFLs were a higher colour temp.

Some CFLs are poorer than others for colour rendering. We shop around until SWMBO finds a brand that she likes. We have been (happily) completely free of incandescents for several years for general use.

One downside of CFLs is that they discolour plastic lampshades (more UV). On the other hand, the heat from incandescents is probably more detrimental, particularly to the holder.

[John Rumm]

But, CFLs seem noticeably worse in this respect. Some triphosphor linear tubes mange to produce quite acceptable light with good colour rendition.

[Mary Fisher]

Have you ever dined with him?

[Derek Geldard]

I stopped using linear tubes in habitable rooms a good few years ago because of poor aesthetics

You could be right however, either it is a big problem for the manufacturers to get the light output from the much reduced area of phosphor and they have to compromise, or some of the phosphors suffer early damage because of the high level of bombardment from the discharge.

DG

[Si]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

I've bought 32W daylight bulbs from . They arrive from Germany in about a week.

[Derek Geldard]

How would I know ?

DG

[Grumps]

They're flippin' huge!

[nightjar]

The 'equivalent' rating used is that of softone lamps, rather than normal GLS lamps, so it depends which you compare them to.

Colin Bignell

[Si]

In message , Grumps writes

takes one out... 18cm top to bottom, 6cm diameter e&oe

is that huge? they fit my, very domestic uplighters/downlighters just fine.

[Colin Wilson]

I think it's fair to say i've wasted more on low energy lamps that are unsuitable than spent on energy on tungsten filament lamps that do what I want, when I want (no warm-up time, wrong colour etc).

[Derek Geldard]

.>

Just be sure it's daylight you want, it's recommended for sewing, quilting, and other specialist applications. OTOH daylight from fluorescent tubes makes people look apoplectic.

Im sure it's a good source of bulbs but a lot of stuff on that site is well freaky.

"Professor Dr. Fritz Hollwich, Director of the University Eye Hopsital in Munster, discovered that only around 25% of the light absorbed by our eyes is used directly for vision, the other 75% travels via the optic pathways to the brain and hypothalmus - the body's chief control system. This controls the nervous system and endocrine system, affecting amongs other things our glandular and hormone system.

Irradiation with sunlight increases the number of white blood cells, most of the lymphocytes, causing an upsurge in the defences against infectious diseases. It also stimulates the formation of Interferon, thereby preventing viruses from proliferating. Our bodies need clear information about day and night in order to regulate our waking and sleeping phases and the biorhythms associated with this. When it is dark more melatonin is produced, which signals to the body that it is time to sleep. On the other hand bright full-spectrum light suppresses the production of melatonin. If parts of the light spectrum are missing, the body can enter a twilight state, comatose, neither fully awake nor asleep."

Therefore : Drink water, eat nuts, send me money, and buy my lamps.

DG

[Pete C]

Philips do a range of CFLs, I use the 'softone' ones shaped like a normal filament bulb and find them to be pretty good, enough light and reasonable colour rendering.

Often freebie CFLs are a bit cheapo and so give them a bad name.

cheers, Pete.

[Hugh Jampton]

How strange ....

I've read the posts in this thread and it seems that nearly all are against LEDs. Well - we've had them (most lights) in our house for many years and really have no problems with them. They last for years and the light is quite acceptable to us.

As usual I'm the odd one out :-)