In message , Jonelle writes
Too right, I'm slowly winning my wife over to having a few fluorescent tubes in the bedroom. Sign of old age I suppose, rather see what's in the wardrobes than have seductive lighting...............
I am quite a fan of using concealed link lights for up lighting and under cabinet lighting. Not particularly energy efficient (its easy to rack of a few hundred watts of them), but good work light with no shadows.
Our current kitchen is a similar height to that, and it does open up other options that don't work as well in lower rooms. I suggested the above plan to SWMBO, but she was not keen. In the end went for a 1.2M track light with 4 wide angle low voltage 50W dichroic halogens. To be fair that has also worked very well - the multiple angles eliminate the shadows, and the height ensures that the light is evenly distributed in spite of the lamps being directional.
GU10s are the spawn of santa! (Ho Ho Ho). The LV versions outperform them in every way.
A cautionary note, that the 32W, 40W and 60W T9-T12 circular fluorescents are below the minimum efficiency level that the EU intends to permit to be sold in a few years time, so you should expect their sale to be banned. These were all old halophospate tubes, although the ones you buy today might be triphosphor (I've not looked), but will still be lower efficiency due to the tube geometry.
There are some new efficient T5 circular tubes, but they aren't retrofits for the old fittings - they must use electronic control gear (like all the new T5 tubes), so the old fittings will be useless unless you get a stock of old tubes (and their filament lamp ballasts if you have real 1960's ones;-).
Thanks for the tip-off. I bought the 32W version from Argos. It is a good light but is heavy so I assume old-fashioned gear. It's re-packed to be returned; it kept cutting out due to weight on the batten holder and buzzed occasionally. The diagram shows it in a pendant fitting - on your own head be it!
One style I saw a lot of in the US in the 1960's was a nest of 2 or 3 different sized circular tubes inside each other with the inner ones slightly lower forming a cone of tubes. I rather liked those at the time, but I've never seen them here. Only other place I ever saw them was in a bar-come-cafe in France. The US circular tubes go one size smaller than we have here -- I think their smallest is 20W -- which makes such a design more practical. They also have single ballasts which are desiged to run multiple different power circular tubes too.
Andrew Gabriel wibbled on Saturday 17 October 2009 10:57
That's interesting.
I think it's time to start googling around the EU - and take advantage of harmonisation. Someone on 230V must have a decent design available as it's patently possible to get creative with the tubes...
In B&Q there was a 40W(? - looked at too many to remember exactly) that seemed to be IP44 (not on box but bathroom zones mentioned) and round the corner there were a couple of cheap ones that had enclosed tubes of, IIRC,
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