Low voltage lighting in 18th edition?

[Harry Bloomfield]

[e-mail] has brought this to us :

230v spec lamps do not survive long on 240v.

[damduck-egg]

Depends if the sellers care.

TBH I think Dennis's comment was really about a non issue. As the incandescent lamp appears be rapidly being replaced by LED some seem like a lot of modern stuff to have a wider voltage range .

I was surprised at not being able to easily find a stockist of incandescent lamps in India to compare with, the government appears to have discouraged their use fairly vigorously by subsidising other types until the sheer quantity of sales for LED dropped the unit cost.

G.Harman

[Huge]

We went to India on holiday some 5 years ago and I was surprised not to see a single incandescent lamp while we were there. It was CFLs everywhere.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

True. It makes far more sense for every country in the world to use a different type of supply. Called taking back control. Why make things easy for the countries we import all our electrical goods from? Far better they have to be specially made for us. And they pay for that. They can pay for our wall across the channel too.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If a kid is old enough to remove a BC bulb, they should be old enough to know not to stick their fingers in it.

But if you are really concerned about safety, fit an appropriate RCD. But don't expect others to have to pay extra for stupid parents.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You must be one of those who think our voltage was changed by EU regs. A Mail reader?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Does the 18th edition cover commercial lighting installations?

[Scott]

I'm not concerned at all. Anyway, I thought an RCD only detected leakage to earth so why would touching both terminals trip an RCD?

[tabbypurr]

I've never yet seen 220/230/240v filament lamps labeled as the wrong voltage. I have however seen no shortage of people that don't understand filament lamps & mains voltage.

NT

[dennis]

At about 18:00 the voltage on my energy meter quite often says ~230V. I have seen it down at 229V but not often. That's before I switch on the oven, hob or kettle.

[Roger Hayter]

And mine used to be from 246 to 253. Still in spec for both the 230V and the old 240V standards.

[Scott]

I'm sure as a child I was told it was 250V. Was that ever true or was my granny exaggerating to scare me :-)

[Graham.]

Wasn't there a betting fraud case a few years ago, that worked by literally hacking the floodlight control system?

[Max Demian]

Has anyone tested RCDs on children? ;->

[tabbypurr]

I've not seen the nazi 'research' I believe the 30mA trip threshold is based on, but I expect they probably did.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Very first time I went abroad (to Portugal) in the '60s, was surprised to see just about everywhere lit by fluorescents. Presumably because the relative costs of electricity were very much higher than the UK they wanted the best bang for their buck.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

[Scott]

appears to disagree with you.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Then it's wrong too.

A device which detects leakage to earth is an ELCB.

An RCD looks for differential current between line and neutral. Which, of course, may be caused by a leakage to earth.

[Roger Hayter]

I thought actually he was right, but that the average human who is not currently hanging from a very well insulated overhead structure tends to have quite a low impedance to earth.