The Status 30W in Morrisons seem to be OK; also the PF is nearly 1. There is a bit of warm-up time - that doesn't bother me as the one that I use most is on in the early morning when the 'daylight' is poor, so a good bright light after 30 sec. or so is acceptable.
I have had consistently good results from Prolite spirals over the last 3 years. I have had a couple of bulbs burning 24h/day and the lifetime seems to be around 2 years - so somewhere bweteen 15,000 - 20,000 hours.
The 25W and 30W BC ones are extremely good - fast start up and good light - far better than an incandesent for working by.
But they are not cheap - which pretty much sums it up. I got fed up with supermarket crap dying or being useless I did a trial of several types.
Megaman aren't a bad make either.
I've had two out door Megaman spot lights actually fill up with water - strangely they stopped working soon after that, but pretty lousy for an external bulb!
AWEM
In message , Tim Watts wrote
My experience with that brand
Andrew Gabriel :
I look forward to a sensible world, where the brightness was specified as the light *output*, shortly after switching on (say 3 seconds), when half its rated life has elapsed.
Never going to happen, is it? Slimy bastards.
They came back as horribly inefficient decorative lamps a few years ago (were available in B&Q, and may still be).
They've always been available for laboratory use from lab suppliers, normally for imaging their filaments through optics (e.g. pin-hole cameras).
They have an interesting failure mode - if the glass cracks and air gets in, they normally explode at next switch-on.
How many blew up out of how many did you try?
A sample of one/one can be bad luck. One of mine was DoA but was replaced for free.
I recommended the 23W Feit ones from Costco elsewhere in the thread. They are cheap (and come variously in packs of 4 or 6), but they're currently out of stock until April. I've fitted loads of them over the last 4-5 years and so far very few have failed. Many of these are running in enclosed hot fittings too.
ITYM take it back and get it replaced by another brand.
I had one of the SL18 pre-release samples they distributed in 1980, and required a feedback form (which I submitted). Unfortunately, I left it in digs when I moved out in 1984. I tried to retrieve it a year later, but the occupier told me it had died and been chucked out.
I still have an SL25 and SL9 in the cupboard, but the ratings other than SL18 (18W) appeared significantly later than the original SL18.
Thorn Lighting released the 2D lamp and BC ballast at the same time, the advantage being that you didn't have to throw out the ballast when the tube died. The SL18 became popular in the home, whereas the
2D became more popular in commercial installations, as companies started designing luminares specifically for it (the original retrofit BC ballast version never got very popular). Commercial use of compact fluorescent was way ahead of domestic use in the early days, so Thorn's 2D was initially more successful than Philips SL18.
I suspect it was the dishonesty of the filament equivalence labels meaning they were always dimmer than expected, combined with retail outlets like supermarkets not stocking any genuine 100W (or above) equivalents.
Get an LED lamp and stop using the CFL shit. Instant on, 50,000 hour life, bright, any tone of white you want, virtually no heat produced, virtually no electricity used.
In your dreams.
Agreed up to about a year ago the "equivalence" was optomistic to say the least. More recently the packaging does seem to reflect more accurate values and the lumen output is more promimently displayed as well.
I've never lived anywhere that had 100W tungsten bulbs, far to fing bright! 60W perl was the norm. Clear ones are just to harsh. Mind you main living areas would have a fitting with several bulbs in not just a single pendant. Are those that seem to require the light output of
100W bulbs just have the one bulb per room?
In my house. I bought a load direct from the manufacturer in Hong Kong.= =A35 each including postage. They're brighter than the 50W halogen sp= ots I replaced them with, I'd estimate about 75W. They consume 6.5W (I = measured it).
110 years old and still going...
From what I've read, there's a "bathtub" failure curve on them. Once they've lasted a few weeks, they're fairly reliable.
Possibly, if you buy a decent brand (eg with Cree, Nichia or Luxeon LEDs).
If you buy cheap chinese crap from B&Q, you can look forward to LED chips failing in short order.
Also the colour index is even more a minefield than CFLS.
Filaments were so much simpler - no dimmer problems, and your choice was limited to crap vs OK vis a vis lifetime. A GLS 100W filament while it worked generally behaved like any other GLS 100W filament.
And in the old days, we mostly only had BC fittings to worry about...
What make specifically (or a link to your supplier) - and have you any idea of lifetime yet?
There are indeed a lot of s**te ones. I made the mistake of buying a flimsy looking one manufactured in the UK once. It lasted about 2 months, then a third of the LEDs went off, a couple more months and another third went off.
These ones I have now have a 5 year warranty and use the new type of LED - there are only three huge LEDs in them as opposed to 120 LEDs in the crap one I had before (which incidentally cost more!)
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