Remember my post a few weeks back "Another Reason to Hate CFLs" ? Well, here's yet another. That one that I put in my bench light, that started it all, has now become so dim, that it is worse than useless. It has been getting worse and worse over the last week. There are signs of the ballast enclosure running hot, so I guess that any electros in there, have just cooked dry, due to the fact that it is predominantly hanging down, in a semi-enclosed 'shade', much like a lot of household room and decorative lighting does. They are fundamentally a crap technology that has been forced on a largely unwanting public, by supposedly green issues with a dubious foundation in fact.
I know a lot of people on here seem to like the dreadful things, and swear by them, but my continuing experience, judged from when they first appeared, right up until now, just makes me want to swear *at* them ...
I have now found an internet site selling all varieties of incandescents, including 60 watt pearl, so I shall be stocking up post haste. I have also just started trying out the halogen versions of traditional light bulbs, which still seem to make it into the eco-bollox "book of energy savers", even though they only consume a few watts less than their equivalent light-output 'traditional' tungsten cousins. Thus far, I am impressed. I now have a 70 watt actual, 100 watt equivalent, fitted to my hallway main light fixture. It is very bright, very easy (for me anyway) to see by, and has a good colour spectrum, not in the slightest way offensive to my eyes, unlike the CFLs, which no matter how much anyone says that *they* can't tell the difference with, *I* can ... d :-\
It's a matter of use and taste. I would not put one in a reading light, but for general illumination (but not base up), they are fine.
For example, an 11 watt CFL is just perfect for my bathroom, so that at
3am when I stumble in half asleep without my glasses to use the toilet, I don't trip over the bathtub (it's recessed into the floor). A 11 watt or even a 30 watt incandescent bulb would not be bright enough.
On the other hand, if I had two 35 watt flourescent lights installed for more reasonable use, such as being able to read while on the toilet, seeing well enough to take a bath or shower, or even brushing my teeth.
So in general, I save a lot of money on electricity using one, but don't expect it to be something it's not.
As soon as you have the bulbs in hand, share the URL. :-)
Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
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My home workshop is actually a converted bedroom - and when building it tried to make things as easy as possible to revert back to that when I get too old to use it. ;-) Ie, any time soon...
The workbenches all have decent lighting above them, but the switches aren't at the door so I still have a central pendant fitting for just general illumination. Which was fitted with a clear 150 watt tungsten. Now blown my last spare of this size.
So after a deal of looking, got a spiral CFL said to be a 120 watt equivalent. Is it hell - it's dimmer than a 100 watt pearl. And a bilious shade of yellow. And it takes ages to get to full output - even at an ambient temp of 20C.
I do like the mains halogen types, though, apart from cost. Have a 100 watt one in the anglepoise at the electronics bench. At my age you need lots of light when examining PCBs, etc. And that light quality is just right.
--
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Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
My Shed is lit by 75W "eco" halogens (only 3 of 'em so far) plus one in the Danglepoise over the measuring and marking-out "table", very good light. I'm fitting a 50W 12V halogen in the lathe's worklight (easier to find than 50V incandescents around here) so will see (I hope) how that works out.
Of course you can tell the difference re colour spectra - the CFLs (and worse, "white" LEDs) give 3 narrow bands centred on the eye's sensitivities to RGB light (which works ok with emittive displays) so only illuminate 3 colours correctly when looking at reflective/absorbtive materials - any colours in between the 3 narrow peaks won't be rendered correctly, for values of "rendered under a full-spectrum light" as per sunlight, incandescent lights, even full moonlight...
They're just adequate for the lav's, hallways, front porch and the cluttered loft though.
Incandescents also have major green bonuses re recycling or landfill - by design they don't contain any mercury, other toxic heavy metals, radioactive materials or toxic organic materials (unlike CFLs), can be run through a crusher to recover the glasses and metals separately, are far cheaper and simpler to manufacture - one wonders whether the powers that be actually considered the whole lifecycle of CFLs when promoting them as "green"? In the USA and probably in the EU they're classified as "hazardous waste" as they fail the Toxic Characteristic Leaching Procedure test hence much more onerous disposal requirements.
Just my ha'pence worth, Dave H.
--
(The engineer formerly known as Homeless)
"Rules are for the obedience of fools, and the guidance of wise men" -
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Oh yes, Dave. You are preaching to the converted ! Probably, actually, to the original pastor !! I'm famous on the 'net for crying about CFLs, lead-free solder, and eco-bollox in general. I have had a good rant many times about the eco 'credentials' of this so-called 'green' technology, including the hidden costs of manufacturing, shipping, and disposing of CFLs - and ugly windmills all over the land and seascapes and tidal electricity mills and now fields of PV panels.
I just wish that some of the politicians and 'save-the-planet-green-mist-brigade-do-gooders', would actually stop for a moment and temporarily put aside their evangelical fervour, and have a realistic look at the wider picture. It's just so frustrating to see good, proven, mature and reliable technologies, which were developed over many years with very good reasons for the changes and developments to them, displaced by these substitute (NOT replacement) technologies, which have been hurried into production without due respect for many affected areas, just to satisfy directives and personal 'missions' being thrust upon the population by politicians, think tanks, and faceless committees and commissions, desperately trying to either make a name for themselves, or preserve their jobs and pensions ... :-(
I'm not against responsible use of the planet's resources, and recycling where appropriate, but it has all turned into nothing short of a religion in the last few years, without any consideration of issues besides the green ones, and it really makes me mad that we're all rolling over and letting it wash over us, in the name of 'doing our bit'.
Don't expect it to last very. If you don't run it long enough to engage the halogen cycle, the bulb will burn out faster than a conventional incandescent.
Several weeks ago I said I'd switched to all fluorescents. I was wrong. The stairwell and hallway lamps are all incandescent. (Almost all of them are still working after 10 years.) Fixtures that are turned on only briefly should be regular incandescents -- or LEDs! Other types are not appropriate.
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in news:ibgphk$dr0$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
I have 130V "contractor" incandescents in my apartment. there's one bulb in the bathroom fixture(8 40w mini-bulbs) that is original,still working after 25 years. One in my dining room [heavily used]lasted 15 years,but that one was on a dimmer.
I use CFLs where a light stays on a long time[living room],and incandescents for short on-off applications.
You don't really remember who invented global warming do you?
Back in the mid 1980's when the coal miner's strike brought the UK economy to its knees (the pound was $1.05), Margaret Thatcher came up with it as a way of preventing the miners from ever having a politicial voice again.
The whole idea was to make coal and the miners so "dirty" to the common man that the mines would be closed and they would be the last generation of miners destined to finish out their (longer) lives on the dole.
It sort of worked until Al Gore got into the carbon credit business. He had a professional "pitch" put together to get investors (something every startup does) and it took off. In the end it became the power point pitch that won a Nobel prize.
It's not as far fetched as you think. Before she got into politics, Thatcher was an industrial engineer and is the mother of modern ice cream. She calculated the exact proportion of air that could be added to ice cream and still sold as ice cream.
Now except for home made and few specialty products, all ice cream is made from a variation of her formula.
Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
To help restaurants, as part of the "stimulus package", everyone must order
dessert. As part of the socialized health plan, you are forbidden to eat it. :-)
I'm not convinced about this. I have lots of 12v halogens on dimmers, and their life doesn't seem any different from those which aren't. If anything, longer. Nor have they blackened as some say should happen.
One thing that does annoy is most CFLs have a shorter life than claimed when hung with the connector at the top - as most incandescent lamps. Due to the heat getting to the electronics.
I bought a very expensive GE RO80 CFL spot which claimed a very long life
- precisely because it was difficult to change. And that failed after about 1500 hours - because of overheating, I was told. In a fitting designed for a 100 watt incandescent.
WTF is the point of a spot which can't be pointed where you want the light to land?
And giving an equivalent light output based on some ancient incandescent bulb no one ever uses?
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Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
And incidentally the rest of the working class population in the UK. As well as plenty of the middle classes too. The UK is strange in that many seem to want others to be low paid, rather than all well paid.
And, of course, North Sea gas was just coming on stream. Now, it is well past peak prododuction. So our now converted power stations rely on imported gas. At whatever those who sell it wish to charge.
Who'd have thought a politician would go for short term gain? ;-(
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Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
It depend on how far you dim them. If you dim just a little bit, they'll be at the point where the temperature is extremely high, but not high enough for the halogen cycle to kick in. Result: short life.
But if you dim fairly far down, you'll be below that range, and they'll last "forever".
It provides a reference point most people are familiar with. In 20 years, it will have disappeared.
Can't you (still) purchase these over-the-counter? I'll admit to not having gone shopping for any recently (as I have several dozen of various bulb types on the shelf) but i didn't realize they have (?) disappeared...
(which also makes me wonder if lead solder has gone this route)
I found the halogens to be a harsh light. Love them outdoors (can you spell "bright as day"?) but I've removed all of the indoor bulbs.
We're waiting for dimmable LED lamps (that won't require growing extra limbs to purchase)...
In theory, they have this side of the pond. There was EU legislation put in place - that our government of course felt it necessary to sign up to - which phased out incandescent bulbs with a pearl diffuse envelope. 60 watters were to be the first to go, followed by 100s. Clear envelopes however, were to remain available, at least for the time being. So all of the supermarkets and sheds stopped selling 60 watt pearl bulbs, ahead of the 'ban' to make sure that they complied, and were not left with cartloads of unsellable items on their hands. However, as I understand it, due to a governmental administrative snafu, the actual legislation was never enacted in the UK, leaving the way wide open for internet sellers, to just carry on as they were, and take full advantage of people's natural tendencies to stock up. I guess that the supermarkets etc have not restocked to make sure that a) they don't catch a cold if the situation suddenly changes, and b) they don't look bad that they've sold out on their eco-bollox credibility ratings.
No, not really. Standard leaded solder has disappeared from all commercially available electronic equipment, with the exception of classes of items such as avionics, life support, and military (draw your own conclusions on this) which have been granted dispensations to continue to manufacture in leaded technology. This has been the case since June 2006 when the RoHS directive came into full operation. However, there is no requirement for equipment manufactured and brought to market before that date, and perfectly legally constructed using non RoHS compliant materials, including solder, to be repaired using anything other than originally specified non-compliant parts and solder. Indeed, it is considered to be not particularly metallurgically good to mix the two types of technology. There is also no requirement for items constructed for your personal use, and not to be offered for resale, to be constructed with lead-free parts and solder. For these reasons, traditional 60/40 solder is still readily available from all the usual parts supply houses, and is expected to continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Really ? I have found the light to be perfectly pleasant, if perhaps a little bright. Maybe that is your interpretation of "harsh" ?
Although like CFLs, they do seem to be getting a little better, I've yet to see any that come close to other lighting technologies. My local supermarket has a number of floodlight fixtures for the car park, split between wall and pole mounts. Until a couple of weeks ago, these were fitted with some kind of metal halide or maybe high pressure sodium bulb. Whatever they were, they were a pale yellow, and did a grand job of lighting the car park in all weather conditions. They have now replaced the fittings with white LED arrays. I would guess that each one is probably a 10 x 5 matrix, so 50 LEDs. They are so bright that you can't look at them so what power rating are they ? 1 watters ? or 3s maybe ? Whatever, still a pretty significant power draw over 50 of them. However, bright as they are, the light from them is "harsh" - there's that word again - cold and shadowy. They don't actually come close to the performance of the previous floodlights, whatever exact technology they were. It will be interesting to see how well they penetrate fog, as we're now into that season. When low pressure sodiums were first introduced for street lighting, as I recall, fog penetration - which *is* inescapably good for yellow light - was one of the cited advantages for the technology. Certainly where you find white (mercury vapour ? egg shaped bulbs) high intensity street lighting in use, it performs nothing like as well in fog.
No. I have a tendency to not read boring bullshit.
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A bit of trivia on lead. See PDF or XLS for USA lead production at:
Despite the RoHS ban, new production (mining or primary production) in the USA has dropped drastically over the years, but recycling (secondary production) has made up the difference. If you look at the lead-use numbers above, there's a decrease in the use of lead in solder, which is more than compensated for by the increased use of lead in other areas. At best, overall consumption is fairly flat, with a slight drop due to the current recession.
More on lead:
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
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I'm on my 2nd year of running a 100 watt equiv 6500k CFL upside down and enclosed in a globe all year long dusk to dawn. I guess the brand does matter in this case Osram/Sylvania. And there was no indication on the package of any severe duty specifications.
**Why would you stock up on incandescents? In a few years, LEDs will be pretty much the standard and reasonably priced and they keep their colour temperature when dimmed. As for experiences, mine is all good (with CFLs). In the past 7 years, I've had two failures (out of 19 installed). One I dropped and the other a possum sat on it. I either use CFLs or straight tubes just about everywhere. When I really need a lot of light, I hook up my
80 Watt (or 160) halide. Either one makes a 500 Watt halogen look sick. There are a few places in my homoe where I still have incandescents/halogens. I can't wait to dump them. They're unreliable pieces of shit. Give me CFLs any day. Or LEDs. Or halides, when I need them.
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