Remote Living > Lighting
What are your thoughts on CLF bulbs?
george65:
--- Quote from: DamonHD on January 29, 2017, 09:30:52 AM --- And we don't have air con or a clothes dryer (or pool pump, or desktop computer; laptops instead). But we do have (efficient, nice-to-use) electric cooking (induction hob, fan oven) as it happens.
--- End quote ---
Given this, Lighting in YOUR home may constitute a worthwhile part of your energy consumption.
With my home which has pretty much everything mentioned including a wife and daughter that love fan heaters running all winter in half the rooms, the power we use on lighting is insignificant. I worked out years ago we spent far more on boiling the kettle for Cups of tea through the course of the day than we came near on lighting.
In any case, If one has solar on the roof and is making a saving there, why should one not be allowed to choose what damn light bulbs they have installed?
I appreciate some may be concerned about an extra Dollar on their power bill but for those whom are happy to pay to get what they want, like most other things in life, I don't think it's fair we are dictated to because someone else has an agenda they want to push. If I want an incandecent light bulb and are prepared to pay the bit extra a month on power bills for them, why shouldn't I be able to run them?
Next thing is someone is going to tell us we all have to drive those stupid Prius things to save fuel.
I'm on the 4th generation of lighting here. Place had all fluros when we bought it which I always hated. Replaced them with the Low voltage, High heat 12V/50W downlight types in most rooms and had to suffer those God awful CFL pieces of ship which wouldn't fit in some arrangements anyway as well when real lightbulbs were deemed too non PC to sell any more. Those 12V things gave good light but were always blowing and burning the arse out of the ceramic holders. I used to have to replace 1 a week on average which of course over time added up to several when I got around to it and some rooms only having one left working.
Next was to replace the bulbs with the LED kind. Dear as poison, pretty damn weak and also had variable unpleasant colour temperatures. Did get lucky and was in the right place at the right time so bought a couple of boxes of the things for about 10% the going rate.
Latest re fit has been to put in the new LED's that are the bulb and fitting in one with their own low voltage transformer that is dimmable. Have dimmers on pretty much every switch and dimmed the other ones even though they said non dimmable and never had a problem.
The later types are much brighter, consistent colour temp and don't do haunted house impressions like the MR12 type on the old transformers where they would suddenly start going bright to dim like someone was playing with the dimmer controls.
I think the time will soon come where new houses are wired with one large transformer and then the low voltage LED's are all tapped off that rather than run individual transformers. I have seen on new homes, they put non switched outlet type fittings in the roof that the new type lights can be plugged into. Great for replacement but all those batten holder outlets must add up!
Can't see an entire homes lighting taking any more than 10A @ 12-24V now so wouldn't be hard to do this way when all the lights are only going to be around 10W rated anyhow. The real determination of what gets used these days isn't efficiency or even cost, it's the speed to install.
Someone makes a system that runs some wires that can easily be clipped onto for each fitting and that is the way it will be done.
David HK:
This is a very interesting topic.
Each year I try to offer contributors a moment of winter time reading by making reference to the following URL http://www.pavouk.org/hw/lamp/en_index.html which has an in depth explanation of all the different types of CFL and the circuit layouts.
Its a useful reference base and is not connected with commercial operations, business, politics (whatever they are). Someone has taken a lot of time to put this article together and it blends in nicely with this topic.
As for myself I normally use a black pen to write the date on the barrel of a CFL on the day I it goes into service. I should keep an Excel file naming the room and date the CFL was put into use, but occasionally I fall behind on this. Readers can see the obvious logic which is to try and measure the life until failure of a CFL.
I wonder if CFL's really are lasting the expected life claimed by manufactures?
Dave in Hong Kong
george65:
--- Quote from: David HK on January 29, 2017, 07:24:57 PM ---
I wonder if CFL's really are lasting the expected life claimed by manufactures?
--- End quote ---
I think you'll find as with most claimed lives there would be a set of parameters they are based on. I'd guarantee one of those in this case would be run time. I Imagine they don't want you turning them on too often but also not running them too long where the electronics would heat soak.
I would also think they would specify environmental conditions like temp and humidity and power supply Voltage, frequency and stability.
There could be other factors such as air movement, clearance, orientation and others.
It wouldn't be straightforward that I be sure of that.
Spose the only way to tell their lifetime in practicality would be put a timer on the circuit that measured their run time. Could take some years before they failed. Probably cheap little timers on Fleabay you could use for the job now.
For CFL's, I really wonder why you would bother with them these days? Still horrible damn things IMHO and still not cheap. Saw them on sale at the hardware 2 days ago for a box of 6x 400 Lumen models ( which I thought was very dim) for $40.
$40 would have bought a LOT of incandescent globes which were always under a dollar for domestic sizes here.
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