[Closed] Rant: Energy-saving lightbulbs

Ok, fair point. Noticed the dining room light was crap yesterday.

Sooooo...

How can we take state of the art energy efficient LED lighting and bring it from the bike to the front room???

I bought a whole case of 100W old style lamps a few months back
They're still available - get them while you can

We had £30 quids worth of top brand energy savers in our main lounge light
I took them all out & put the 100s in - what a difference!

Bring the sun to your living room! 😆

Most of the lights we have now use 35w halogen bulbs. Much better of the rooms where you need decent light.

I have found that the energy savers that say they give out the same as a 75W old-style bulb work ok.

dont know how any of lot manage to night ride if you cant even manage in the house with energy saving bulbs 😆

i've had them in houses since about 1998 and never had a problem with them

Bloody has to be at least one early-adopter coming on here willy-waving! 🙄

dont know how any of lot manage to night ride if you cant even manage in the house with energy saving bulbs

simple - I don't have good low light vision so ramp it up as much as poss

They are somewhat scamtastic in somuch as they're indicated filament equivalent wattage is a work of fictional genuis, plus the power factor of them means the leccy companies have to provide more power than is imediately obvious.
However the last lot of 23W ones I got from Tesco were a lot brighter and reached full brightness pretty much instantly. The bulbs were £1 each or 5 for a £1, which seemed a bit bizare 🙂

Hora, that's what happens when you buy the cheapest. Buy a bulb with a warm colour output (2600-2800 Kelvin), that mtches your lighting power requirement- you'll need a 20w bulb to match a 100w incandescent. Oh, and look for one marketed as 'instant on'- full light output pretty much straight away.

You can buy LED replacements for bayonet/screw fittings, as well as halogen spots, but the good ones are expensive- £20+ for good replacements.

The last lot of bulbs I bought come on pretty much straight away, certainly full power within a minute. Hardly a PITA.

20W ones I have around are better than the 60W ones our landlord fitted, the house is so bright now.

🙄

I'd almost forgotten how good a really rubbish Hora rant was. 🙂

Maybe you just need to eat more carrots.

Yep cheap ones, like the ones given away free are pants.
I sell a version here the best one is 15W in white COL3500 comes on straight away and isn't orange.
But most punters want the as many as you can eat for 50p ones, regardless I'll only sell the good ones that work, but you have to pay the price

I'll tell you what gets my goat with energy saving bulbs.

When NPower send you a box full of free ones. The box is *just* too big to go through the letterbox, so the postie leaves a little note telling you to come to the depot. And it's christmas so you think it's that 12" dildo you ordered from that online shop for a present for the wife so you *have* to go to the depot and collect it. I mean, you've got all the standard stuff like perfume and jewelry already but girls like something romantic on christmas morning so you *have* to go.

You get there and it's a box of shite bulbs.

The only energy savers I notice are my B&Q downlighters in the kitchen...when cold they are really dim for the first couple of minutes, you just get an eerie orange glow.

Apart from that, my only real gripe is the electric companies that keep sending me bulbs as a gift. They don't fit through the letterbox so you get a drop card. Always a dissapointment when you've rushed home from work to get to the depot before closing time to find its yet more bulbs to add to the pile. They are friken lightbulbs worth less than the postage on the box...why o why can't the senders specify they can be left behind the dustbin or something! Even the postie manning the counter apologised as he handed them over 🙂

Edit: Snap!

Plus they shatter when you stick them up your fanny.

all the 5 for 50p bulbs i've had from Tesco and Sainsburys recently have been great! I route through though and make sure I only get the 20W (100w equivalent) ones which I find fine - come on instantly and bright!

the 9 and 11w ones are pitiful though...

[Plus they shatter when you stick them up your fanny.]

Wow read that just in time 😳

Anyway I think it's a plan most cunning on behalf of the manufacturers you see. Under the WEE directive you can't dispose of fluorescent lamps by normal means, you have to pay to dispose of them through specialist companies. So it's cheaper to dispose of old stock by posting them out to punters to deal with, so in a roundabout way they just end up in bins and landfill. I'd send them back.

<pedantry mode>

They're actually fluorescent tubes, not bulbs

</pedantry mode>

It's like finding an old non working fridge left in the new house you've just bought.

I'll tell you what gets my goat with energy saving bulbs.

When NPower send you a box full of free ones. The box is *just* too big to go through the letterbox, so the postie leaves

I use Phillips Energy Saver bulbs, come up bright very quickly, no probs so far. Argos were a couple of days ago selling 10 for a £1.....YES 10 for a £1 !!!!!!!. In their section prior to tills.

Thay also create load of electromagnetic noise, so if you play a strat or telecaster ect.., you have to turn the lights out all over the house before you start playing.

They are also full of nasty stuff, so you have to leave the room for 20mins if you break one (dunno if this applies to the fanny situation though?).

Brought this one up AGAIN have we? Jesus you'd think people would realise that el-cheapo lightbulbs take a while to warm up and that decent ones warm up in seconds, but really, seriously do you need stadium lighting intensity instantly in your house? Give over and find something important to moan about!

Just buy 25W ones.....

vinnyeh is absolutely correct, modern CFLs can be as effetive as the old GLS lamps. Just don't buy the cheapest crappest ones in the shop.

We have dimmer switches all around the house which is annoying as you have to find the ones that will dim (the fluorescent ones don't as we found out) which is a bit more awkward.

Some CFLs dim fine, however you should be aware that the performance tails off when you do (ie they become less efficient).

For those saying that pricier bulbs are fine, I have one of these in the living room:
[img] [/img]
[url= http://www.thelightbulbshop.co.uk/Shop/LightBulbs/EnergySavingBulbs/Product/2278/DC5BC/DuluxELClassic.aspx ]Osram Dulux EL Classic - £6.73[/url]

15W - it's supposed to be equivalent to 75W - but you can barely read by it and when you first switch it on you have to look straight at it to even know it is lit.

One of these days I'll be bored enough to take a photo under it to show what I mean.

I changed the dimmer switches to normal ones in the 2 main rooms downstairs when I put in CFLs - though they seemed to work OK with the dimmer switches. My sitting room has 6 wall lights and was silly bright IMO when I moved in - now just use 3 of the wall lights with CFLs and that's fine for us; they're below 20w I'm sure.

Those Osrams are rubbish, especialy in BC as they're top heavy, and they're warm white.
Shops just punt out any old garbage without giving a thought as to how good they are.

**** the fancy bloody bulbs. Im going hunting for a shedload of 100w normal bulbs!

Feel free to use the 100W bulbs. How are your leccy bills?

@ Hora
Yep loads of people put off by rubbish lamps and go back to good old tungsten.
Well done the government with your crappy ideas and inferior goods.

GrahamS:

One of these days I'll be bored enough to take a photo under it to show what I mean.

If you ever get that bored i would just shoot yourself 😉

How are your leccy bills?

Thanks the weak and ineffectual Government that leftwing loonies voted in, its not my leccy bills- its my ****ing gas bills that cause me concern.

Yes, damn that government with their energy saving ideas. The less efficiently we use our electricity the better.

That'll work 😉

If you ever get that bored i would just shoot yourself

I'm rubbish at self portraits 😀

I can guarantee that your gas and electricty bills will rise and rise if you plan on using the same amount rather than working out ways to reduce energy usage.

Leftwing loonies? You'll be after the Daily Malice campaign to save our 'beloved' lightbulb then!

Whilst I attempt to save energy and recycle and what-not my wife is less interested - and when she turns on the 2000w heater I do wonder if using a few less 100w bulbs is really gonna make much difference....

Say 4 100w lightbulbs is not going to mean squat over the next few years of ridiculous energy price rises. The energy-efficient bulbs are merely poster-childs to be waved at us poor saps by the energy companies.

Cant wait for the next batch of marketing bulbs to be sent to us to 'hide' 20%+ price rises.

So a saving of 4x 65W (say) per household. Assuming around 20 million households and all the lights on at the same time that's 5.2GW! I believe Drax is around 2.5GW at peak load so that's not really squat.

It's guaranteed that energy prices will rise and whinging isn't going to do much about that!

My mistake, Drax is around 4.5GW!

Now, I like a pointless rant as much as the next man, but this "modern light bulbs are rubbish" thing confuses me. Why not simply buy a bulb that has the colour temperature and light output that you require?

Why not simply buy a bulb that has the colour temperature and light output that you require?

And how do you do that when the [url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8406923.stm ]European Commission[/url] and [url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6693174/Energy-saving-bulbs-are-not-labelled-correctly-according-to-Defra-study.html ]DEFRA[/url] admit that manufacturers lie on the specs and labelling of these bulbs?

Allegedly.

and when she turns on the 2000w heater I do wonder if using a few less 100w bulbs is really gonna make much difference....

On one hand, yes you are right the energy consumed in heating, cooling and domestic ho****er are much more significant than lighting for example, however every bit helps. Also factor in the public buidlings (schools, hospitals etc) that are least efficient of all, or offices and shops that 'drink' energy at scary rates due to poor design and understanding or blindnesses to the issue.

Bulbs are also 'low hanging fruit' - easy, cheap and effective. Try saying that about (for example) insulating and draft-proofing all the cute, solid walled terraces and cottages that litter the UK...

Good bulbs are worth it, and we are slowly buying LED ones (our new house has many spots ) and so far they are great.

Most of the new bulbs are the equivilent of walking about in a coal mine.

I would feel a bit better about being forced to use them if all office blocks were forced to turn lights out instead of running them all night.

If shops and offices had to be designed with enough windows and light wells to reduce thier need for artificial lighting - most shops have blanked out any windows, other than front displays, so have to use masses of artificial lights.

If a maximum temp level was set for shop heating (recent article in paper saying they are heated higher than summer temps abroad!)

If shops were banned from leaving all thier doors open in the winter, with heaters on full blast, trying to still keep the building warm.

In comparison, my 2 100 watt bulbs look pretty harmless. The rest in the house are low energy.

From linky above...

So, to get the brightness of a traditional 60-watt bulb, choose a 15-watt CFL bulb.

Either I'm getting amazing bulbs or the world is going nuts. My 11W bulbs more than replace my 60Wers.

Who wants a clinical 100W floodlighting effect in the house?

I suggest you're getting good bulbs (what brand are they by the way?).

As I said my 15W, supposedly 75W equivalent, is more like a 35W equivalent. I don't need clinical floodlighting, but I'd like to be able to read the paper.

Hora moaning about lightbulbs [b]again[/b]??
Have you tried using bulbs with the correct output yet?

If shops and offices had to be designed with enough windows and light wells to reduce thier need for artificial lighting - most shops have blanked out any windows, other than front displays, so have to use masses of artificial lights.

Ah, but then the passive solar gain would be so high that they turn on the a/c....

[i]So a saving of 4x 65W (say) per household. Assuming around 20 million households and all the lights on at the same time that's 5.2GW! I believe Drax is around 2.5GW at peak load so that's not really squat.[/i]

I think the saving will be a bit less (though still substantial)
A 100W bulb is a purely resistive load and the volts and amps are in phase. So the leccy supplier have 100VA of generating power (ignoring transmission losses) to drive it.
CFLs at the moment typically have a power factor of 0.5 This means that although a 25W CFL will register a consumption of 25W watts on your meter, because of the intermitent current they draw, the supplier has to provide 50VA of generating power, rather than the intuitive 25VA. Also if the resitive heating from the light bulbs will have to be transfered to your heating system instead.

Of course that's not to say that CFLs don't save energy and aren't worthwhile, just that the headline savings are not as much as people first imagine.

Smart @arse!

Also if the resitive heating from the light bulbs will have to be transfered to your heating system instead.

I looked into this, and it makes b*gg*r all difference in the average 'heat leaking' UK house, it would if you live in a Passive Haus++/AECB Gold+ house

Out of interest why does it not make any difference? Is not 400W of heat 400W heat? I mean you could quite reasonably argue that you won't notice the heat difference, but that's the same argument as you won't notice if you turn the thermostat down 0.1 degree. In both cases i'm sure it will feel exactly the same, and use less energy. But in both cases you'll just using less energy becuase you're keeping the place slightly cooler rather than any efficiency gain.
Though I'm quite prepared to believe that I've missed something, as it's your area of expertise.

because the heating needed for the average (UK insulated and drafty) room is so high, and its not 400w of heat (some is light), plus its high up (usually) and not where occupants benefit.

Don't get me wrontg, it does something. PassiveHaus calculations take account of it, and how much water is in your toilet cistern and at what incoming temp (for example), its just in most houses it is naff all.