Technicalities

We've gone mostly energy-saving in our house, barring the dimmer-switched standing lamp in the lounge, and the kitchen light.

Kitchen light annoys me mightily - it has 4 of the little halogen bulbs, and if you put all 4 in, inevitably one of them goes within a couple of weeks. Net result is we usually run with 2 of the four bulbs in as it gives plenty of light and as a handy corollary, saves money too. Trouble is, if those two go in quick succession and you don't have a replacement bulb in...

*ahem* I digress. LED bulbs would be a splendid idea. I thought I'd seen some in B&Q or homebase, but I could be imagining it.

Argh, I've got so many different types of light fitting in my flat, it's crazy. I must try and standardise them a bit, and then I'd (hopefully) only need one type of bulb to fit in them all.

our bathroom light is the worst - takes a standard bayonet fitting, but with a *tiny* bulb. Finally got an energy-saving one and it lasted about six months. Argh.

Now I just need to persuade the Beans that it *is* possible to sleep with the lights *off*.

...and that no monsters will appear as a result.

I can't understand why LED lights are not more commonly available. Hell, even the little floaty bath lights I got for Christmas have them in! So how comes we can't have LEDs available at home?

I know - it's surprising. LEDs are everywhere now, yet no-one seems to have come up with the idea of a bayonet-fitting LED light bulb.

LED bulbs :)

http://www.energybulbs.co.uk/products/LED+Light+Bulbs/Philips+MASTER+LED+Range

But they're thirty quid EACH. Sod that, I'm afraid.

Yeah, I thought that too! But at least it shows they do exist, and will come down in price as the technology is more widespread.

True - I'm sure in a few years' time they'll be affordable. Look how expensive DVD players once were - now you can get them for peanuts. I'm just not willing to be an early adopter here...

We have led bulbs in the kitchen, actually we have a whole load of different types as Tim wanted to experiment and see what is best. He'll probably know more than me. I'll ask him later if he has replied.

Are the LED bulbs the sort that would go in any light fitting, or are they low-voltage ones?

Standard GU10 fitting, usually takes 50W halogen spots, now available in compact fluorescent and LED. I've mentioned it a couple of times in spodlife with pictures and everything.

Ah...so they can replace standard halogen spots? Sounds good, we've got several of those. :)

Aye, we've replaced about 50% of our halogen spots with LED GU10s, they're bright and seem to outlast the halogen spots hugely, but they're very directional which is a bit annoying.

Hmm...for the lights concerned, directional shouldn't be a problem. Where do you get them?

Mine came as a pack of 3 from e-bay. There's a variety on there with different numbers of LEDs and rated as 'equivalent to X watts'. These were apparently 30ish, I think, watts equivalent - which is probably about true - apart from the really quite narrow beam they of light they're fine, and by combining them with the halogens it works quite well.

They're quite a blue-white light, but some of 'em offer more natural looking light, apparently. When I looked there was quite a range (and I wanted cheap, because we're broke, so the ones I got possibly weren't the best, though they were by no means the cheapest). My local electrical store (real one, not B&Q) carries them too, but they were quite pricey and only had the 15W equivalent. Mind you, they still carry bits for my 1950s fuse box so I like 'em lots :)

Cool - I'll do some research. :)

I suffer migraines and flourescent bulbs will intensify them horribly as they flicker very slightly.
Some people are triggered by them easily though, I have been in the past but it was in a large gallery where it was the only form of light (my migraines are mainly environmental triggers, and photo-sensitive triggers affect me less than others who are mainly photo-sensitive).

This also works for epileptics. So I am worried that flourescent bulbs will seriously affect people who suffer from these conditions. Non-flicker bulbs do exist but they cost a bomb.

The other one, as you say, is the incompatibility with dimmers. But converting to dimmable halogens isn't too expensive, but really irritating nontheless.

You can get dimmable energy saving bulbs here. Ouch on the price though. But I suspect they'll come down in time.

http://www.energybulbs.co.uk/products/Dimmable+Light+Bulbs

But the environmental impact of these things is negligable, if not comprimised. Disposal of flourescent bulbs needs to be done correctly otherwise toxic mercury is released when they're broken, which can end up in the water table. And given many people's attitudes to waste disposal this is so not going to be complied with.

So yes, a very minimal amount of energy will be saved, which will be good for the planet, but releasing all that mercury into the enviroment may well cancel that out.

I certainly don't go with the Mail style "they're ruining the good British lightbulb with Brussels guidelines" argument, but I think banning them wasn't really needed.

Absolutely agreed with your last sentence. I think changing the pricing so that energy-savers are cheaper and tungsten bulbs cost more would be the best thing to do - the quickest way to get anyone to adopt anything is to give them a financial incentive to do so.

Indeed. The migraines are a problem though, I was thinking about a friend's dad, he can't go near a flourescent bulb and when he was working they changed all the strip lights in his department as they were such a trigger. So that's a worry, otherwise I think it's a bit mad people are getting so hot under the collar about it.

On LEDs...Glen's experiments with solar panels and LEDs show they can, in theory, be used to light a house. And when there was a power cut they worked just fine as emergency lighting. The problem being though that they're just not bright enough to give proper light, you'd need a lot to actually get the same amount of light as a bulb.

But again, I suspect with time and improvements they'll be used within homes before too long.

The problem being though that they're just not bright enough to give proper light, you'd need a lot to actually get the same amount of light as a bulb.

That's the thing - if you look at LED traffic lights and railway signals, you'll see that it takes a huge cluster of LEDs to create the equivalent light of one bulb, plus there's the additional circuitry to operate them off a suitable low voltage. Network Rail's conventional railway signals (the bulbed variety) work off 110v, but LEDs work off twelve, so the signal heads need additional parts in them to step the voltage down.

There are bulbs I've found (though I'm not sure if they're exactly the same!). I was thinking, and I know nothing about electrics, whether houses would require some re-wiring, or additional components like the rail signs, if LEDs were to be used if the voltage is different?

I saw the Mail in WHSmith and laughed out loud at lunch. They're giving away "beloved traditional lightbulbs".

"Beloved?!" To be honest I've never looked at a lightbulb and got the warm and fuzzies!

It's also just mind boggling. There are civilians dying in Gaza and the Mail is getting wound up about lightbulbs.

But I guess it keeps their minds off the more important issues of the world...whinge about something rather rediculous and forget about all the global crap that's happening.

The mercury in the bulbs affecting you if one broke in your home is a bit alarmist. The amount of mercury per bulb/tube is minute. However, the UK has dumped between 60-80 million fluorescent tubes PER YEAR into landfill for the last thirty years, and would have continued to do so if it wasn't for the WEEE regulations brought in by the EU a couple of years back. Just think of all that mercury that could potentially enter the water table...

There are leds available for home use and you can by ones that fit into your current halogen fittings, they're not brilliant, to get really good ones you'd have to buy an led fitting with the electronic driver(5Watt led=40Watt halogen currently). They are expensive, but they last between 30-50thousand hours, whereas a halogen is usually rated at 5000hrs which you of course know is rubbish.

You can also get energy saving Halogens that use 35Watts of power and are equivalent to 50Watt halogens. It doesn't sound like much, but you'd be surprised how much energy you save and reduction of your carbon footprint if you change your light bulbs.

And these are the newspapers that said amalgam fillings were poisoning us, but completely ignored the later research that said they were fine. To say nothing of MMR vaccine and the epidemic that scare caused.

Oh god, don't get me started on MMR scares. The guy who started that all off has been massively discredited.

I don't know if your companies are the same but recently we've received a pack of 5 free energy saving bulbs from both British Gas and EDF. We've changed the whole house over to them apart from some lamps which take unusually-shaped bulbs and also (as you say) our main lounge lights which are all on dimmers.

The day they make cheap dimmer-friendly energy saving bulbs is the day our house will probably become 100% 'greenly' lit.

The obstacles for me are (a) the dimmers and (b) some light fittings which take assorted small bulbs and spots, which I'm not sure you can get green bulbs for. I must investigate.

http://www.energybulbs.co.uk/products/Dimmable+Light+Bulbs

When those halve in price I'll be upgrading, but for now £11 is about three times more than I'd be willing to spend on a lightbulb tbh!

It appears to be still OK to say "No DSS" on room/flat adverts though.

BTW Have you started reading the Daily Mail again??

LED spots are available in Homebase, but I didn't check the price. The free fluorescent lights we got from British Gas were strange - they were exactly the same as ones we'd bought except they said they lasted 10 years instead of 8. But when the bulb in my bedroom blew, I put one in, but it stank of plastic, so I had to put the one we'd bought in instead.

I must investigate the different options - I don't mind the bulbs being pricy if they'll genuinely last a long time, but there's some debate over how accurate the claims are.

As a side point, my local Tesco do 'value' CFLs, which is how my house got converted. Although we've now replaced a lot of lights around the house with new ones with obscure bulbs - thankfully ikea do their bulbs in CFL form and most of the others are around if you look hard enough. Quite often they come in silly-big-packs, hence we got 5 of the ones in the lounge (it only needs 3), but that was handy 'cos one of the grotty GE bulbs I got the first time around which are slow to come on, and dim when they first come on, died, and has been replaced with a much better B&Q one which comes on properly :)