3 Pin Low Energy Bulbs BC3 Fittings

gabriel77

Hi all just spent 2 days looking for one of these bulbs, no one sells them. Then I remembered this wonderful sight and thought I'd ask. Well clearly didnt need too. Thank you all for your wonderful advice I now know what to do. What a really stupid idea putting these kind of fitments into low cost housing, honestly, people will be sitting in the dark, £10.00 a bulb. Well Im going to get onto my Housing Association tomorrow and demand they come in and change them all, crazy rip off times. :eek:

qualityguy

Hmm it's bad enough having these new bulbs forced on us, faceless idiots forcing the issue even more. This is a classic case of the EU coming up with a hairbrained idea and rushing it through with no forward planning. In this case the new bulbs are not readily available and this is not the first thing that been forced on the general public with no warning.

You can't supposedly add electrical items to your OWN home any more, even if you know what you are doing. All the old wiring with red and black was taken off the shelves virtually over night to be replaced with blue and brown. so when you come to sell a check can be made.

Then there was the gas cooker fiasco. All new gas cookers installed in "multi-dwelling" buildings such as flats have to have auto gas shut of valves fitted to them, so you can't leave the gas on on. A good idea in theory but this regulalion got rushed through so fast no one bothered to check that there were actually any cookers fitted with the valve in question! So for a while my daughter who wanted a cooker for her flat couldn't buy one, finally she got special permission after a lot of faffing around.

I now hear our plumbing fittings such as taps are being made with smaller bores presumably to save water and force people to put up with a lower flow rate. So don't throw those old taps away. Apparently these new fittings are more suitable for continental systems, (certainly the pipework in France IS smaller that ours).

What is very worrying is that all these new regualations are being sneaked in un announced and catching people out, all by faceless eurocrats too!!

Meanwhile back to the bulb issue. I would simply change the light fittings, the pendant type (on the end of a piece of wire) should be easy enough to change. Time to stick two fingers up at these Eurocrats .......... Hmm maybe THESE fittings will be banned soon, it wouldn't surprise me :mad:

kcaj7

Hello

on ur post 4.1.09 u said that ur bc3 bulb appeared to have died but that u, "fiddled with the bayonet part to get it going again."

I'd be very grateful for some more info on this as we had decided to replace our bc3 fitting for the usual bc 2 pin version until I read on another thread that it may well void our electrical warranty! Also read that there may be a risk of arcing and thought there was a chance of my getting it wrong on Dan's adaptation as others had reported the same.

Thanks to all contributors on this: Would otherwise be very at sea in this mess.

Bongedone

Angelic wrote: »

This is disgusting. £10 plus per bulb:mad:

Someone should organise a march...

You missed the march. It happened back in March!

barmonkey

just cut 1 pin from a 2 pin bulb, it only needs 1 pin to hold it in place, my flat had the 3 pin sockets in every room so i went to tesco and bought 10 for £2 and cut the pin off,

Bongedone

barmonkey wrote: »

just cut 1 pin from a 2 pin bulb, it only needs 1 pin to hold it in place, my flat had the 3 pin sockets in every room so i went to tesco and bought 10 for £2 and cut the pin off,

I thought they where talking about the fittings that came in my new build flat but they are not.

In my flat the ballast for the CFL is part of the fitting and not part of the bulb. These bulbs are very expensive. I just changed the fittings so I can use normal cheap CFLs.

dasophster

I live in a housing assoc flat and we are allowed to get the light fittings changed to any that we like so don't see why we couldn't change the majority of these blasted 3-pin fittings to the regular 2 pin bayonet type, after all if we can have fancy spotlights or chandeliers put up then surely changing to a 2 pin bayonet is far less of an issue. Also just changing the bulb holder is classed as a minor electrical job (so permitted to do yourself; like rewiring a plug) not a major one. Anyhoo from my understanding as long as one fitting in the property remains a BC3 then it fits the building regulations perfectly. The building warranty period for this development with the house builders has finished as well. After buying the bulb holders from ryness ages ago I only changed them yesterday, just never got round to it, but got quite sick of spending £100+ over the past two years on replacing the MEM-lite bulbs, which surely should be reported to trading standards for their laughable claim that they last 8 years-most of the time they don't even last 8 months! I replaced the stupid MEM bulbs with some nice free osram ones that my old electricity company so kindly sent

manc54

We moved into a new build last year (housing assoc) and all the light fittings are 3-pin. Most of the new houses had a bulb die within the 1st month. Another problem was none of our shades fitted, the bulbs are too long. So the end result of the engery saving has meant spending money for new shades and replacing hard-to-find, expensive bulbs on top of moving expenses. This from a housing assoc that mainly deals with low-paid, working (we had to provide pay slips before moving in) families. Thank you very much, greenies!

Nixt

Hi , Have just fallen foul of the fact that there is more than 1 type of 3 pin light fittting - bought some 3 pin bulbs called B22d-3 BC3 only to find the configuration of the 3 pins is totally different - how many more types are there? how can you be sure you're buying the right bulb? ( don't have landlords permission to change the fittings)

dasophster

They are called MEM bc3, they are only sold online and in select electrical retailers like BEW. Good luck! I now have none of these fittings in anymore as its only regulations there had to be one of these installed when the place is built, they don't have to be kept. There were a couple I put off changing until the MEM bulbs ran out which unsurprisingly didn't take long, lol. Only thing is changing the bulb holder kills your arms but its worth it. Regular bc bulbs are less flickery than the rubbish MEM ones too xx