Energy saving light bulbs

andrew-b

Networkguy wrote: »

Having now checked, the Ikea ones are much longer than normal and are certainly longer than the 70mm limit you have.

They work for us because of the type of light fitting we use.

Sorry to get your hopes up

Thanks everso much for checking for me...appreciate it! Looks like i'll have to wait until the like-for-like replacements become affordable. I'll keep searching!

Andy

jimtylee

Having tried many brands of so called energy saving bulbs.......we find them very dull in comparison to a normal household bulb.....do not believe the hype about 11 watt energy bulb equals a 60 watt ordinary bulb.....do your own experiment, light a room with a 60 watt bulb then plug in a 11 watt energy bulb...you won't need glasses to see the difference......dimsville hello..

Jim........................

jimtylee

robby-01 wrote: »

low energy bulbs are rubbish end of story.They might use less energy but that is it,

DEAD RIGHT ON THE NAIL THEY ARE AWFUL

JIM.................

Networkguy

jimtylee wrote: »

Having tried many brands of so called energy saving bulbs.......we find them very dull in comparison to a normal household bulb.....do not believe the hype about 11 watt energy bulb equals a 60 watt ordinary bulb.....do your own experiment, light a room with a 60 watt bulb then plug in a 11 watt energy bulb...you won't need glasses to see the difference......dimsville hello..

Jim........................

I have a lot of these bulbs in my house and have mixed views.

They all take a few moments to "warm up" so when you first switch them on they do seem dull. If however you walk into a room where they are already on and have been for a few minutes, the difference is not as great.

There is a big variance in makes and also, bulbs I am buying today are much better than those I bought 2 years ago.

Indeed for the first time this week I have actually found a GU10 replacement bulb that is a match for the 35W GU10 bulbs I was using (these are the 8W GE bulbs currently on offer at Tesco). Again however these bulbs are longer and are not suitable for all kinds of fittings.

So I do think you are right in that when switching from normal to low energy bulbs it is not as simple as a like for like swap BUT we have now reached a point where in my house, I have 8 x 50W 63mm GU10 bulbs in the kitchen which are normal bulbs because I cannot find a low energy alternative and 10 x 35W GU10 bulbs recessed into the ceiling of the bathroom and en-suite but the remaining 60 bulbs in the house have all been replaced for low energy and I am more than happy with the levels of light.

In some cases, where we had a 60W bulb before we might have gone for "same as 100W" low energy option but this is not a big deal. Also with the halogen bulbs, even though we can't use low energy we have been able to swap the 75W 63mm GU10 bulbs for 50W bulbs with no noticable difference so can still save.

Most importantly though regardless of the green issues or calls by the government, I am paying 80% less to light my home than if I were using normal bulbs and with the current cost of electricity, that is a big saving.

bobinbognor

I bought two energy saving bulbs for my bathroom lights over the mirror because we usually leave at least one of these on overnight and I want to save energy but retain a light at night. The bulbs I bought are too fat in diameter at the base to fit through the hole in the shade, so I cannot fit/use them. I am not prepared to throw out perfectly good wall lights just so I can fit a new bulb, so where does that leave me, and I'm sure thousands of other users with wall lights that cannot accept these new bulbs. The cost of replacing my wall lights will exceed any savings by using energy saving bulbs by a huge amount, so where is the incentive?

Networkguy

bobinbognor wrote: »

I bought two energy saving bulbs for my bathroom lights over the mirror because we usually leave at least one of these on overnight and I want to save energy but retain a light at night. The bulbs I bought are too fat in diameter at the base to fit through the hole in the shade, so I cannot fit/use them. I am not prepared to throw out perfectly good wall lights just so I can fit a new bulb, so where does that leave me, and I'm sure thousands of other users with wall lights that cannot accept these new bulbs. The cost of replacing my wall lights will exceed any savings by using energy saving bulbs by a huge amount, so where is the incentive?

Exactly the reason for all my halogen bulbs in the bathroom. The energy saving ones I have found to give good light don't fit and the LED ones that do fit give out very little light at all.

I believe the push right now is on the normal household bulbs not the specialist bulbs so one can only hope that when the push comes to replace them, there are some bulbs out there one can buy to do the job.

madjay

All Lamps are being Phased out by wattage size not type!

harryhound

For those of you (like me) not sure what a GU10 is, they are the power greedy halogen technology. The 4 x 4 equivalent for house lighting.

Spot lighting the floor looks good architecturally but there is a price to pay.

http://www.screwfix.com/search.do;jsessionid=VIEKEF4TLDXTQCSTHZOSFFQ?_dyncharset=UTF-8&fh_search=GU10+bulbs&searchbutton.x=10&searchbutton.y=11&searchbutton=submit

[If you click to page two of the above list, there are mini mercury equivalents - but surprise surprise Screwfix is out of stock on most of them - probably getting lots of complaints like the ones above].

Russell_Smith_2

I'm sure I've not seen anyone mention that the best place to 'walk off the street' and buy these bulbs at the moment (beleive it or not) is B&Q !

Russell @ Parity Projects

Networkguy

Russell_Smith wrote: »

I'm sure I've not seen anyone mention that the best place to 'walk off the street' and buy these bulbs at the moment (beleive it or not) is B&Q !

Russell @ Parity Projects

Tesco are also looking quite good as well with buy 1 get TWO free on most of their low energy bulbs and buy one get one free on the rest.