Halogen Lamps/ Capsules withdrawn from sale in 2023

Discussion in 'Electricians' Talk' started by Smokey, Jun 9, 2021.

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  1. Smokey

    Smokey Active Member

  2. ElecCEng

    ElecCEng Screwfix Select

    If individuals aren’t making the right choices the government helps them out, regardless of EU membership. Many benefits to more energy efficient regulations; environmental, climate change, grid pressures, etc.
     
    rogerk101 likes this.
  3. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

    The EU did not make changes like this without the UK representatives taking part in discussions and votes, well at least the intelligent ones!

    There will always be those who try to avoid change, such as those buying filament bulbs made for road traffic lights from an ironmongers in their village High Street, because they don’t want LEDs, not thinking that actually the traffic lights are now LED, so no one else wants the bulbs for the purpose they were made for.
     
    rogerk101 likes this.
  4. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

    Have you ever heard of Dubai light bulbs?

    Now there’s something to get you going!

     
  5. MGW

    MGW Screwfix Select

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57407233 seems to say September, which means to comply with https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmenvaud/220/22007.htm any electronic power supply or switch which needs tungsten bulbs would need to have been withdrawn from sale 5 years before, I think you can still buy dimming switches and electronic transformers which need at least a 20 watt load, so bulbs need to be on sale for another 5 years.

    this is causing a problem read more here https://www.alexfergus.com/blog/light-flicker-health and the really annoying bit is there is no need for it.

    This https://assets.publishing.service.g...ment_-_Lighting_Products_Regulations_2021.pdf document page 41 refers to Flicker metric(PstLM) Stroboscopic effect metric(SVM) but as clear as mud to me, I know some bulbs have a smoothing capacitor so very little flicker, however there is nothing on the adverts to say which have the capacitor fitted.
     
  6. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

  7. MGW

    MGW Screwfix Select

    I am happy with LED, I was surprised when I bought this house to find so many tungsten bulbs, but it is not as simple as remove the tungsten and fit LED, be it a load capacitor, or swapping dimmer switch, or rewiring the silly MR16 lamps, it does involve some expense. And we all know we can get all sorts of non compliant stuff off the internet, but the normal person walks into a shop and says this bulb has blown I want a replacement. And I failed to find LED bulbs that would work within a reasonable distance from home. I had to use the internet, and even then cross fingers and was not sure the bulbs would work. And the fitting looks completely different with 5 LED bulbs with no covers to 5 quartz with glass covers.

    Personally I hate G9 bulbs, the quartz needed covers to ensure when they fail hot bits don't start fires, and for the covers to fit the LED bulb is too small in physical size to have the smoothing capacitor required to stop flicker, I told my wife before she bought the silly fitting I did not like it, so she will not complain as she knows answer will be I told you so. But with the G9-big.jpg large LED bulb it does look hideous.

    Again I hate MR16 units, when this house Kitchen bike.jpg was mine it had a 64 watt fluorescent with a 24 watt LED tube in it. Now I think 12 x 3 watt down lights, so 36 watt to light the same room, and no brighter, but must be better than tungsten where likely would have needed 9 x 35 watt, but 9 x 3 watt would not have worked, even 9 x 7.5 watt would not have given the spread, as 50 mm is really too small, but as you go over 3 watt cooling is required so part of that 50 mm is cooling fins, so down to around 20 mm.
     
  8. Bob Rathbone

    Bob Rathbone Screwfix Select

    Perhaps the solution is to have a dedicated DC supply for our lighting circuits fed from a high frequency switching PSU.
     
  9. IW guy

    IW guy New Member

    Some did. A lot less than half in fact. The rest either didn't vote or voted remain.
     
  10. MGW

    MGW Screwfix Select

    I did wire a farm house in the Falklands with DC lighting, in the main 24 volt using Nickel Iron batteries and 20 watt 2 foot fluorescent tubes and inverters out of an old bus, due to being DC I used a simple diode so each bedroom light also worked the hall light, two reasons one so way lit to the toilet at night and two so if a bedroom light was left on it was clear it had been left on.

    Wind charger topped up batteries, but also a simple car battery charger when main generator ran.

    However DC bulbs are more expensive, often with a wide voltage range 10 - 30 volt, and often better lumen per watt to AC versions normally around 100 lumen per watt where AC often down to 75 lumen per watt, there is no capacitive or inductive linking so no need for leak resistors, however dimming, and other controls which we have got use to would be out the window, no reason why could not be done, but there is a lack of hard ware and back to cost.
     
  11. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

    The Telegraph is quoting a group climate change deniers.
    The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is the United Kingdom's most high-profile climate denier group. It opposes action to mitigate climate change. Founded by Nigel Lawson,[1] it is a registered educational charity "deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated" to mitigate global warming.
    https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation

    I was an early adopter of LED lighting, back when LED GU10 lamps were £17 each, even at that price they soon paid for themselves, at the same time I swapped my central heating programmer from one that only ran the heating and hot water at the same time to one that allows different settings for each.

    Swapping to LED lighting and changing the central heating programmer has now saved me thousands of pounds.

    If you don’t think that lamps, light fittings and heating controls sold by Screwfix and others will save you money and may reduce pollution you aren’t on the same wavelength as the rest of us.
     
    Starslikedust likes this.
  12. MGW

    MGW Screwfix Select

    The trip from where I live to Welshpool can be done in many ways, last time I used an e-bike used about 0.25 kWh to do return trip, the train is likely the worst at the moment around 0.25 ton of coal, and that is around 50 kWh for the return journey, as to where the bus and car comes in, 1 litre = around 10 kWh so around the 2 kWh, however in spite of the huge differences no government department says we must stop using steam trains, and if the pod system was not there likely would be carrying 4 times the passengers, same applies I suspect to the bus, but the point is it is up to me how I travel, and clearly 1.5 hours to do 16 miles, using faster methods must be allowed.

    It is not proved that using tungsten bulbs uses more power than LED bulbs and central heating, clearly today we don't want any extra heat in the house, but be it LED bulbs or induction hob it should be up to me which I use, the demo with a gas hob opened my eyes, filled an electric kettle (2.8 kW) to full make, then poured it into a pan, and put lid one it, then refilled kettle, turned on gas (5.5 kW) full on and then the kettle, the kettle took half the time, did same with induction hob (3 kW) and kettle and both boiled together, clearly gas hobs use over twice the fuel to an electric hob, to the extent that need extractor fans or AC running to remove the heat, so clearly first thing to ban is gas cookers.

    Same with transport the first thing is to convert mass transport to electric, buses and trains, and re-open all the branch lines so rail can transport goods most of the way, then look at private transport. 4 kW per person should be ample, my e-bike limited to 250 watt, so that is 16 times more powerful, so a car carrying 5 people 20 kW or 27 HP and I had a Reliant Regal which was 24 HP so yes that would be ample to get from A to B. There is no excuse for a car to have 10 times this power, 225 kW for a Tesla is clearly OTT.

    We have already limited the power for vacuum cleaners, although it seems only lip service paid to it, as wife arrived home with a 3 kW garden sucker/blower and I am sure that is over the limit.

    But house work has become too easy, so by limiting the power for a vacuum cleaner we can keep the woman working longer cleaning the home, can't make it too easy.

    But let him without sin save the first kWh. How collecting general rubbish with one wagon, recycled rubbish with another and garden waste with yet another saves energy I still need to work out. But I see no reason why some one should be forced to use LED if they don't want to. Encourage use of LED yes, same as encourage us to use the bus rather than car, but to ban tungsten that is wrong. Specially as to date there is nothing on LED bulbs to say which are not going to cause ocular migraine or epilepsy or worse. Some do have smoothing capacitors but to date they don't need to tell which are which.
     
  13. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

    My usage and bills went down.
     
  14. IW guy

    IW guy New Member

    The clue is what is printed on them. 50w on Tungsten, and 5w on LED.

    But as the price of electricity is 4 times that of gas it still costs half as much to use the gas cooker. Until this anomaly is sorted I'm keeping my gas cooker.
     
    rogerk101 likes this.
  15. MGW

    MGW Screwfix Select

    But that assumes you don't want the heat. I to be frank was fed up with changing a bulb every other week, it had nothing to do with energy use. However when I change to CFL I found I was cold in the evening, I had not considered the radian heat from the bulbs, and the instant two degree boost from a tungsten bulb removed the need for programmable thermostats, and that extra energy is only delivered to rooms in use, so in winter overall the tungsten bulb saves energy, maybe not money due to differing fuel costs. As to if the energy saved in winter is greater to energy wasted in summer is open for debate.
    I see how using a wok the gas is far better, but costing is hard, every time I remove the pan the induction switches off, so not only using less energy to start with, but also other savings, including no real need for a hood to remove combustion waste products, or an air conditioning unit to cool the house again, to my mind Ronan Point showed the problem with gas, it's not safe.

    In 1980 I went to work abroad and when on leave said to wife you can have a new cooker any one you want, and she was looking at a Canon gas cooker with built in microwave, £1000 and that was 1980. however she looked at the fingers supporting the pans, and decided they were dangerous, too easy for a pan to fall on a child, so went for an electric with a ceramic hob, purely as less likely a pan could fall. But also she considered (as it turned out in error) the ceramic hob was easy clean.

    Since then the electric cooker has come on leaps and bounds, the ceramic hob does not get as hot with induction so now is easy clean, the induction auto turns off with pan removal, excess time, and over temperature, plus it does not get as hot, so you can put the old £5 note not tried with plastic ones, under the pan when boiling it without damage. And for the first time electric is quicker than gas, not really a benefit as except for water, using 3.7 kW boost feature will just burn any food, but also it turns down lower, so can melt chocolate without using a bowl inside a pan of water. And the fan oven heats up faster, and is well insulated, so less heat escapes, and has the option to select where the heat comes from, from top, sides, or back, closed door grilling was some thing new to me, and it works well.

    If a gas cooker was invented today it would be banned. Also getting the gas bottles changed is a pain, we still use gas in the caravan, and running out of gas in middle of cooking a meal is a pain. I know you can get oil fired cookers, but they get the kitchen far too hot, worse than gas.

    However I think we should be able to choose. Be it gas cooking or lighting, if you want gas lamps on the wall then it should be allowed. Why the gas lights are no longer fitted to caravans I don't know. Same with tungsten if you want them then OK.

    In the same way before Colvid if I wanted to go to Welshpool I went by steam train, not friendly to the environment, but nothing like standing on the open air section of carriage and smelling the steam, oil and coal, although not so keen to get smuts in my eye.

    And in the grand scheme of things, tungsten lamps don't really cause enough waste to worry about. Start at the big things first, diesel trains to start with, diesel ships as well, and paraffin budgies are clearly out. If you count waiting around a air ports, then a holiday to South of France using trains is not that much slower, but the cost is far higher, and what we need is for air travel to have same taxes as rail travel and bus travel, 4/5 of price is diesel is tax, aviation fuel should be the same.
     
  16. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

    Being an early adopter I spent around £136 on eight replacement GU10 LED lamps in my kitchen, they still soon paid for themselves at that price overall I spent over £200 on LED lamps around home, the only halogens I have left are some MR16 lamps over my wardrobe which have run for over twenty years without failing, when one of the MR16 lamps fails I will replace the set of three but at the moment I am actually waiting to see how long they will run for. I did make a good job of fitting the MR16 lamps and they are not covered at the rear allowing them to run as coolly as possible.
     
    quasar9 likes this.
  17. IW guy

    IW guy New Member

    What base and voltage are your MR16 lamps?
     
  18. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

    I have not looked at them in probably around twenty years.
     
  19. Bazza

    Bazza Screwfix Select

    I have just replaced my bathroom downlights. The old halogens were (in common with most) GU5.3 bases using 12 volts.
     
  20. quasar9

    quasar9 Screwfix Select

    wifey swears by the gas cookers and we now have a stainless steel Brittania ( curiously made in Italy despite its name !) with industrial looking cast iron pan supports ! Almost all parts are replaceable although at some serious cost. We looked at shiny ceramic halogen/induction hobs and apart from needing compatible types of pans with the latter, almost all of the people we know have regretted their purchase of the ceramic hobs. All sealed up, often replacement is the only option. Worse you can easily damage their surface in a busy kitchen. All good for a sleek showroom kitchen but useless in a normal busy household. The only part that may be hard to get in the future for the Britannia is the halogen bulbs for the ovens !:mad: Maybe I should stock up .


    While I have LED’S everywhere in the house, I have kept old gu10 halogens in the bathroom as it provides a bit of heat which is not wasted ! I am well stocked up with these as I still have ones replaced with LED version :D
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2021

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