DIYbanter - View Single Post - Constitutionality of light bulb ban questioned - Environmental Protection Agency must be called for a broken bulb

Dan Lanciani

In article TYV6k.28$7g.5@trndny05, (James Sweet) writes:
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| Here in Arizona's mild winters even regular fluorescents tubes flicker
| in my garage.
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| ...Jim Thompson
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| They're probably those crappy 34W energy saver tubes with magnetic
| ballasts that usually don't drive them harder than about 25W. Those were
| a hack from the 70s energy crisis and hardly work in a drafty room
| indoors.

I thought the 34W F40T12 energy miser tubes became common as a result
of the 1992 EPACT that also brought us the horrible 60W F96T12 tubes.
This was the law that was popularly described as banning (yes, I know,
there's that word again) cool white tubes.

I remember having a lot of trouble with short lives on the "compatible"
34W F40 tubes until I replaced the ballasts with dual-rated 40W/34W ones.
The 60W F96T12 tubes were just so dreary that I went for the much more
expensive improved color rendering 75W products that were exempt from the
requirements. These provided *almost* as much light as the original 75W
F96T12/CW tubes, so slightly less efficiency at a much higher price.

In the past few years I've noticed that the commodity F40 and F96 tubes
at the home centers are once again 40W and 75W respectively, so I assume
they all now qualify for the good color rendering (or other) exemption
from the requirements. (Or are they lying about the wattage?)

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com