On 15/10/2011 13:01, Stephen wrote:
"Jim wrote in message
...
What, exactly, is the situation regarding the phasing out of tungsten
lightbulbs?
All my main room lights are on dimmer switches so do I fill my spare
bedroom with bulbs for the future?

You've raised a point indirectly for me. I have 8 off 50 watt GU10 tungsten
bulbs on two dimmer switches, so thats a total load max of 200 watts per
dimmer. I recall that when fitting the dimmer switch, it needs a minimum
load to work properly which was 100 watts, SO I am OK if two out of our
bulbs go pop.

Now I have seen in my local Tescos that there are Philips LED GU10 lamps
that are 4 watts each and are compatible with dimmers.

So if I replace the 8 off 50 watt bulbs with these 4 watt dimmable LED
GU10's thats a load of 16 watts per dimmer knob.....

Have I got to change the dimmer switch as well?

Probably... or use a combination of real bulbs and energy saving to keep
above the threshold but reduce the total. This can also work well with
multibulb fittings I find - you can use a few CFLs to keep the spaces
populated and running costs down, while contributing some[1] light, but
have a real tungsten one in there as well to give proper colour
rendition ans usable illumination.

[1] For example one of the fittings in my hall has three separate BC
lamp holders. Its fitted with two 7W compact candle CFLs that claim 40W
filament lamp equivalence, and one traditional 40W clear candle bulb.
Using a Lux meter 6' below the fitting shows that the two CFLs (when
warmed up) provide 14 lux between them. Adding the incandescent brings
the total up to 36 lux.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/