On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 15:00:33 -0000, Tim Watts wrote:

On 25/02/15 14:07, Tough Guy no. 1265 wrote:
On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 14:00:19 -0000, Jethro_uk
wrote:

On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 13:34:40 +0000, Tough Guy no. 1265 wrote:

Why are councils re-laying all the cables and replacing all the
streetlamp poles for no ****ing reason? All they needed to do was to
change the lamp on the top. What a waste of millions of pounds of
council taxes. The cables worked fine. The poles were in perfect
condition.

Assuming LED lamps draw less power (and weigh less) then there's the
possibility that the council are substituting wires and poles with
something that uses less (or no) metal, and - given the prices decent
quality scrap metal fetches (copper in particular) are using the funds
raised to help pay for the replacements.

I doubt the price is that high that it pays for the cost of having
someone with an expensive crane lift go round and swap all the poles.
And they're replacing steel painted brown with steel galvanised. I
can't see any net gain. As for the wires, the cost of digging up half
the pavement and retarmacing it must be far greater than the metal they
get from the bigger wires.

Well, yes. The assertion was tripe.

I wonder if this is a case of LED makers trying to go non standard like
they do with household fittings - or maybe the lamp head is just weird
and unsuitable for retrofit?

But it would be more cost effective to swap the entire head than replace
the pole and reconnect to the mains...

The new head clamps around the top of a steel tubular pole. It would have gone on the old pole just fine, even if you had to saw off the top which maybe had some kind of fitting on it.

--
I don't approve of political jokes. I've seen too many of them get elected.