"gamer" wrote in message
...
wrote:

In all the praise of compact
fluorescent bulbs I've see in
the press, nobody mentions that they
take at least a minute to reach
full intensity after they are turned
on...Or have I bought the wrong type
of bulb?

--



In response to this thread, I bought several of the fluorescent (soft
light) flood lights yesterday for the kitchen.

In addition to the claimed longer life & 1/4 wattage, I prefer its
somewhat less yellow light.

Glad I read this thread.

Great. Hope they were marked "Energy Star" though (if bought in the U.S.).
Energy Star tests for life, light output, color and other performance
factors. The criteria are on the E* site.

A warm-up period is normal for any fluorescent lamp. It's a bit longer and
more noticeable in some CFLs.

TKM

In article ,
Paul M. Eldridge wrote:

Hi John,

I've had what can only be described as horrible luck with Lights of
America and, like you, I'll never buy any of their products again.
When people complain about their poor experiences with CFLs, I
automatically think "oh dear Lord, Lights of America".

I've used a variety of CFLs over the past twenty-three years and some
of my Philips lamps are now more than ten years old -- frankly, short
of unscrewing them from their sockets and smashing them on the ground,
these Philips lamps just won't die.

Cheers,
Paul

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:00:17 -0700, "John Weiss"
jrweiss98155nospamatnospamcomcastdotnospamnet wrote:

I second Don's experience with Lights of America. They have been the
shortest-lived CFLs of any I have bought -- little or no better than
incandescents. I will not buy them any more at any price.

A third vote against Light of America, and a smiley face for Panasonic's
terrific (but expensive) globe CFLs.

In , Paul M. Eldridge wrote:
Hi John,

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 15:03:10 -0700, "John Weiss"
jrweiss98155nospamatnospamcomcastdotnospamnet wrote:

So far, my longest-lived CFLs are a pair from Ikea that were on sale for
$1.00 each, and have been running 24/7 outside my garage for about 4 years
now.

I don't know much about the IKEA brand of CFLs. I seem to recall the
reviews were mixed in terms of their colour rendering, but I have no
first hand experience to judge this (Don Klipstein would be the best
person to confirm this particular point). In any event, fours years
service is pretty damn impressive -- i.e., 4 years x 8,760 hrs/yr =
35,040 hours, or the equivalent of 35 to 45 incandescent bulbs (each)
and counting!.

I have seen a couple different versions of the "Ikea Specials" and fair
chance not all of them. But so far, they appear to me to have the usual
color rendering index of 82 and a color that I consider a little
more incandescentlike than average.

I still have some of my 7 and 9-watt single stick Philips PL lamps I
had purchased back in 1984. They're been long since relegated to odd
ball places where they don't get a lot of use, but some twenty-three
years later they continue to fire up every time.

Holy HO-LY Cow! This sounds like a bit of history here! Those things
were pretty new back then. When were they first introduced - early
1980's? I think I first saw one in 1983, and heard about them as
something really new maybe in 1981 or 1982 or so. They were pretty
newfangled and just beginning to catch on a little in 1989.

- Don Klipstein )

Hi Don,

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 04:23:20 +0000 (UTC), (Don
Klipstein) wrote:

In , Paul M. Eldridge wrote:

[...]
I don't know much about the IKEA brand of CFLs. I seem to recall the
reviews were mixed in terms of their colour rendering, but I have no
first hand experience to judge this (Don Klipstein would be the best
person to confirm this particular point). In any event, fours years
service is pretty damn impressive -- i.e., 4 years x 8,760 hrs/yr =
35,040 hours, or the equivalent of 35 to 45 incandescent bulbs (each)
and counting!.

I have seen a couple different versions of the "Ikea Specials" and fair
chance not all of them. But so far, they appear to me to have the usual
color rendering index of 82 and a color that I consider a little
more incandescentlike than average.

Thanks for confirming this. For some reason, I had thought you had
mentioned this but I must have confused it with some other brand.

I still have some of my 7 and 9-watt single stick Philips PL lamps I
had purchased back in 1984. They're been long since relegated to odd
ball places where they don't get a lot of use, but some twenty-three
years later they continue to fire up every time.

Holy HO-LY Cow! This sounds like a bit of history here! Those things
were pretty new back then. When were they first introduced - early
1980's? I think I first saw one in 1983, and heard about them as
something really new maybe in 1981 or 1982 or so. They were pretty
newfangled and just beginning to catch on a little in 1989.

I bought four of them from a small lighting distributor in Toronto
shortly after they became available here in Canada and I don't want to
tell you how much I paid for them; suffice to say, I could have
retired the debt of some third world country.... maybe even paid off
my student loans....

It's a two-piece arrangement -- a standard PL lamp and separate
magnetic ballast that, by today's standards, is rather large and
clunky. Not exactly state of the art (the equivalent of a Kaypro in
today's computing world) but I knew then I was holding the future of
home lighting in my hands.

Cheers,
Paul

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 01:03:43 -0500, wrote:

I'll second that. I have one SL18/R40 that sits on my side desk, it
has to be about 1988 vintage. Back around then I was working for a
company that kept an entire string of 15 150 watt downlights in a hall
running 24/7. I convinced them to swap out to the SL18s. The savings
was substantial. I think one had failed after more than a year of
use, and the rest just kept on going. IIRC, I first learned about
them back in 1982 or 1983 and played around with a couple then.

Another pioneer! Take a bow!

To some of us, a few lights in a hallway seems like such a small thing
but it's not. A savings of 1.98 kW times 24 hours a day works out to
be 17,345 kWh/yr, plus perhaps an additional 4,000 to 5,000 kWh/yr in
related a/c savings. That's enough energy to operate my entire home
for TWO YEARS, including heating and cooling. Factor in the
additional savings in lamp replacement costs and labour and you can
see why they make good sense.

Cheers,
Paul

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:31:26 GMT, Paul M. Eldridge
wrote:

Good point. I rave about my terrific experience with Philips, but
this is based on a narrow set of products, e.g., the SL lamps that are
(or use to be) made in Mexico.

I'll second that. I have one SL18/R40 that sits on my side desk, it
has to be about 1988 vintage. Back around then I was working for a
company that kept an entire string of 15 150 watt downlights in a hall
running 24/7. I convinced them to swap out to the SL18s. The savings
was substantial. I think one had failed after more than a year of
use, and the rest just kept on going. IIRC, I first learned about
them back in 1982 or 1983 and played around with a couple then.

In article ,
Paul M. Eldridge wrote:
In , Paul M. Eldridge wrote:

It's a two-piece arrangement -- a standard PL lamp and separate
magnetic ballast that, by today's standards, is rather large and
clunky.

I just rediscovered that history.
The Fabric Warehouse near me has aisles of "other stuff"
such as halogen lamps, Capslytes and 13 W screw-in-ballasts.
At a dollar each, I bought a few,
and found ONE bulb that fit (for a dollar or 2).
The exit sign fluorescent retrofit kits were there
probably due to a misprint on the box:
it said 11-watt but only included a 9w ballast and 9w lamp.
--

-- mejeep deMeep ferret!

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:28:55 GMT, Paul M. Eldridge
wrote:

I've used a variety of CFLs over the past twenty-three years and some
of my Philips lamps are now more than ten years old -- frankly, short
of unscrewing them from their sockets and smashing them on the ground,
these Philips lamps just won't die.

Funny you mention this because I have an older Philips 15W CFL (the
type with the 3 parallel tubes) that has been running continuously for
a good 4 years now with no sign of fading. This thing was given out
by the local electric company in the early 1990s, so I don't know how
much, if at all, it was used then, but we put it in service in our
house in May 2003, and it runs faithfully every evening in our foyer.

On Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:28:45 GMT, Paul M. Eldridge
wrote:

The Philips Marathon Universal (available at Home Depot) has an
operating range of -30C through to +60C (-22F to +140F). If any CFL
is likely to provide long service life within an enclosed fixture,
this is the one.

See:
http://www.nam.lighting.philips.com/...pdf/p-3754.pdf

This is exactly what that older 15W Philips CFL in my foyer fixture
looks like! Works great, gives good light.

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:04:31 GMT, KLS wrote:

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:28:55 GMT, Paul M. Eldridge
wrote:

I've used a variety of CFLs over the past twenty-three years and some
of my Philips lamps are now more than ten years old -- frankly, short
of unscrewing them from their sockets and smashing them on the ground,
these Philips lamps just won't die.

Funny you mention this because I have an older Philips 15W CFL (the
type with the 3 parallel tubes) that has been running continuously for
a good 4 years now with no sign of fading. This thing was given out
by the local electric company in the early 1990s, so I don't know how
much, if at all, it was used then, but we put it in service in our
house in May 2003, and it runs faithfully every evening in our foyer.

Thanks for sharing this; it's seems our own experiences and those of
Don and Harry closely match. The three parallel tube design certainly
suggests this is another SL lamp, or what I consider to be the "gold
standard" of CFLs. There are few things I recommend without
hesitation, but this just happens to be one of them.

Cheers,
Paul

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:11:53 GMT, KLS wrote:

On Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:28:45 GMT, Paul M. Eldridge
wrote:

The Philips Marathon Universal (available at Home Depot) has an
operating range of -30C through to +60C (-22F to +140F). If any CFL
is likely to provide long service life within an enclosed fixture,
this is the one.

See:
http://www.nam.lighting.philips.com/...pdf/p-3754.pdf

This is exactly what that older 15W Philips CFL in my foyer fixture
looks like! Works great, gives good light.

Technically speaking, if it's 15-watts it would be its predecessor,
the SLS15, but you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. Its
closest match today is the 14-watt Marathon and although I can't
confirm this, the new base (ballast enclosure) may be slightly
smaller. Again, it's an amazing performer.

Cheers,
Paul

"TKM" wrote in message
...
It's a bit longer and more noticeable in some CFLs.

I bought some new CFL floods from Walmart and the warm-up time for these is
significantly longer. On the order of 2 to 3 minutes before full intensity.
The packaging says 100W equivalent, but when they first go on, they're about
as bright as a 25W bulb for the first minute. I've had much better
experience with the "Lights of America" brand where you barely noticed the
startup time.

-al sung
Rapid Realm Technology, Inc.
Hopkinton, MA

On Mar 12, 5:04 pm, KLS wrote:
... has been running continuously for
a good 4 years now with no sign of fading.

This is probably a technical impossibility given how flourescent bulbs
work. I am sure if you comapred it to a new bulb of similar output
there would be a noticable difference. I replaced one of two ~3 YO
bulbs in a fixture the other day and the new one is quite a bit
brighter. Oh, they came from the same pack.

"Alan Sung" wrote...

I bought some new CFL floods from Walmart and the warm-up time for these
is
significantly longer. On the order of 2 to 3 minutes before full
intensity.
The packaging says 100W equivalent, but when they first go on, they're
about
as bright as a 25W bulb for the first minute. I've had much better
experience with the "Lights of America" brand where you barely noticed the
startup time.

I have replaced over half the most-used lights in my house with CFLs. In
most cases the warmup time doesn't bother me. In fact, I welcome the fact
that when I turn on a bathroom or kitchen light first thing in the morning,
I am not blinded by an immediate 100W arc!

In the kitchen I have 2 recessed floods over the sink and 4 over the stove.
In each I have left a single incandescent flood, and replaced the others
with CFLs. I get immediate, bright light from the single light, and the
rest come up to speed in a few minutes, giving my eyes time to adjust.

On Mar 9, 1:48 am, "Bucky" wrote:
On Mar 8, 2:59 pm, "zeez" wrote:

What would happen to things such as flashing marquees on signs and
carnival rides, or any application that
requires lights to be able to flash on and off quickly?

that would be great, I absolutely loathe vegas-style lights, they're
so tacky


For me, it depends on the venue. If it's a carnival or a movie
theatre sign, I don't
have a problem, but if they start sticking them everywhere
(convienence stores,
wedding chapels, etc) then yes, that does go well beyond good taste
and looks
horrable. Then too, those looking to get married in vegas by Elvis
don't seem to
have much class to begin with. ;-)

On Mar 8, 3:28 pm, "Rod Speed" wrote:
zeez wrote:
On Mar 8, 7:07 am, krw wrote:
In article om,
says... On Mar 7, 3:14 am,
wrote:
In all the praise of compact
fluorescent bulbs I've see in
the press, nobody mentions that they
take at least a minute to reach
full intensity after they are turned
on...Or have I bought the wrong type
of bulb?

it's not mentioned because it's common knowledge and not that big
of a deal.

It's a big enough of a deal (along with the crappy color) that I
won't buy any more CFs.
This raises an intersting questions: What if California
and Australia succeed with their ban on incadecents?

Australia wont be having a mindless blanket ban on incandescents.

What would happen to things such as flashing marquees
on signs and carnival rides, or any application that
requires lights to be able to flash on and off quickly?

Those and a raft of other stuff like fridge and oven
lights will certainly have an exemption in Australia.

LEDs? Do they have LED clusters that can screw into
a normal socket and deliver the kind of light needed?


I would love to have R/G/B clusters that can be individualy dimmed
via sliders.
Not hard/expensive to do at all, and you could have just about any
kind of lighting
you want.


Yes, thats already available for car lights and its perfectly
possible to do that with mains voltage bulbs too.

They're already widely used for traffic lights etc too.

Most railroad gates seem to be switching over to LEDs and electronic
(synthesized) bells.

- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

"Alan Sung" wrote in message
. ..
"TKM" wrote in message
...
It's a bit longer and more noticeable in some CFLs.

I bought some new CFL floods from Walmart and the warm-up time for these
is
significantly longer. On the order of 2 to 3 minutes before full
intensity.
The packaging says 100W equivalent, but when they first go on, they're
about
as bright as a 25W bulb for the first minute. I've had much better
experience with the "Lights of America" brand where you barely noticed the
startup time.

-al sung
Rapid Realm Technology, Inc.
Hopkinton, MA


Chances are you have an "amalgam" CFL. Manufacturers don't distinguish
between amalgam and non-amalgam lamps; but the amalgam designs are generally
superior because they maintain maximum light output over a wider range of
ambient temperatures. The downside is that they take several minutes more
to warm up to full output.

TKM

In misc.consumers.house wrote:
: I would love to have R/G/B clusters that can be individualy dimmed
: via sliders.
: Not hard/expensive to do at all, and you could have just about any
: kind of lighting
: you want.

http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/...1000650085.htm

"
" * Features:
o Remote controlled color-changing lamp
o LED colors: red, green, blue and white
o Energy-saving LED bulb
o Can set your desired color via the remote
o Colors can be changed with the transmitter to a shade of your choice
o There are 256 codes for the receiver
o Transmitter: AAA 1.5V x 3 and A23, 12V battery
o Lower power dissipation
* Specifications:
o Power: 220V (+/-10), 50Hz
o Remote distance: 25 meters maximum"

--- Chip

On Mar 15, 11:31 am, "Charles Buchholtz"
wrote:
In misc.consumers.house wrote:

: I would love to have R/G/B clusters that can be individualy dimmed
: via sliders.
: Not hard/expensive to do at all, and you could have just about any
: kind of lighting
: you want.

http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/...1000650085.htm

"
" * Features:
o Remote controlled color-changing lamp
o LED colors: red, green, blue and white
o Energy-saving LED bulb
o Can set your desired color via the remote
o Colors can be changed with the transmitter to a shade of your choice
o There are 256 codes for the receiver
o Transmitter: AAA 1.5V x 3 and A23, 12V battery
o Lower power dissipation
* Specifications:
o Power: 220V (+/-10), 50Hz
o Remote distance: 25 meters maximum"


Very nice, thanks! Do they sell for 120v/60hz current?

In misc.consumers.house zeez wrote:
: : I would love to have R/G/B clusters that can be individualy dimmed
:
: http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/...1000650085.htm
: o Power: 220V (+/-10), 50Hz
:
: Very nice, thanks! Do they sell for 120v/60hz current?

Don't know. It took about 5 minutes of googling to find this product.
I was actually looking for a different company. A number of companies
have multicolor products using R/G/B LEDs; I bet you'll find something
if you google. For example:

http://www.amazon.com/LAMPS-PLUS-Col.../dp/B00075YXRO

I think this one continuously changes color, and you can stop it when
it gets to the color you want,

--- Chip