What an utter load of tosh. Our house is full of these evil little dumb things. Its icey and cold outside so to continue the miserable theme we now have a Dickensonesque interior, walking round, nay GROPING round a dimly lit room everytime you quickly want to find something. Yes, you could stand there for five bloody minutes waiting for the thing to warm up and give you a 1/2candle of light but hey who am I to complain?

Ok, fair point. Noticed the dining room light was crap yesterday.

Sooooo…

How can we take state of the art energy efficient LED lighting and bring it from the bike to the front room???

I bought a whole case of 100W old style lamps a few months back
They're still available – get them while you can

We had £30 quids worth of top brand energy savers in our main lounge light
I took them all out & put the 100s in – what a difference!

Bring the sun to your living room! 😆

Most of the lights we have now use 35w halogen bulbs. Much better of the rooms where you need decent light.

I have found that the energy savers that say they give out the same as a 75W old-style bulb work ok.

dont know how any of lot manage to night ride if you cant even manage in the house with energy saving bulbs 😆

i've had them in houses since about 1998 and never had a problem with them

Bloody has to be at least one early-adopter coming on here willy-waving! 🙄

dont know how any of lot manage to night ride if you cant even manage in the house with energy saving bulbs

simple – I don't have good low light vision so ramp it up as much as poss

They are somewhat scamtastic in somuch as they're indicated filament equivalent wattage is a work of fictional genuis, plus the power factor of them means the leccy companies have to provide more power than is imediately obvious.
However the last lot of 23W ones I got from Tesco were a lot brighter and reached full brightness pretty much instantly. The bulbs were £1 each or 5 for a £1, which seemed a bit bizare 🙂

Hora, that's what happens when you buy the cheapest. Buy a bulb with a warm colour output (2600-2800 Kelvin), that mtches your lighting power requirement- you'll need a 20w bulb to match a 100w incandescent. Oh, and look for one marketed as 'instant on'- full light output pretty much straight away.

You can buy LED replacements for bayonet/screw fittings, as well as halogen spots, but the good ones are expensive- £20+ for good replacements.

The last lot of bulbs I bought come on pretty much straight away, certainly full power within a minute. Hardly a PITA.

20W ones I have around are better than the 60W ones our landlord fitted, the house is so bright now.

🙄

I'd almost forgotten how good a really rubbish Hora rant was. 🙂

Maybe you just need to eat more carrots.

Yep cheap ones, like the ones given away free are pants.
I sell a version here the best one is 15W in white COL3500 comes on straight away and isn't orange.
But most punters want the as many as you can eat for 50p ones, regardless I'll only sell the good ones that work, but you have to pay the price

I'll tell you what gets my goat with energy saving bulbs.

When NPower send you a box full of free ones. The box is *just* too big to go through the letterbox, so the postie leaves a little note telling you to come to the depot. And it's christmas so you think it's that 12" dildo you ordered from that online shop for a present for the wife so you *have* to go to the depot and collect it. I mean, you've got all the standard stuff like perfume and jewelry already but girls like something romantic on christmas morning so you *have* to go.

You get there and it's a box of shite bulbs.

The only energy savers I notice are my B&Q downlighters in the kitchen…when cold they are really dim for the first couple of minutes, you just get an eerie orange glow.

Apart from that, my only real gripe is the electric companies that keep sending me bulbs as a gift. They don't fit through the letterbox so you get a drop card. Always a dissapointment when you've rushed home from work to get to the depot before closing time to find its yet more bulbs to add to the pile. They are friken lightbulbs worth less than the postage on the box…why o why can't the senders specify they can be left behind the dustbin or something! Even the postie manning the counter apologised as he handed them over 🙂

Edit: Snap!

Plus they shatter when you stick them up your fanny.

all the 5 for 50p bulbs i've had from Tesco and Sainsburys recently have been great! I route through though and make sure I only get the 20W (100w equivalent) ones which I find fine – come on instantly and bright!

the 9 and 11w ones are pitiful though…

[Plus they shatter when you stick them up your fanny.]

Wow read that just in time 😳

Anyway I think it's a plan most cunning on behalf of the manufacturers you see. Under the WEE directive you can't dispose of fluorescent lamps by normal means, you have to pay to dispose of them through specialist companies. So it's cheaper to dispose of old stock by posting them out to punters to deal with, so in a roundabout way they just end up in bins and landfill. I'd send them back.

<pedantry mode>

They're actually fluorescent tubes, not bulbs

</pedantry mode>

It's like finding an old non working fridge left in the new house you've just bought.

I'll tell you what gets my goat with energy saving bulbs.

When NPower send you a box full of free ones. The box is *just* too big to go through the letterbox, so the postie leaves …..
the box by the back door and you only find the thing when you're just messing about kicking the 6" of snow around when you leave the house….. 🙄

I use Phillips Energy Saver bulbs, come up bright very quickly, no probs so far. Argos were a couple of days ago selling 10 for a £1…..YES 10 for a £1 !!!!!!!. In their section prior to tills.

Thay also create load of electromagnetic noise, so if you play a strat or telecaster ect.., you have to turn the lights out all over the house before you start playing.

They are also full of nasty stuff, so you have to leave the room for 20mins if you break one (dunno if this applies to the fanny situation though?).

Brought this one up AGAIN have we? Jesus you'd think people would realise that el-cheapo lightbulbs take a while to warm up and that decent ones warm up in seconds, but really, seriously do you need stadium lighting intensity instantly in your house? Give over and find something important to moan about!

Just buy 25W ones…..

vinnyeh is absolutely correct, modern CFLs can be as effetive as the old GLS lamps. Just don't buy the cheapest crappest ones in the shop.

We have dimmer switches all around the house which is annoying as you have to find the ones that will dim (the fluorescent ones don't as we found out) which is a bit more awkward.

Some CFLs dim fine, however you should be aware that the performance tails off when you do (ie they become less efficient).

For those saying that pricier bulbs are fine, I have one of these in the living room:

Osram Dulux EL Classic – £6.73

15W – it's supposed to be equivalent to 75W – but you can barely read by it and when you first switch it on you have to look straight at it to even know it is lit.

One of these days I'll be bored enough to take a photo under it to show what I mean.

I changed the dimmer switches to normal ones in the 2 main rooms downstairs when I put in CFLs – though they seemed to work OK with the dimmer switches. My sitting room has 6 wall lights and was silly bright IMO when I moved in – now just use 3 of the wall lights with CFLs and that's fine for us; they're below 20w I'm sure.

Those Osrams are rubbish, especialy in BC as they're top heavy, and they're warm white.
Shops just punt out any old garbage without giving a thought as to how good they are.

**** the fancy bloody bulbs. Im going hunting for a shedload of 100w normal bulbs!

Feel free to use the 100W bulbs. How are your leccy bills?

@ Hora
Yep loads of people put off by rubbish lamps and go back to good old tungsten.
Well done the government with your crappy ideas and inferior goods.

GrahamS:

One of these days I'll be bored enough to take a photo under it to show what I mean.

If you ever get that bored i would just shoot yourself 😉

How are your leccy bills?

Thanks the weak and ineffectual Government that leftwing loonies voted in, its not my leccy bills- its my **** gas bills that cause me concern.

Yes, damn that government with their energy saving ideas. The less efficiently we use our electricity the better.

That'll work 😉

If you ever get that bored i would just shoot yourself

I'm rubbish at self portraits 😀