[Closed] Gov's lighting regs

Enforcing changing all light bulbs to low energy is an excellent idea imo.

I feel fairly confident that unless there is a very good reason, most commercial premises already turn off their lights at night time.

When motorways are lit, it is done for safety reasons. Although cars do indeed have headlights, the amount of area which they light up is considerably less than the area lit up by a street light.

Streetlights used to be turned off after a certain time at night and as far as I'm concerned they still should be. Yes, yes, I know - security, safety and crime prevention yadayada. It'd make it a hell of a lot more noticeable if some scally was wandering around with a torch looking for a place to do over.

Anyway, there is no reason to have lights burning 24 hours a day. I don't see what's wrong with making everyone change to low energy either but there are better places they could be pointing the legislation IMO.

commercial premises with CCTV need to keep their lights on, otherwise the cctv sees nowt and their insurance can be void as a result

Also added together there are far far more lights in our homes than in commercial buildings

its more entertaining when councils take away the period lamp posts and then install them in areas with "less likelihood of vandalism".

Where councillors happen to have houses 😆

also a switch to low energy bulbs, or some other form of lamp is inevitable, legislation or not. Theres not enough tungsten in the world to keep making conventional light filaments for a great deal longer.

We're having a conservatory built at the moment. The electrician was round looking at the light fittings and asked if we wanted twice the amount we'd asked for. We asked him why and he said that all his customers recently had been asking for twice the number of fittings to account for the government forcing them to use low powered light bulbs.

Looks like that government initiative has failed then.

Not really, 100W equiv energy saver takes 13w, even two of them is a 70% saving. The only issue I have is the extra kit that goes into making the energy savers - mercury, PCBs, electronics in the driver etc.

Looks like government's initiative has succeeded to me samuri - low energy lamps consume 80% less energy than conventional ones, so big saving even if people use twice as many of them.

BTW, I like your spark's sales patter .....

Could we not have infra-red sensors that detected burglars in buildings, like we do in my work? Could the principle be applied to street lighting, or would cats and dogs set it off?
You'd certainly notice a scally lurking around if the street lights lit up as he skulked round town.

Street lighting takes too long to warm up to be run on-demand I reckon. Plus its not much good for cars then either. Plus street lighting is used as a sort of "base load" so that they dont have to shut powerstations down completely overnight (takes too long to shut them down and bring them back up and you cant run them at no-load, plus it would be a waste if they did).

retail shop lighting staying on out of opening hours is ridiculous
insurance or not, you do not need 15 halogen spots lighting the products you're selling in your window-display

I think that came from some strange perception that burglars could be seen inside more easily by passing people/police. Imagine it's totally pointless really.

I really dislike low energy light bulbs, changing to them will require me to change every single light fitting in my house as I have yet to see an aesthetically pleasing low energy bulb, this is going to cost me more money than I will save using low energy bulbs for the next 5 years, it will also cost me a fortune in batteries as during the hours of darkness I will have to carry a torch so that I can find what I'm looking for, don't want to have to switch the lights on 30 minutes before I go in to a room and then still wonder why it's not very light in there.

With the improvements in LED's surely they would be a better bet in the home, at least they would light the rooms up.

The above is based on my own experiences with low energy bulbs and yes I am in favour of lowering my carbon emissions.

Slight aside, climatecare do a carbon offset program where you can pay to offset the CO2 you produce, if I pay the £130 per year to offset the CO2 my driving, flying and home produces shouldn't I be allowed to use proper light bulbs etc?

[i]an aesthetically pleasing low energy bulb[/i]
lol. It's a ****ing light bulb, not a Monet. Or perhaps you have nice collections of filament bulbs scattered artistically around the house?

I do a little lighting design in my work. I never spec CFL's because the light output is generally a very warm colour temperature - not really pleasant to illuminate a property/the interior.

LED technology (as i understand it) is still coming on in leaps and bounds, e.g. the P2 luxeon LED has a wattage consumption of approx 6 watts, pretty good! but at around £50 for that to be built into a housing, its not cheap technology at the moment.

The main reason we use 'regular' bulbs is that they can be dimmed, the colour temperature is whiter and all connected to a lighting control system, allows the property to run efficiently.

I certainly think a greater amount of funding needs to be poured into (O)LED technology, CFL's are a poor stop-gap while finding something that works well - and not forgetting the environmental impact of CFL fittings (mercury etc)

jt

Is their technical or political reason why CFLs don't produce the same amount of light as a 100W bulb? It seems amazing that manufacture's claim their CFL bulbs are equivalent to a 100W filament when it clearly they aren't even close.

It could be the colour temperature (wavelength) of the light has a bearing on the perceived light output?

jt

Votchy - I don't know when you last tried low energy bulbs, but mine come on instantly. Plus I don't see how this:

[img] [/img]

Looks very much different to a tungsten bulb.

We'll start to see changes in street lights soon. LED versions can be dimmed right down in the small hours, and motion sensors can be used to bring them briefly back to full power as cars/people pass by. Still expensive as they use lots (100+) LED's per light. But with LEDs being a very small point source of light, small lenses on each one control the light spread expremely well, and give very even illumination to the road and not beyond.

I agree with kaskazi. I think it is fine to encorage people to use low energy bulbs and most people I know have changed to these in areas of thier house which are suitable. However it is a different sort of light and even the highest power low energy bulbs are rubbish for doing some tasks in.

If they are serious then they should do this fairly - vast office atriums of mulitple stories should not be heated. Loads of offices near us do leave lights on all night. Most shops now leave doors wide open, with huge heaters just inside, blasting heat out into the road. Shoping malls have big enlosed areas which could be just roofed, but which have heating AND air conditioning. All air conditioning systems in offices and shops should be discoraged as there are many ways to ventilate better before resorting to this expense.

I also grew up next to a main road that had and still has no street lamps and the motorway in that area also has no lights.

I think there are many ways of reducing energy use, but its easy to 'pick' on the public rather than upset businesses. Also it looks like something significant is being done as they hope we wont notice all the stuff that is not being done.

Curtain heaters - while they appear to 'blast heat out into the road' they keep the hot air in the store, so the saving is generally huge compared to not having one!

But yes, you are right, a higher spec of Building Management Systems needs to come into force, e.g. lighting near a window doesn't need to be as bright as the lighting at the back of the office... natural air ventilation needs to be encouraged as opposed to HVAC systems pumping away all day.

(a friend of mine told me about a simple system they installed in a school, when the Co2 gets too high, they open a few windows to get the air circulating again 😉 clever and v.cheap)

You can get LED lights for the home that plug straight into an existing bayonet fitting and they're not (in the grand scheme of things) all that expensive.

Isn't it Holland where Phillips designed & installed the motion sensing LED motorway lights that dim when there's no traffic and increase power as something passes? Not cheap I'll wager but got to be worth it in the long run.

I agree with eco benefits of low energy light bulbs. But what i don't like is the government ramming the things down our throats.

My missus suffers from SLE which is a form of Lupus which causes her joints to swell and causes pain when she moves. It is caused by her immune system attacking her own body, so she takes drugs to suppress her immune system. If she goes out in the sun for any length of time this boosts her immune system and brings on the Lupus.

And guess what the new low energy bulbs give off UV light so these can cause her Lupus to come out. There are no exemptions from low energy bulbs, yet another 'one size fits all' from the government which does not fit all individual. BTW we have low energy bulbs at home but only in rooms that we seldom use and a stockpile of the old bulbs for the other rooms.

Well I am in the process to fit low energy bulb in mum's house..
So far that has involved changing all the plugs as the moron who put the bulbs in only put bayonet

Well I am in the process to fit low energy bulb in mum's house..
So far that has involved changing all the plugs as the moron who put the bulbs in only put bayonet

You can get bayonet fitting low energy bulbs. It's what the energy Companies send out to you in the UK. Are you overseas?

Jimmers - have you tried talking with your local Occupational Therapy Nurse? They might surprise you with some of the options they can give you. There's a chap around here who has some condition with his eyes that's light triggered and they managed to sort him out. I realise it's not the same as your situation but it might be worth asking.

IWH - Cheers, we shall follow up on that advice.

For a lot of Lupus sufferers the problem is not so much at home as there are workarounds (use sidelights instead of main lights) but rather in the work place or public places where there is no choice but to sit by a strong low energy light source for example in an office or a doctors surgery.

It can't be too hard to make a low energy bulb that is low in UV light. There are some brands of low energy bulbs that kick out up to 5 times more UV energy than other bulbs for the same wattage. When the new low energy bulbs were enforced the government should have stipulated a max UV rating for manufacturers.

You can get bayonet fitting low energy bulbs. It's what the energy Companies send out to you in the UK. Are you overseas?

Yup are you from mars for asking that question 😉

Plus screw in bulbs came in all size shape and colour :d

Seems to me that most of our light bulb failures are due to current fluxtuations and not just them wearing out , so I am reluctant to start using more expensive bulbs that will have to be replaced frequently.

Have one low energy light bulb in the bathroom that is less than 2 months old, 60w equivalent output, takes at least 1/2 hour to get up to full brightness and even then I can't read ST in the bath like I could with the original 60w bulb in there.

The bulb pictured above does look like a normal bulb, albeit it has white glass not clear and would look sh1t in a light fitting that currently uses clear candle bulbs, if you like pig ugly bulbs like that on show in your house then fine, in mine I like the bulbs to blend in with the light fitting, ie aesthetically pleasing, not scare people when they enter the room because it looks like a ****ing ghost hanging from the lamp shade 😀

Interesting thoughts! I admit we have eco bulbs in the house, but do struggle with light levels sometimes. And our monthly elec bill doesn;t seem to have gone down! Keep it coming...

Am i missing a point in that all this was brought in as part l of the building regs and with most local building inspectors they will not allow the spark to simply install 'low energy' lamps?
this is quite a good initiative when compared to part p of the building regs but don't get me started on that...

Seems to me that most of our light bulb failures are due to current fluxtuations and not just them wearing out