In the realm of bizarro world, earlier I heard a noise in the house that sounded like something falling. I couldn't find the source until nightfall when I noticed the table lamp --switched on by a PE cell -- wasn't lit. Reason for that was the CFL bulb had literally jumped out of the bayonet socket and onto the table, hence the noise I heard earlier. It's one of the spiral type like this:

https://www.electricalworld.com/Images/Models/Full/2324.Jpg

I can't imagine it twisting itself out of the socket so I guess it wasn't twisted right home in the first place, although it's been that way since Oct 2016 according to my date marking on it. And most amazing of all, it didn't break. These horrible spiral bulbs are so fragile they can often break off in your hand.

That reminds me of a Pink Panther movie where Peter Sellers is snooping around in a motel room looking for clues.

He comes across a lamp that keeps popping out of its socket and rockets straight up in the air with an amusing whistling noise, he catches it on its way down and plugs it back in. As he turns away it pops out again------.

No more, I won't ruin it for those who haven't seen it yet.

I have Rarer ones , but yes its very 1950s . They do come up for sale on ebay sometimes .
That colour is the most collectable and is called salmon pink.
The heat still works great .
I got that one many years age from a house sale where everything had to go .
Pretty cool old thing though.
Pete
Btw its good fun watching 50s sci movies on the vintage TVs with that heater ticking away too.
Atmosphere! Bloodly great fun!

Back in 1982 when I was still at school we had one of those heaters in our classroom. It was at one end of the platform (remember those?) and whilst it made a sterling effort, it didn't quite have an effect at the rear of the room.

1982 still at school?
Must be about my age then ya poor old bugger.
Video killed the radio star!
What I like about you!
All in all its just another brick in the wall.

Yep way back then! Pete

I rather like the illumination from the LED lights and in most cases you can purchase either Warm White or Cool White & on reflection I think that the comment re the harsh light from the CFC lamps is pretty much on the money.

Anyone with a few teenagers about will certainly have observed that rarely do they switch lights OFF as they depart a room & in general leave a trail of ON room lights wherever they go. Thus with lamps ranging from 60 to 100W in most rooms in our house it does not take long for the KW Hours to really build up. With 4 or 5 room lights on you are looking at 1KWH every 2 hours & it takes not a genius to work out that replacing those lamps with 9 or 10W LED lamps makes a very big impact on your power bill.

Initially we started with CFC lamps on a property that relied upon solar power only in the mid 1990's & my batteries really appreciated the switch to CFC's but I hated them in winter time as some took ages to generate a reasonable light when conditions were cold.

A change of premises some 15 years ago saw me start to use LED lamps and I bought one from Jaycar that was a 12V replacement do a Halogen downlight over the kitchen benches. That lamp is still running now so obviously the quality was there as it then cost around $20.
I replaced it because when I went to replace a blown 12V Halogen when I pulled it out of the holder a bundle of charred leaves fluttered down all nicely blackened from a tiled roof space that has NO sarking under the tiles so leaf litter finds it way in under the tiles into the roof space.
I recall that some roof space fires had been caused by Halogen downlights getting things so hot that combustion started in the ceiling & later downlights are supposed to have cowls fitted to keep leaf litter & roofing insulation away from the very hot running Halogens.

The LED lamp runs as cool as a cucumber & this one emits NO RFI that I can detect which is NOT what I can say about some other 12V DC LED lamps I installed in our camper van as almost ALL of those totally wipe out Terrestrial TV in the van as well as messing up the AM band with FM only marginally affected.
The LEDs replaced the 2D type flouro lamps in the camper as the little DC inverters in each ran stinking hot melting the back of all the lamps over time and in one overhead locker had started to char lining material placed over the rear of the lamp. Additionally the 2D flouro lamps were costing around $25 each to replace IF I could find a supplier & the inverters in each whistled on the AM band the frequency of which changed as supply volts changed so they also had RFI issues.
So we could watch a bit of TV I modified a couple of the old 2D Flouro housings to take 4 Star type LED's in series direct off the 12V supply & they provide enough light for TV watching with the RFI & on the others I found that a series diode in the 12V supply lead along with a 25μF cap on the load side of that diode almost totally stopped the RFI mucking up either TV or radio unless in very poor signal zones.

In the current house we have slowly replaced ALL incandescents with applicable light output LED lamps even to the PAR flood lamps that used to be 120W are now 15W & have very similar light coverage.
Usually buy from the hardware stores and generally go for the known brands with almost zero failures which is what I did not see when using CFC type lamps & even had a couple of those go SPLAT & issue forth smoke & horrible smells.

With the volume of production of LED lamps worldwide I would like to see some figures on just what it costs to make a incandescent lamp as compared to making the equiv light output LED lamp. The CFC lamps certainly DID cost a lot more to manufacture & there are serious pollution issues if not disposed of correctly...dunno about LED's though.

A few years back the cinema industry switched from the conventional Black & White sound tracks on film to Cyan & White for environmental reasons & we had to swap the light source that was focussed onto the sound track through a small slit to scan the sound track. Most of the older machines used 10V X 7.5A exciter lamps & many of exhibitors switched to a 3W Luxeon Star Lumiled with virtually no drop in volume so there alone was a big saving in power costs & staff did not burn their fingers if they got overly close to the lit exciter lamps.

All the high end houses are going full LED and lighting controled systems. I sold lighting for Lutron briefly as a Rep , filling in for a friend of mine. One big house on the east side spent 85k on lighting and control systems!
But for me I dont like it, but I can relate to kids and power bills ! Gosh! Ive even found the dryer on with nothing in it many times!

Pete

Some friends have LED in ceilings throughout their house. I don't mind the illumination, but I'm not a fan of the delay between switch on and light.

I have had one Led bulb in a desk lamp (12) actually cause a spectacular Bang and RCD & circuit breakers tripping.

The globes are supposed to fuse if the filament drops: Yeh!

The electronic ballasts in two twin flouro's put in when the house was built are crap one has already gon intermittent & died & the other one is about to do the die bit.

Most of the LEDS seem to have some form of ballast & as I have noted previously I have actually sent two LED floodlights back for RFI generation.

As far as I can see there is no such thing as quality now & when it comes to RFI. The regulators seem to be a asleep at the wheel. You seem to be able to import any sort of rubbish with impunity.

Caveat Emptor

Some friends have LED in ceilings throughout their house. I don't mind the illumination, but I'm not a fan of the delay between switch on and light.

This effect is more often found in dimmable LED fittings than the non-dimmable ones. Dimmable fittings have a soft starter in them to stop the fitting trying to reach full brilliance when the fittings are switched on whilst dimmed.

I converted to LED for all light fittings, including my fridge light about five years ago now. I didn't do it as much for the environment as I did for my wallet. Some people don't understand what effect lights can have on the electricity bill even though they are amongst the smallest loads in a domestic installation. A 10 watt LED globe puts out the same light as a 75 watt incandescent globe. Always use 3000K globes as they most closely mimic the colour temperature of an incandescent globe. 6000K are ridiculously blue and put out an unrealistic light that can cause eye strain. 4000K is also okay and best for stick-on LED strips that are often found for over bench lighting in the kitchen.

I wouldn't bother not using LED globes simply because of RFI. RFI is found in just about all electrical loads with a switchmode power supply and that's pretty much any load that isn't purely resistive these days.

Very hard to practice Caveat Emptor when most of the rubbish comes from the same place & is made to the same standard.

I have often wondered about the Energy inputs of CFL & LED from Creation to expiry. Viz the amount it costs in parts, energy & labour (robots cost as well) plus transport. Then the true energy it uses, not puts out in light: You pay for what is consumes.

I have CFL's that have lasted 10,000 hrs (timed circuit) the average life for a decent incandescent, was around 1000hrs . There stuff all in a filament light bulb. So it takes little to make it & I would think all of re-cycleable.

Ute has had Halogen headlights since the early eighties & I drove a Magna with Halogen headlights for over 10 years night shift & country roads, No failures. This is not like the modern cars where I see, apart from idiots with fog lights on all hrs etc. when I go to town, Day or Night, at least 5 or more, very modern, even current model cars, with blown headlights, or other lighting defects....... never seen so many as I do now.

Very hard to practice Caveat Emptor when most of the rubbish comes from the same place & is made to the same standard.

Precisely.

Re Caveat Emptor, I was practicing some irony. Even if you could crack open a product before you buy it you'd probably be none the wiser.

We had a big reliability issue in the business a few years back with small 12v plugpacks that are shipped with almost every product we make. Thousands of them. We torture-tested samples on an automated test jig that applied various loads in excess of the PP's rating, including short circuits. We cracked them open to see what parts were used, physical size of primary side cap, running temperatures etc. We checked RFI, load noise etc.

Guess what? The PP with the "ugliest" internals (smallest primary cap and transformer, untidy PCB) turned out to be the best performer in our tests! And time has shown it's also reliable long term.

Go figure!

My LED globe circuit was functioning ..... 'goodbye' to all those natural resources used in its manufacture ... 'hello' to more landfill and emissions .... due to shoddy workmanship in this case.