[Tech21]

What type of fitting are the light bulbs in NZ, bayonet or E/S?
And does anyone ever bother to use those "Energy Saver" things that take for ever to get bright?

[IanW99]

What type of fitting are the light bulbs in NZ, bayonet or E/S?
And does anyone ever bother to use those "Energy Saver" things that take for ever to get bright?

They use either type of fitting (bayonet and E/S), they even appear to use whichever they want around the house e.g. our house is mostly E/S but there are a few bayonet as well.

I don't know which is the more common around NZ but in our last two houses E/S were more common.

And yes, they have promotions of the "Energy Saver" CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) to get everyone switched over, there has also been some talk of banning the use of the old (incandescent) bulbs.

Ian

[Tech21]

Thanks for that Ian, They are also talking about banning incandescent bulbs in the UK too....The global warming lobby has a lot to answer for...if I am paying for the energy I don't see why I can't have the choice....use energy efficient bulbs so Transpower (who my wife has just got a job with) makes less money or use filament bulbs and then they can have a reasonable lump of my cash....oh well.

Cheers

Gareth

[marcia]

We use the energy efficient light bulbs, but in places where we need the 'instant' light and where the light won't be on for long, we use the normal bulbs - eg in the wardrobes, pantry, laundry etc.
:nice1

[Tech21]

Thanks for that,
Do the energy efficiant bulbs make any noticable difference to your electric bill or not?

And for that matter, what price is domestic electricity in NZ compaired to UK prices?

Thanks

Gareth

[IanW99]

Check out Power Switch (http://www.consumer.org.nz/powerswitch/).

Fill in the details and it will provide you with the best options. If you then select the plan it will give you detailed information on charges - you can use this to compare to UK.

It also does gas if you are interested.

Ian

[marcia]

Thanks for that,
Do the energy efficiant bulbs make any noticable difference to your electric bill or not?

And for that matter, what price is domestic electricity in NZ compaired to UK prices?

Thanks

Gareth

Can't really tell you if it makes a difference usng the energy saving light bulbs as the previous owners had already put them in.

As for Electricity bills, well we have a big house (380 metres squared), 3 kids (who never turn off lights!!), playstations, computers Tv's etc, hibby in the 'man cave' welding, and our electricity bills are averaging around $100 per month.

Our heating, hot water, and gas hob are all on Gas which costs, $85 per bottle, during the winter we were going throough a bottle aprox every 3 weeks, and last Autumn our longest stint was 2 months before we had to change the bottle, we've yet to see what its like over the summer!

HTH :)

[Tech21]

'man cave'
Never heard that one before....but rather a fine and apt description.:laugh

Thanks for the info, sounds a lot cheaper than I am paying in the UK at present, and our house is reasonably large by modern UK semi sizes but 380m^2 it ain't....lucky if it's 100m^2 including upstairs....hang on, I'll work it out....'it's 24 feet by 18 feet x 2 = 864ft^2 which is divided by sq ft in a sq mtr which is around 10.77 which is 80m^2, therefor your house is has nearly 5 times the floor area of my UK one and as I said, ours isn't considered small.

Is you house considered large by NZ standards?

Cheers

G

[marcia]

Is you house considered large by NZ standards?

Cheers

G


ermmmmmmmmmmmmm well - it has been described by another member of this forum (a good friend i might add) as obscene!!!

We did want a large house, we have 3 boys who all need there space (and so do we!!) It's on a lifestyle block, just over an acre, the bedrooms are huge, we have a massive, kitchen, dining, living (but filled with a snooker table) area, and a huge separate lounge. Surprisingly i don't mind vaccuuming it either, not having to drag the vac up and down stairs is brilliant!! :laugh

We didn't expect to end up with such a large one, but its the one that we both liked and that felt right! - if you follow my sig link to our piczo site - there are some photos on there if you want to be nosy!!

Oh yeah and just another note, we had a nice 'considered big compared to others around, detached house, with decent gardens in the uk, but the house alone, we have here wouldn't fit on the piece of land our old one was on! Pound for dollar we swapped what we had in the UK for what we have here, and I know which I prefer!!:raebanana

[Leccy-Lee]

From a professional point of view i can say that the energy saving lamps dont make a huge difference, but sure they do save in the long run for sure. But if you are forever turning them on and off, they could actually turn out to use more power than a normal lamp you know!

So as Marcia correctly advised, its best to not use energy savers in places that get turned off and on loads, firstly it provides poor light as they dont get bright enough if only on for short periods and secondly as i said they dont save much energy if there ona nd off all the time.

From a personal point of view, and one from a guy who has studied lighting design of buildings and interiors professionally, i actually hate them in 90% of locations, as they cast the usual nasty fluorescents light ( i wont get technical with colour temperatures etc :p ) they physically look pants hanging from your ceiling etc. As a prime example the rental i am in now, my flatmate has been all "green" and replaced all lamps with the energy savers even in the brass-effect decrotive fittings with 3 lamps. So where the lounge should have a nice brass light with 3 ambient candle-lamps in it nicely, it now has 3 huge ghastly bulging compacts stuck in it, and when you turn it on rather than a nice cosy warm glow to the room, all you get is patchy bright office like flourescents. So in my opinion they have a use maybe in store rooms etc if you leave it on for a bit, but in any living areas like your bedroom or lounge etc then please try and create an atmosphere and not a bright bulging office!

Hereth ends the designer-like rant LOL :cheers

[Tech21]

We didn't expect to end up with such a large one,
http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff8/Vids-an-stuff/matron1.jpg

[Tech21]

Sorry about the photo for your quote...but I just couldn't resist it.

I will be looking out for a much bigger house and garden than we have already, somewhere within commuting distance of Wellington.

Living in Warrington and working in Manchester (14 miles away) you quickly become accustomed to your drive to work being anywhere from 15 - 20 minute on the perfect day for driving in (this has happened once in the 8 years I have been working there).....or more the reality is 40minutes to 90 minutes with most of the time just spent sitting on the M56 not moving anywhere...even the back roads through Partington and Carrington have 2 mile stretches where you don't move for 20 minutes or so, and coming home can be as bad.
My record for the longest time spent to travel 14 miles home was last February when we has gales (only 90mph) and they shut all the bridges across the MSC and the Mersey to traffic and I had to cross them both to get home...cutting a long story short, I left work at 1400hrs to pick my son up from school and arrived home (14 miles away) at 2230hrs...one horrendous journey and one I don't want to make again.

[IanW99]

From a professional point of view i can say that the energy saving lamps dont make a huge difference, but sure they do save in the long run for sure. But if you are forever turning them on and off, they could actually turn out to use more power than a normal lamp you know!
...

From a personal point of view, and one from a guy who has studied lighting design of buildings and interiors professionally, i actually hate them in 90% of locations, as they cast the usual nasty fluorescents light ( i wont get technical with colour temperatures etc :p ) they physically look pants hanging from your ceiling etc. As a prime example the rental i am in now, my flatmate has been all "green" and replaced all lamps with the energy savers even in the brass-effect decrotive fittings with 3 lamps. So where the lounge should have a nice brass light with 3 ambient candle-lamps in it nicely, it now has 3 huge ghastly bulging compacts stuck in it, and when you turn it on rather than a nice cosy warm glow to the room, all you get is patchy bright office like flourescents. So in my opinion they have a use maybe in store rooms etc if you leave it on for a bit, but in any living areas like your bedroom or lounge etc then please try and create an atmosphere and not a bright bulging office!

Hereth ends the designer-like rant LOL :cheers

Lee, Can you clarify your point about CFLs using more power than incandescent bulbs if you switch them on and off alot? I ask because I don't see how they would be worse than a normal bulb on switch on.

And why don't you think they make much difference, they use approx 20% of the power of a incandescent bulb.

There was an article on the TV show Mythbusters recently where they tested the myth of bulbs including CFLs using more power on startup and from their testing showed that any additional power used is insignificant.

For the colour temp point, you can get CFLs with different colour temperatures so they don't have to be bright white like in an office.

Ian

[Leccy-Lee]

Ian

I never factually stated that they DO use more power, only that they could use more. I did say that generally they do have a saving, especially in the long term (such as costs of lamps etc etc) and they most likely do save some power. BUT my point i was making was that they certainly do not save the amount of power that most people would like to think they do. For example an 26w CFL (energy saving compact lamp) you may be thinking only uses 26w of your power bill right?
WARNING: Boring technical bit ahead.....! :nice1

Wrong, because its a fluorescent light (just packed into a tiny space) it has electronic control circuits and an inductor which produces a reactive load. Now reactive loads have what is known as a Power Factor Co-efficient, which means in very basic terms,the reactive part of the load will also use power to work. So in essence the lamp itself may use 26w of power, but taking into account the power factor of the control gear (the lump at the base of the CFL) your 26w CFL may be using as much as 40w in reality. And when you first turn on the light, the control gear strikes up and therefore the reactive load and power factor will use even more power, so at start up our example of a 26w CFL may draw 50w of power.

So as i said, if you use one in place of a 60w filament lamp then sure you will still be saving power, just please dont be fooled into thinking your 26w lamp is a saving of 34w from the old one, its probably much less than that.

Moving on to Colour temperatures Ian, Been trying to think how to type this without being rude or sounding arrogant, so please dont take the wrong way my friend. As i pointed out,I have worked as a professional lighting designer on and off since 1993 and worked for one of the largest lighting companies in Europe, i could quote about 28 colours of Fluorescent's for Phillips, 18 for Osram, and i think Silvania had about 14 Available. So yes you are indeed correct there are colours available, although i think in the CFL versions of lamps theres only three Phillips do anyhow (being 840,830 and 950 Kelvin). My point was that regardless of the colour, it will always be a fluorescent type of light, it cant ever replicate the temperature of a tungsten lamp with regard to warmth, shadows etc. Ask any photographer about the differences to your expensive portrait photo if taken under a CFL lamp, and under a tungsten lamp regardless of colour, the photos would feel so very different.

Anyhow hope i have shed a little more light (pun intended!) on why the CFLs dont use quite as little as you would think, i dont say dont use them at all, just be aware they probably use twice the power as it says on the box, and all i was saying was if you got a nice cosy lounge or bedroom where you want to relax and enjoy a cocoa or get romantic :p , then god forbid the stark harshness of a CFL lamp ruining the moment, get a dimmer switch and a nice fitting with 2-3 normal candle lamps and enjoy the warmth of your cocoa!

PS: Hell i love mythbusters too, but sadly its not the most scientific study ever done..

[Leccy-Lee]

Here.. A quick google finds a website explaining it for me! :cheers
While the consumer saves watts with any of the compact fluorescent alternatives, the utility company must generate nearly the same amount of VA for the magnetic adapter unit as for the incandescent lamp. While this is an extreme case, it does illustrate the effect of power factor.

If your interested: http://www.savethebulb.org/CFL%20Power%20Used.html

[IanW99]

Well you said:-

But if you are forever turning them on and off, they could actually turn out to use more power than a normal lamp you know!

And that certainly implied to me that if you use them in a location where they were switched on or off a lot that there was a real possibility of them using more power than an incandescent bulb.
This is clearly not true even if you take power factor into account.

So as i said, if you use one in place of a 60w filament lamp then sure you will still be saving power, just please dont be fooled into thinking your 26w lamp is a saving of 34w from the old one, its probably much less than that.
This example is also very misleading, even in the most subjective tests a CFL of 26W will be much brigher than a 60W incandescent. A more accepted standard would be a a 20W CFL is equivalent to a 100W incandescent buld.

Agreed that due to power factor a CFL bulb actually uses more (real) power than quoted but from a consumer perspective the actual (measured) power is correct, so the actual saving for consumers is for my example above, the stated 80W or put it another way the electricity companies will only charge me for using 20W worth of power.

For the quality of light you may be interested in CFL v's Incandescent (http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/home_improvement/4215199.html) where they tested the 'quality' of light and found that modern CFLs were actually preferred.

For those that are interested in more detail the following link is also useful Should there be a ban on incandescent Lamps (http://sound.westhost.com/articles/incandescent.htm). In particular it has some good information of when CFLs are good and when they are not and why incandescent bulbs shouldn't be banned at this time.

Thanks anyway for providing details of 'power factor' it wasn't something that I was aware of, so most interesting.

Ian

[Leccy-Lee]

Ian

Couple of great links there, good find and very interesting read. Cant believe anyone could seriously think of banning filament lamps! Blimey, thats going to mean changing dimmers, light fittings etc (Yaa more work! lol)

Apologises Ian if my post was misleading or badly worded i never meant to confuse. And the example i gave was very unscientific from the top of my head as a sparkie, just to get the idea across, in fact my theory never worked on paper, again apologises, wish i had found that link before i calculated power factors in my head. Was just trying (badly!) to explain that the differences with CFLs to Tungsten is the reactive load. And i hope we can agree to disagree on the colour temperature thing.

Anyhow enough techy talk, probably bored everyone to death anyhow.

[Tech21]

Just a thought, are there any domestic HID's available?

Isn't the advantages of HID's (High Intensity Discharge) that you can get the same colour temperature as daylight, lower power consumption and long bulb life...and isn't that what the "green" activists say that they are wanting?

.....they certainly work on my car OK.

If the above turns out to be a load of old cobblers, then please feel free to correct me.

Cheers

Gareth

[Leccy-Lee]

No your pretty much on the money, there not strictly same a daylight, but i know what you mean, they are very close to producing daylight (Mercury HIDs that is not sodium), although i have yet to see any suitable domestic light fittings for them, this is probably due to fact most HIDs need a strike time and therefore not very practical indoors, as if you turn it off it would need 10-15 minutes before you could turn it back on, and when its back on it could take 2-3 minutes to get to full brightness and colour. I confess i have no idea how the HID car headlamps get around this, if they are truly HIDS? The smallest range of 230v HIDs are Phillips Mastercolours and you find there 70w and 150w versions all over shops and banks etc in wall-washes and uplighters.

BUT, personally i really think the future of energy-saving lighting is clearly in LED technology, during my time in lighting design i have designed and installed many professional LED floodlights and fittings into venues and buildings, and with the latest Luxeon K2 LEDS which are the pinnacle of bright LED technology right now, you can really get an incredibly powerful light (be it flood, spot etc) for example heres a link to some professional parcans in LED,

http://www.pixelpar.com/pixelrange/product_pixelpar.htm

I put about 18 of these around a theatre in the UK for architectural lighting, just these little fittings floodlight 4storeys of the building just fine. at using about 100w only compared to there 1000w usual floodlight equivalents! And thats without mentioning the ability to produce millions of colours and the fact there run at a very low heat temperature compared to conventional lights.

Now i am not suggesting you put professional LED floodlights costing 1000s of dollars in your lounge :p But as this technology filters down i think the ability to have LED lighting just as bright etc in your home will come very soon. In fact there are some domestic LED lightbulbs here:

http://www.superbrightleds.com/edison.html

However most of these are still using older LED technology and in my own opinion would not be nearly bright enough just now to replace your 100w lamp with one of these. When the very bright K2 and newer k3 Luxeon LEDs start making it into domestic bayonet and edison lightbulbs then thats when we can truly save energy. As you could theoretically light your room for only a few watts of power.! :cheers :cheers

[alan999]

BUT, personally i really think the future of energy-saving lighting is clearly in LED technology,

I do that now, turn all the lights off and have my LED telly on!

[IanW99]

I do that now, turn all the lights off and have my LED telly on!

You have an LED telly, wow most of us have to put up with an LCD one... :exit

:D
Ian

[Leccy-Lee]

I do that now, turn all the lights off and have my LED telly on!

How swish :clap

[Tech21]

Hi Lee,
I think that LED's may well be the way to go....they have made great inroads into the car market for use as secondary lighting, indicators, side lights etc but not yet as primary lighting but I am sure it will come. I have a couple of LED torches that appear to run for ever on a couple of LR44's but the only slight problem is that the light is blue and not "white", this I assume will no longer be a problem with the newer LED technology.

For people who haven't come across HID's before, here is a quick 1 page on how they work.
http://www.hids4u.co.uk/about.asp

This is the rant and paranoia bit : -:mad:
Why doesn't the government (well the UK government at any rate) back these energy saving devices and embrace the newer technologies?....it almost looks like they really don't want to....or is that just my paranoia showing through?
Well not really paranoia just first hand experience of how they say one thing and mean another....I spent 20 years working on high energy Sodium Sulphur battery technology for use in vehicles (including rail transport and domestic supply)...not the milk-float type of battery performance but quite high performance, in 1980 we had a Ford Transit van that would take out a Porsche of the day up to 90MPH and at 90 the Transit got a bit unstable that's why we never pushed it any farer and the cells were a little unreliable at that time. We later built (amongst a lot of others) an Audi Quattro with a standard petrol engine FWD and electric RWD that was able to be switched from one to the other as you were driving without any alteration of speed….the US government were very interested in this concept for the pollution problems in LA.
We had multi billion $ markets available in the USA for vehicles and for their national power grid that would give a constant output and no more brown-outs when a power station went off line...we were a small company of around 150 people at its peak, the company was formed by one of the large UK battery groups and the Electricity Council....to cut a long and interesting story short....when we had the technology working and saleable the government refused to back it and sold it off to a German generating company who, 3 years to the day from them taking over closed the place down, in 1996, keeping only our patents and intellectual properties so that no one else can go down this path....funny how it was a major European electricity producer who, with the help of the UK government, removed this technology from the market place....or again, is it just my paranoia???

Well, anyone who's got this far and still isn't bored to death, here’s what New Scientist had to say on the matter : -
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15020320.700.html

Cheers

Gareth

[Leccy-Lee]

I think everyone avoiding this topic, got too techy! lol

[Tech21]

I think everyone avoiding this topic, got too techy! lol

Good idea, Lets get back to something way more simpler....

What's the best beer in NZ?
And where's the best place in Wellington to get it?:laugh

Cheers

G

[Leccy-Lee]

I only drink Cider, so i would have no idea! LOL

[alan999]

You have an LED telly, wow most of us have to put up with an LCD one... :exit

:D
Ian

oops, must stop trying to impress. Mine's an ancient 29incher that cost $45 on trademe!!