Banning GLS lamps and replacing them with CFL'

Copper

Just wondering what your opinions on the proposed banning of GLS lamps is. I was listening to a guy from Greenpeace on Matt Cooper and basically he was very adamant that banning GLS lamps was going to solve global warming and that we are terribly backward for using them. They had a guy who manufactures lamps on aswell and they had done research which showed that to change a house over to CFL and LED lamps would cost € 1,000, when you consider control gear to convert light fittings to take these new lamps.

Personally I reckon its a terrible idea to ban them, apart from the fact that I hate the light from CFL's and their warm up time is a pain in the hole. We don't yet have an adequate replacement for GLS lamps IMO.

CFL's introduce all sorts of burdens on the supply including harmonics and P.F issues. Imagine if all the households in Ireland were using them, what affect would that have on the supply? Disposing of millions of CFL lamps, which contain mercury would be problematic, and I bet most people would just throw them in the bin where they end up on landfills polluting groundwater. And for short switching cycles they can use more energy than GLS lamps, and their lifespan is reduced.

I don't think Greenpeace have considered the other aspects of CFL's apart from simple energy savings.

Stoner

thats a very good point Copper with respect to how households will deal with CFL lamps, I fear you are correct, I fired one into the bin last week after i smashed it, even though we have a facility to deal with them in work, I just never thought of it.
Knowing Irish people I think it would take a long time before they thought or cared to dispose of these lamps correctly.
It like everything else, I bring all my plastics down to the recycle centre nearest to me, I'm told that the energy I waste in driving down there is greater then the energy saved by the act of recycling, i guess it depends on how much plastic I am brining down on each trip.

I think 1000 euro is a bit of a scare tactic though. I changed my mothers house over for less than 300 euro, I gutted my house and redesigned the whole place, as a result everything is energy efficient bar the security lights. I have 1x13Watt PL fittings in my hall and WCs and 2x26 Watt fittings in my kitchen there is no real start up or warm up time with these fittings.
But I understand that most peoples options will be a direct change to BC CFL and LEDs. I also think that the standard of lamps should be reviewed, there are a lot of cheap CFLs and Halogens for sale in discount stores, these have a short unpredictable life span and increase toxic waste IMO.

On the whole though I do think that we need to look at how we use light as a society as we are very wasteful.

northdublin

only last night i changed most of my gu-10 lamps to 7 watt cfls. took a few samples form the job and using the 5 gu-10 fittings in the hall i stuck a differant bulb in each one. ranging in led to differant colour cfls. decided to go for the daylight coulour cfl. i could understand peoples hesitance in switching to cfl as it changes the apearence of a room and if you have cfls mixed with wall lights with g-9s or halogens it looks a bit weird. but if you design a room with this in mind and install the right fittings i think you can get away with it.
we have a big bin in the job for bulbs and it doesnt take long to fill with the like of tubes and 2d lamps but i never really see sparks throwing in cfls or any other type of bulb so its a wonder where these end up?

eoghan.geraghty

northdublin wrote: »

we have a big bin in the job for bulbs and it doesnt take long to fill with the like of tubes and 2d lamps but i never really see sparks throwing in cfls or any other type of bulb so its a wonder where these end up?

Unfortunately the skip!
I finished revamping a warehouse last week and the guy looked at me like I had 2 heads when I was taking the old fittings and lamps away.