The AM Forum

Incandescent light globes are to be phased out next year down under but I would check this


http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=720597

http://www.environment.gov.au/settlements/waste/lamp-mercury.html

They do create very measurable amounts of UV, which are of course within safe limits...yer.   

And dont breath in the white gas that they emit when they break, its got mercury in it.

Authorities here have also detailed procedures for cleaning up when they break, you need a hazmat suit.

So - yes as per an earlier thread - stock up now.   

Yup Colin,
It's too bad that our GREEN crap has headed "down under".
The newer bulbs are hazardous to our health!!!!!!!!!!

The DAM L.E.D.'s are still outta sight for replacements. I wish they were the preffered energy saving light.

Fred

I have at least 100 stashed so far.
Maybe I'll start another box next to my R12.

I used to do that kind of stuff. sometimes it just adds to the "too much stuff" syndrome. I still have a bunch of cans of R-12 stashed and dont own anything that uses it any more. Where does it end and what is next? Next thing you know, if the tree huggers have their way, we'll be hoarding and stockpiling TP!! ;D ;D

                                                              The Slab Bacon

If you eat good food, you don't need alot of TP.

I am hoarding a collection ruggedised, low-efficiency, long-life bulbs, and I add to the collection as I run across them.

I'm not too overly concerned about mercury pollution (hell, I probably have had and still have enough M-V rectifiers on my property to make the mercury in all the CFL's I would use in a lifetime comparable to pissing in the ocean), but I do have uses for incandescent lamps where CFL's would be unsatisfactory.  Examples include using them as resistors to take advantage of their thermal characteristic, cheap and dirty rf dummy loads, portable drop-cord lamps and other abusive environments, heat generators, and outdoors in the winter cold.  I have found that even the newer CFL's generate RF hash to my indoor receiving antennas, so I won't use one inside the shack.

The incandescents that you can still buy, although more efficient and give off less heat, are extremely delicate, taking only a minor physical shock to open the filament, and their life is very short, sometimes only a few weeks if the light is used for even a short while every day.

But I haven't had much better luck with CFL's.  I have yet to see one last the promised five years.  Mine usually crap out after about a year or so.  The other day, the one I had in the kitchen began to flicker.  I turned it off, and when I turned it back on next time, it made a popping sound and gave off a burnt smell along with a whiff of smoke, and of course, didn't light up.  When I replaced it, I noticed that the base was uncomfortably hot to the touch, and there were traces of carbon soot near the base.  Apparently the little PC board inside the base had turned to toast.  It the right (or wrong) environment, I suspect this could have resulted in a fire, so maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to use a CFL in close vicinity to flammable material.

I do use CFL's in light fixtures that have tended to crap out from the constant heat given off by incandescents, such as the lamps inside a fully enclosed glass shade like the old school-house style lights and spherical glass shades.

Regarding safety, are CFL's any worse than the long fluorescent tubes that have been in use for many decades?  When I was a kid I remember being warned never to play with those tubes because they were filled with "poison gas".

Just add incandescent lamps to the long list of stuff "you can't get anymore".

Or for better hygiene, consider installing a bidet.

Quote from: W1EUJ on Today at 01:57:14 PM
If you eat good food, you don't need alot of TP.

I beg to differ. Good healthy food causes more eliminations, hence more TP. The bidet is the ultimate device
Is this thread going down the toilet??

Fred

One thing about CFLs, you can screw in some of those Y adapters and put two or four 33W ones in a single socket, and get about 400W worth of light for a little more than the 100W worth of electricity a bulb would use.. The Y adapters will be next on the greenie list.

Or you can remove the parts from the base and make a transmitter out of them.

http://mjrainey.googlepages.com/dasderelicht

I'm stockpiling rolls of good tin-lead solder.

Steve WD8DAS

Yup Colin,
It's too bad that our GREEN crap has headed "down under".



    Yer no problems Mop, its common knowledge that we are the 51 st state of America and we don't mind it that way.

So how do you replace the bulb in the fridge with a CFL?  Or the oven lite?   

As to the light bulb replacement problem in the fridge or oven, this is another benefit of going green!  It makes your life more exciting.  In the future no lights for the fridge or oven.  Now when you reach into the refrigerator you may come out with the cold beer you wanted or a half-empty can of cat food.  Or your oven broiled fish may turn out to be Sushi or carbonized.  No more boring trips to the kitchen!

I did a green marketing presentation at an academic conference last January and the basic theme of my presentation was that, in general, green marketing initiatives rarely look at the overall system with a consideration of the development/production/consumption/reclamation-disposal cycle and instead are based upon a small part of the overall system.  Depending upon your point-of-view you can attribute this to either lack of intelligence or greed on the part of the purveyor. 

There are some well thought out exceptions; for example ADM in their nearby Decatur milling/processing plant uses the waste heat from soybean fermentation to create heat for their hydroponic greenhouse vegetables and Tilapia fish farm.  Likewise, the water from the fish farm including the fish waste is used to grow and fertilize the vegetables.  But much of green marketing is really just marketing with the word green tacked on; it is the same sort of thought process that makes BPL sound like a great idea to those who have only a vague understanding of the process and environment.  The emphasis should be on green engineering and not green marketing but this would require that people with scientific and technical ability actually be in charge of strategy and direction...

Rodger WQ9E

I'm working on an optics project now...

So, we started talking about the CFL bulbs, and since we had a spectrum analyzer available we decided to take a look a the output spectrum of the bulbs. Very surprising. They have narrow band outputs in Red, Green, and Blue. Sort of like, ummm... yeah, that's it TV phosphors!

I speculated that they're buying up all the old recycled computer monitors and mashing the phosphors together for re-use in these bulbs... dunno.

I would have thought that "rare eaths" are actually, well, rare.
Guess not so much.
Otherwise they'd want to get more of these fluorescent and CFL bulbs back for recycling.

I wonder what the actual cost per bulb in energy is to make them vs. the old tungsten filament bulb. Add in the cost of proper disposal, and then make a comparison.

Btw, they don't last very long at all. I get about 1 year max of full time operation, typically.

The stuff in the base runs WAY WAY too hot, and if they are enclosed, they die a fast hot death.

LEDs will be along presently, these things are an interim step, imho.

Bet we'll see some flat OLED panels to drop into where you have those 2'x4' ceiling fixtures now, in the not too distant future also...

I think I'll test a 2watt LED on the spectrum analyzer too... hmmm...

                _-_-bear

i crap standing up. and when im done only a garden hose will clean up my handywork

I've had those CFLs come out of sockets with MELTED bases. Burnt and stinky.  I wonder how long it will be before someone has a fire and sues the manufacture.  Seems like a bad design.  They don't last in my house, and at 5 - 6 times the cost of long life incandesent bulbs that's not good.  They also gin up quiet a racket on RF too.  I can tell when someone is moving through the house by the noise in the receiver,  as one fixture goes off and on the noise changes...

Also, in the unheated areas they just don't turn on, period. (typical flourescent behavior). 

I guess I will be hunting for the ultra long life bulbs. 

Or maybe I can get some whale oil for my lamps...

CFLs.......I use them everywhere, even in the outside the door socket...  10 below... no problem.

Have yet to hear one any where from 0 to 62mhz (but of course I use coax feedline)
There is one right here on the bench, about 1 foot from the RX.

In 6 years, I've only replaced 2 out of 18 in the house.


I did make the mistake of buying the "cool-white" once...
THOSE got replaced the next day!   Caused headaches to everyone in the house...

Same as a lot of products I guess... some people have better luck than others.

I agree Bruce. I have been using CFL's throughout the house and shack for almost 4 years now. No failures, no noise and with one exception I don't notice any shortcomings. The one thing that irritates me is the short warm up time on a few areas in the house like the basement landing. I flick it on and expect instant light to walk down. Instead I have to wait a second or two. ;D

I have one on the front and back porch outside in sub zero weather and they work good as well. As a matter of fact the only incondesant bulbs in the household are the oven and refrigerator. This sounds like a product developers dream.

Mike

anybody put one in the fridge yet?

Nope, The socket is too small for a standard bulb here. I think they call it an appliance bulb with a half sized screw in bulb. As far as I know they don't yet make one for that. Same for the oven.

For what it's worth, half of the fridge raids, between meals, are in fast attack mode. A CFL startup doesn't stand a chance.

LED lamp arrays would be perfect for the fridge.....
If one wanted to be anal enough to change it out.

They do indeed make CFLs with appliance size bases...
(and mini candelabra bases too...)


Still don't think I'd put one in the oven though.......   :P

There seem to be more to the CFL than the TV set. I am seeing emissions at these wavelengths. My eyes might be missing some at the outer ends, and the camera certainly was notable to detect what could be seen by eye due to whatever reason:
405
435
broad band from 485-500
545
broad band (or many emissions close together) from 576 to 590
590
595
600
610
broad band from 610-630
630
650
662
687
695
band from 703-710

The colors and some widths in the photos are from 'overload"? of the camera. For instance I see yellow sometimes with bright red "tactical" lights in the commo truck.

 it's easy to go "green" without CFL's or any of this other crap. wanna go green? just wipe your boogers on the underside of your radio station table, chair or the side of the transmitter rack. we went to CFL's where i work a few years ago and i lost AM radio reception, as well as anything on a portable (you hammys call them hanhelds) on VHF lowband 30-50 MHZ in the building.

even better.. stock up on remington shotgun shells.... they are green

"Green", sold by the modern day equivalent of snake oil salesmen.

I have a CFL in the desk lamp in my shack, and hear no difference on 75m and up whether it's on or off...


What brand are you using? I put them in my unheated garage and the looooong time to warmup is very annoying when I just need to find something and take it back to the house. I would love to find one that doesn't take 5 minutes (at least) to put out anywhere close to its rated light output and color when the temp is near freezing, let alone sub-zero (which fortunately doesn't happen here in southern MO).

-Charles

Charles,

The two porch lights are GE Helical 20 watt interior bulbs. Not meant for outdoor use they say but they are in dry enclosures and under cover so they don't get wet. I expect they take time to warm up but I never look. I use the back door most often and a dual quartz motion sensing spot turns on when I open the back door. That flood's the area.

In the garage I have the same exact problem. I have 6X4' and 1X8' dual tube Modern, high pressure fluorescent fixtures. They are supposed to light faster and brighter than older tubes but they are very dim when cold. In the garage attic is a brand new 100 watt equivalent CFL and it is very dim when cold. All of the garage lights take about an hour to reach full brightness when the temperature dips to zero or lower. Going out to grab that wrench on a cold dark evening is a pain here as well. When it's warm you need sun glasses in the shop.

It's less about going green and more about saving green. I hear often about people that have had problems with CFL's. If they didn't last or caused noise I wouldn't have them. I guess I'm just lucky.

They don't bother my reception when I am using an outdoor antenna.  But then sometimes I can't hear my own VFO in spot mode on certain antennae, and have to temporarily switch to another receiving antenna to zero-beat .  But CFL's clearly pollute reception with any kind of indoor antenna in the same room.  That includes my shielded rotatable 160m loop and any portable AM or shortwave receiver with whip antenna.

I am  not sold on LED's either.  I gave up on LED flashlights after my third one started having LED's to go dark one by one, on the second or in one case, the original set of batteries.

And I tried halogen incandescent lamps.  They are supposed to give off more light than regular bulbs, but I found them to run extremely hot and not last as long.  When one would crap out, I would find cracks in the glass envelope.  I don't know if that was a result of the failure, or if it was the cause.

oh, I see. I didn't realize you were talking about CFL's left on for prolonged periods. I have also had success with the GE ones as long as they are protected from the weather.

I thought you had found a "magical" CFL that warmed up in a couple of seconds to full brightness in subzero temps!

Wether they last or not I dont care.

What I dont like are the two established facts that they expose you to a higher dose of UV than you would normally get and they are toxic when broken.

We all know the argument - what if you knew your are biologically predisposed to getting cancer or eye problems etc. etc. would you want to sit with one of these in a desk lamp on your face- how do you know your not predisposed to getting such complications?

Another one that they have caused QRM problems.

you got me wondering now about the UV, how much it really is. It was right there plain to see in the spectrum. I've been told plastic like lexan blocks UV, and there are theatrical gel materials that can do the same, but we should not have to spend $ to re-engineer the blasted things. For fun I looked at the CRT and the blue there is roughly 430 to 455nM. no line at 405 like the CFL. There may be shorter waves that can't be seen by eye.

Bear, can you get or capture decent wide band images from your spectrometer? Mine is a cheap $40 one and my camera is narrower than the eye.