Author Topic: The humble light bulb and saving energy  (Read 2672 times)

K Frame

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Re: The humble light bulb and saving energy
« Reply #25 on: March 15, 2019, 02:52:19 PM »
"HO fluorescent tubes."

How DARE you look down on their chosen lifestyle!


Home and Office?
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Perd Hapley

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Re: The humble light bulb and saving energy
« Reply #26 on: March 15, 2019, 03:35:30 PM »
High-output. They're brighter, but the main selling point is that you can run them in cold temperatures.

Come to think of it, since they're used in signs, you can probably find a lot of them just hanging out on the street at night, trying to get your attention, hoping to part you from your money.
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Brad Johnson

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Re: The humble light bulb and saving energy
« Reply #27 on: March 15, 2019, 05:01:13 PM »
High-output. They're brighter, but the main selling point is that you can run them in cold temperatures.


Cold-er, anyway. At sub 40 def F temps they still take a fair bit to warm up. I just replaced a bunch of HO lamps in Dad's shop with LED retrofit tubes for that very reason (and the fact that they live in the boonies and 8' lamps are a PITA to haul even across town, much less an hour away over bumpy ranch roads).

Brad
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Brad Johnson

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Re: The humble light bulb and saving energy
« Reply #28 on: March 15, 2019, 05:05:12 PM »

The ones I was talking about require a little more than a few tenths of a second. That sign tube takes, just by a rough guess, a second-and-a-half. Why it's designed that way, I don't know. I don't suppose it matters, really.

Some of the big high-wattage commercial drivers do take a touch longer to energize, especially if they are driving a giant array of LEDs. Takes a bit for them to reach the proper forward voltage.

Brad
It's all about the pancakes, people.
"And he thought cops wouldn't chase... a STOLEN DONUT TRUCK???? That would be like Willie Nelson ignoring a pickup full of weed."
-HankB

Perd Hapley

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Re: The humble light bulb and saving energy
« Reply #29 on: March 15, 2019, 10:52:42 PM »
Cold-er, anyway. At sub 40 def F temps they still take a fair bit to warm up. I just replaced a bunch of HO lamps in Dad's shop with LED retrofit tubes for that very reason (and the fact that they live in the boonies and 8' lamps are a PITA to haul even across town, much less an hour away over bumpy ranch roads).

Brad

Just going by memory, I think -20 and -30 are the temps I've seen listed on ballasts. I don't think I've seen anything lower than that. Maybe they have lower-temp ballasts in markets farther north.
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K Frame

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Re: The humble light bulb and saving energy
« Reply #30 on: March 16, 2019, 07:01:49 AM »
I've got a CFL in wall sconce beside my front door. It's been there for probably 6 years at this point. Only reason I've not changed it out for an LED is because it's such a pain in the butt to get to because of the hedge and the fixture itself isn't designed to make bulb changes easy.

When it's sub freezing out it takes a good 3 to 5 minutes to come up to full power where the post light at the end of the walk, which is an LED, comes on full brightness immediately when the sensor triggers it.

A couple of years ago, right after I got Seren, I put a new LED fixture in the back yard. It has two spotlight bulbs on a motion sensor. When it gets dark it comes on at half power; when motion triggers it it comes on at full power.

Provides security without blasting out my neighbors.
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