On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 09:59:42 -0500, "Ray O"
<rokigawaATtristarassociatesDOTcom> wrote:
I'll take Tungsten over Mercury any day - Tungsten is inert.

Both can be recycled, but for the most part aren't - nobody wants to
pay the excessive costs for lamp collection and recovery, handling
them as Hazardous Waste is very expensive and it's very hard (often
nearly impossible) to pass along the costs - so the vast majority of
the industry talks a good game, but when the rubber meets the road
they just look the other way and pitch the dead lamps into the regular
municipal landfill...

I'm all for "Doing the right thing" - but when the disposal fees for
the old lamps coming out costs more than the new lamps going in, that
simply makes no sense...

The one good thing is that they use a lot less mercury in modern
"Alto" or "Eco-Lume" fluorescent lamps with the green end-caps, just
enough to work. And so little as to raise the recovery costs even
higher - if they don't have as much reclaimed mercury to resell, they
have to charge the Hazardous Waste generators (us) more of the costs
when they send in used lamps for recycling.

The dimmers put out some noise, but it is not long range - it'll rip
up AM radio for 20 feet and that's about it... What kills CFL lamps
and normal non-dimming fluorescent fixture ballasts is the reduced
voltage from being behind a dimmer, plus the electronic hash of the
dimmer circuit's Triacs or SCRs chopping up the waveform instead of
getting a nice steady sine wave from the utility.

Incandescent lamps are pure resistance loads, they don't care about
the incoming waveform - within reason.

Certain cheap incandescent lamps with one long straight unsupported
filament don't like dimmers at ALL, frequency resonances cause the
filament to start 'whipping' around in a circle like a jumprope doing
Double Dutch, the repeated flexing of the brittle tungsten will kill
them fast - but most dimmers just chop the power once per half-cycle,
they aren't trying to do a high-frequency switching conversion. The
light persistence of a white-hot filament makes that 120Hz flicker
disappear, until you get down to the 'very dim' levels.

240V incandescent lamps are for use in Europe - use a 240V lamp on
120V and it'll barely glow and be way too inefficient.

You can get both 240V and 277V lamps with regular USA-Spec Medium
(AKA "Edison") bases for specialized industrial uses (Janitor Closets
in large office buildings where they only had 277V lighting circuits
handy), but they are rare - Most developers will pay the few bucks
more and put in the proper fluorescent fixture with a 277V ballast
rather than deal with the hassles and safety concerns.

(I got called to a mid-rise office in West LA and had to go get a
case of 277V lamps and paint "277 VOLT LAMPS ONLY" on the sockets.
The tenant that leased 2/3 of the building said "We tried changing
them, but the lamps only lasted about 15 seconds and got /real/
bright...")

They make 130V "Long-Life Lamps" for use on American 120V circuits
and you get roughly double the life - but there's a big lumen/watt
efficiency hit to match. You only want to use those lamps on second-
story chandeliers and other places where the lamps are hard to change,
or where you have to call a professional to do it for you.

Dimmers give you the same effect if you run them slightly dimmed
most of the time, with standard 120V lamps available anywhere.

They use 140V or 145V rated lamps for {<EXIT>} lights on nominal
120V circuits, but that's to save the trouble of changing them - and
they have to use a 15W 145V lamp to get about 5W of usable light.
When you have to pay someone to change lamps, suddenly the cost of the
lamps or the energy they use pales in comparison to the labor.

--<< Bruce >>--

"dbu.," <question*mark (AT) einp (DOT) com> wrote

Hmm, hmm. Say no more.

"Jeff" <news (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote

Analtyical as in anal tickle? In my day it was called stinkfinger.

Last night on television there was this small enthusiastic crowd talking
about "lifters" as if this was something new to enhance the looks of a
woman's breast. I turned to my wife and asked (as if I didn't know), Aren't
those falsies?
Wow! What a re-discovery!
And then there was a commercial for a type of squeeze-yourself-in garment
they called Trim (something), and I said, Wow, they just re-discovered
girdles. I wonder if we'll see a rash of reports on veracious veins in a
year or two.

(Speaking of rash) What's coming next? Designer color toilet tissue?

"Bruce L. Bergman" <blnospambergman (AT) earthlink (DOT) invalid> wrote

Unless somehow I missed it, you haven't said anything about the lack of a
sudden surge of power, which I thought extended the life expectancy of an
incandescent bulb. Am I wrong about this?