[Boatanchors] CFLs

[Pete Lancashire]

As to CFL's I've a friend who's partner is part of the maintenance team in a 29
story office bldg. If I remember they have in desk lamps etc about 400 spiral
ones, and in the building lighting 3,000 or something like that.

What he told me is they see is in the past couple years the consumer
grade spiral CFL
die long before their advertises life. The commercial ones some are now
7+ years old.

At home where I have something like 20 CFLs, I'm seeing too many fail.
Being the Engineer/Boatanchor type I've taken them apart. Everyone except
one has been cheap electrolytic caps. The one that was not a cap was
no solder !! on one connection the tight bend in the lead was the only
thing that let it work for the 5 or so hours.

As to Hg, I agree, but here in Oregon you can take any lamp with Hg
and drop them off, big box stores, hardware stores, etc.

On RF radiation I've some older 100 W equivalent, and they do a pretty
good job of spitting out noise up to about 3 Mhz.The newer ones seem
to be pretty quite. But then when I put in new fixtures, I add a choke.

-pete





On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 9:49 AM, howard holden <holden7471 at msn.com> wrote:
> I've been using CFLs for perhaps 9-10 years now. Replacements are few and
> far between, no RFI that I can hear, and I have had them in the shack all
> along. Never had one catch fire, and even use them outdoors. Yes, they take
> a minute or two to get to decent brilliance, and outdoors even longer if
> it's cold, but it's a small inconvenience for the money saved on electric
> bills. And, they can't be used in a dimmer setup. Back in NJ, tracking our
> electric bills for several years compared to pre-CFL, the CFLs saved an
> average of $15 per month. They paid for themselves in no time, and lasted
> about 3 years average, far longer than any incandescent. In our home here in
> Reno, the kitchen came with 8 in-ceiling flood lamps, each rated at 65
> watts. Replaced them all with 15 watt CFLs, and have absolutely no issues
> with them.  Even though electric is cheaper here in Reno, given that I've
> installed over 25 of the CFLs (small ones, floods, and even 3-ways) I would
> estimate the savings about the same, plus the long life factor. We
> personally find the light from them to be OK.
>
> About the mercury, for those who are concerned, a hefty percentage of the
> electric in this country is generated from coal, for which mercury is a
> by-product of combustion. There is less mercury in the small CFLs than the
> mercury not produced by the lower energy required over their lifetime.
>
> Certainly some have had bad experiences with them, but for our money the
> CFLs  just make better sense than incandescents.
>
> Howie WB2AWQ
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Pete Lancashire
> To: Troglodite at aol.com
> Cc: boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
> Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 9:13 AM
> Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] CFLs
> not only C as in compact but cheap FL, like the $10 shop ones.
>
> at my old place, I had about a dozen of them. the only thing that worked
> was since they were between the joists was to cage them in wire cloth
> (Al window screening).
>
> on the flip side I helped wire a friends shop with commercial fixtures,
> don't
> know what was different on the inside but they were a lot quieter.
>
> love to hear from others and their solutions
>
> -pete
>
> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 8:34 AM,  <Troglodite at aol.com> wrote:
>> One thing no one has mentioned that I have encountered is RFI from CFL's.
>> Perhaps the newer ones are better, but some generate noise all the way up
>> into the GHz region. I cannot use one in the lamp that sits next to my
>> home
>> wireless phone system, as it operates marginally when near the CFL. It
>> runs
>> at 2.4GHz or thereabouts. Now it may be that some lower frequency
>> component
>> is interfering with the phone's processor, I don't know for sure.
>>
>> I also pick up noise on several communications receivers if there are
>> CFL's
>> in the same room. Has anyone else noticed this?
>>
>> Doug Moore kb9tmy
>>
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