When I were a lad, admittedly quite some time ago, the decision making process when buying light bulbs was very straightforward. Your choice was a bayonet fitting and either 60 watt or 100 watt (unless you were dead posh and had mood lighting) and 150 watt if you were looking to heat the house as well.
Has anyone bought a lamp recently? Have you seen the array of fittings, different type of light bulbs and different ways of describing how powerful they are? What a mess.
I was looking for a floor standing reading lamp, essentially to help with the weekend papers. I started the search on Amazon and it didn't take long for me to get very confused (no change there then). Lamps start at £25 and go up to hundreds of pounds. Why anyone would spend hundreds when a cheaper one would do the same job beggars belief. Then, the description of the type of light bulb and the strength of the light are so confusing that I gave up. I thought it might be easier if I looked at the light bulbs in a shop.
No chance and very little by way of explanation. Rant over.
We've become increasingly pissed off about the fancy halogen bulbs "in a regular light bulb fitting" which we've been forced to upgrade to since the bloody EU stopped the manufacture of standard bulbs. But they fail as regularly as standard bulbs and, at £2.95 per pop can get pretty expensive. Neither of us like energy efficient types. Not very green I know.
ReplyDeleteThe solution is to buy "rough service" bulbs for 60W and 100W. Essentially standard bulbs which avoid the EU ban by supposedly being rugged and for commercial premises. They're exactly the same and at less than £1 each, we're happily back to how we were! Look for them locally (sometimes) or on ebay in packs of 10.
I voted for the Common Market, not for some jumped up over rated organisation to tell me what light bulbs I could buy. We're not 'green' either. A light bulb that doesn't provide enough light is a total waste of time. When I'm in charge.................
ReplyDeleteSticking my oar in a bit late here but I so whole heartedly agree. The energy saving bulbs are far too dim for my liking and so expensive that they would have to last ten times as long as the old ones - how likely is that I wonder.
ReplyDeleteAs for all this save the planet nonsense - did you watch the new Top Gear programme on telly? With all those petrol head nutter burning up the planet just for fun I don't see how using a few piddling light bulbs could make any inroads into the damage to the planet that cars are doing, so what's the point?