Good Riddance To The Sixty Watt Light Bulb!
People have a lot of misplaced love for the old sixty watt light-bulb, as this story on the BBC shows.
It doesn’t bother me, as I won’t have an incandescent bulb in the house because of the safety risk, when they fail. An A & E doctor once told me, that they’d had several people come into hospital after falls, where an incandescent bulb had failed and this had tripped out all the lights, which meant they had fallen over the cat, dog or whatever.
But the lights I hate are those halogen MR16 and GU10 bulbs. There average life span is very short and the light they give out, used to give me headches until I went gluten free. I have a lot of those size of bulb in this house and all have been replaced with LED versions, which are brighter, use less energy and rarely fail.
My real problem in this house is finding some lights to replace some of the awful ones that Jerry installed to boost his profits.
Some Truly Hideous Lights
They really are truly hideous. Some of the lights he used were even worse and when I left them on the front patio for someone to take if they wanted, they didn’t remove one. But they did take a couple of old incandescent bulbs!
An Ideal Present For Your NuLabor Friends
I saw this lamp in John Lewis yesterday.
I wonder if Tony Blair did a deal over the naming rights!
Not Big Sellers
If I want to get rid of anything that might be useful to someone, I just put it on the front patio with a note saying it’s alright to take it. But not these lights!
A Box of Useless Lights
They’re obviously too awful for even the grottiest cellar, attic or garden shed. They were of course installed in this house by Jerry, who never missed a chsnce to use crap, where quality was specified.
Although I must say someone did rumage through and take all the tungsten light bulbs.
Mathmos Lighting
This company, famed for the Lava Lamp, seems to be thinking the way I am on column lights with its Airswitch range.
I need one that is the size of the IKEA one, with the controls of the Airswitch.
Clerkenwell Design Week
I went along to Clerkenwell Design Week today, which lasts until Thursday.
Clerkenwell Design Week
It was well worth a visit and was a much more worthwhile event than Grand Designs Live.
The first thing of note, I saw was this folding chair concept called a Flux Chair from The Netherlands.
Flux Chair
This video shows how it opens and folds flat.
Now I have to admit that I like origami and a designer, Reg Bentinck I used a few years ago was a great exponent to create interest in a product.
Anglepoise is a respected British company, renowned for the famed lamp.
Anglepoise Lamps
They had a big display, with lots of new versions. I’d love a large one in brass to go with my colour scheme in my new house.
I walked around the floors of the Farmiloe Building and saw some impressive furniture and lights, but none that really struck me for my needs. There were lots of pendant lights, which are no good for me, as I have concrete ceilings and no points wired to put any. I didn’t see any decent wall lights at all.
As I left this caught my eye.
Furniture Construction Set
It is a sort of construction set for small items developed by Pal Rodenius from Sweden. He had some clever ideas that I liked and I’ll look out for his name in the future.
A Different Approach
This idea of his, is a method for constructing objects, by cutting around different coloured lines to get a chair, a table or a desk. It is a very different approach to creating affordable furniture. I may have got this wrong, but it seems you just trace the design on a piece of plywood and then cut around the appropriate coloured line to get your furniture. See his web site for more of his fascinating work.
I couldn’t miss this as I left to catch a bus home.
A Striking Floor
it was advertising a company, who’ll put any image you want on your floor. Like this map.
A Map as Flooring
I might go back again to dig a bit deeper. It is certainly worth a visit. Especially, if you’re interested in design, as either a practitioner or a purchaser.
The Light From IKEA
As I said here, I bought a light and here it is installed by the front door.
IKEA Orgel Vreten Light
It looks good for something that cost just £20.47. It also uses three small SES bulbs. I got three in Sainsburys in Dalston for just £2.99 each. They were 8W Phillips Tornados.
I think that possibly the one from Selfridges may be more elegant, but at £75, it should be.
Sainsburys should be congratulated in pricing energy-saving bulbs at a competitive price. John Lewis are cheaper, but most retailers charge about £4 for this bulb. Especially, as you can buy tunsten bulbs for pound or two in the market next door.
London Is Heaving
There must be something going on in London later in the week.
I was trying to locate some lights for my hall, so I decided to take the Underground to Warren Street and then walk to Selfridges by way of Habitat, Heals, John Lewis and Marks and Spencer.
A couple of years ago I bought some bedside lights from John Lewis, that are touch on and touch off. I would show you a link to their web site, but they are not there, although they were in the Oxford Street store. Here’s a picture of the bedside light.
John Lewis Touchable Table Lamp
They work well and what I want is three tall ones, so that I can place them at strategic points in my hall. And as I walk past in the dark, they will automatically switch on, when I touch them.
In fact, you can play lots of games with this type of concept. Perhaps, when you are out or it is pitch dark, they should switch on and they could text my mobile phone to say that someone was about.
The possibilities of this sort of technology are endless. The text message facility could even be used to locate where you have put your mobile phone. I once had an e-mail from a friend, asking to call his mobile phone, as he’d left it somewhere in his house and couldn’t find it. Like many these days he didn’t have a landline. He does now!
I finally found an elegant tall lamp in Selfridges, but why are there so few?
I can’t be the only person, who when they enter their house in the dark, doesn’t have a light in the hall, that is close to hand. But I have a space between the door and the wall, where I could put such a light.
A Space for a Tall Lamp
Ideally it would be touchable, but a foot switch would be an alternative. Note the switches on the wall. They are for the outside lights, or at least I can’t get them to work any others. At least, I’ve got a suitable powerpoint, but note the cracked plaster above it. Jerry’s electrician didn’t have a clue.
You might argue, why I don’t have a light in the hall? Jerry didn’t put one in to save money and to put one in would mean trunking all over the place as the ceiling is a concrete slab. Wall lights are so naff! And yes, I’ve got lots of really hideous ones, probably bought in some bastion of good design like Fred’s El-Cheapo Lighting Emporium in Dalston Market. Don’t knock that market, as I think, Lord Sugar started his business careeer there.
The trip wasn’t helped by the fact that London seemed to have many more people about than normal. To make matters worse there were lots of smokers lining up outside the shops having a cough and a drag. Some were even sitting on the floor, creating more unseen hazards for people with limited vision. I did think about deliberately falling over a particular well-upholstered couple dragging away with one hand and eating a burger with the other but I decided against it, as I would have hated to have contact with such an awful pair of individuals.
Let’s hope that London gets a little bit less busy as the week goes on. I have a lot of shopping to do!
Lots of Naff Lighting
Jerry used cheap and nasty light fittings in this house and I’ve looking for something more stylist.
Yesterday, I walked round several shops in Central London and didn’t see anything that was in the least bit inspiring.
I’ve found this one on the Internet and it looks promising, but I’d like to touch and feel one before I buy.
C Would Not Have Been Amused
I most certainly aren’t and she would have been with me on this one.
The lights in this house are generally wall units, which were originally fitted with 40 watt tungsten bulbs, that I believe should be removed immediately, as we do need to do something about our electricity consumption and carbon emissions. As half of them have failed, the light in some parts of the house is not good. The fittings were designed for 100 watt tungsten screw bulbs, which despite being available in markets round here should not be sold. Finding an adequate energy-saving replacement is proving tiresome, as it seems that many shops only carry a few very standard and expensive bulbs. So perhaps people in London stick with their illegal tungsten bulbs. As an example, I’ve not seen one of the clever light sensitive bulbs I used to use outside in Suffolk.
There are also loads of the dreaded MR16 halogen bulbs. I hate them as they give me headaches, but the LED replacements don’t. They also give out a lot more light, use a lot less energy and last for ever. I did manage to find two and they helped, but I need to find a lot more, as quite a few of the old ones have either failed or flash on and off.
Scheveningen
I took these pictures just as the sun went down at Scheveningen in Holland.
The interesting pictures are those of the LED streetlight. So why is this light so good?
- The light appears to have fifteen sets of three rows of four 1-watt LEDs. They look like they are the same LEDs as in my floodlights here.
- These lights have a total power consumption of perhaps 200 watts, but then nearly all of this energy ends up as light. A typical halogen light would use between five and ten times more energy.
- You can also see that each of the individual banks of four lights are angled to give an even light on the ground. This is exactly the same way that the lights in floodlight towers at a football ground are arranged so that the pitch is evenly lit.
- LEDs have a life of many years, so how much will be saved on maintenance. I suspect that these lights might even just need a wash every year or so.
- One subsidiary benefit of these lights is that the light goes where it is needed and not up in the sky. Astronomers will be very pleased.
But these lights are just the start. As LEDs are dimmable, low-voltage, easily controlled and have a low energy consumption all sorts of tricks can be played to make them even better. In a country with enough sun, you could even have the lights solar-powered. But perhaps in Holland or the UK, by using a light profile, which dimmed them in the middle of a night, it might even be possible.
It may be quite a mundane piece of street furniture, but in a few years time, all street-lighting will be based on these principles.
If it isn’t, it’ll be a disgrace.
The Anonymous Widower 