I was called out by a client in Cpt for a burning smell only at night in his main bedroom. As he explained it smells like something is burning. Indeed this is what i found. Old type Tungsten screw type bulbs in the headboard recess both sides of the bed. By the way these Tungsten filament bulbs is now officially discontinued and are not allowed to be sold in SA. Pictures below that could have had serious consequences for the house owner. As the pillows moves around when persons lying on the bed pressing against the bulbs that could have ignited the pillow. 

 

 

4 hours ago, TaliaB said:

I was called out by a client in Cpt for a burning smell only at night in his main bedroom. As he explained it smells like something is burning. Indeed this is what i found. Old type Tungsten screw type bulbs in the headboard recess both sides of the bed. By the way these Tungsten filament bulbs is now officially discontinued and are not allowed to be sold in SA. Pictures below that could have had serious consequences for the house owner. As the pillows moves around when persons lying on the bed pressing against the bulbs that could have ignited the pillow. 

 

 

Just to reiterate!! More than 90% of the energy from incandescent bulbs is lost as heat. About 80% of the energy from CFL bulbs is lost as heat. LED bulbs give off almost no heat. I changed the 2 bulbs to 5w E14 LED Warm white(3,000k). No heat whatsoever.

Edited June 18, 20242 yr by TaliaB

yip, that heat is lost watts

I have only leds in whole house now, all lights on 24/7 coz they use so little power

1 hour ago, WannabeSolarSparky said:

yip, that heat is lost watts

Or in this case as a fire hazard

8 minutes ago, TaliaB said:

Or in this case as a fire hazard

Disaster hides where you least expect it.

I also have LEDs throughout the house, and I'm used to having them. And therein lies a trap.

Recently I was in the UK, booked into a Holiday Inn. Now the UK is very concerned about energy consumption right now and the "efficiency of houses" (EG if they leak too much air, or otherwise lose heat, they consume more power and this is inefficient). So UK, big international hotel chain, lots of encouragement to go green, rental e-bikes all over the place.

Me, being used to LEDs, went to adjust the bed side reading lamp which was on an arm sticking out of the head rest. Ouch! Thing was hot. I then checked the other light fittings in the room, or at least the ones I could get to. All incandescent. 

Anyway, one needs to be careful. Don't take it for granted that wherever you are has low energy lighting. As @TaliaB reminded us earlier on, those old globes give off lots of heat (which is whey they're now regarded as so inefficient). We should still be careful when approaching any sort of lighting.

Incandescents may be on the come back there, or at least there is nostalgia for them. I'm guessing this a manifestation of the "it was good enough for my dad, and for his dad before him" thinking that gets people worked up when (a real life example I bumped into) a new owner sands the filthy, warped floor boards in a pub. We were in Milton Keynes. We went to see a show at a very nice theatre called The Stables. All mod cons (including a special RF loop that modern hearing aids can tune into). But there was a forthcoming show whose main selling point was that the stage would be lit with "edison" light bulbs. Presumably this gives a different ambience, or enhances the performance in some way, or is just two fingers up to the interfering government who tells us to use LED lighting and get heat pumps and has introduced energy efficiency certificates for houses (you must get your house inspected and rated before you sell, and must present the certificate to prospective buyers).

Edited June 19, 20242 yr by Bobster.
sppeling

I'm all for energy conservation but LED lamps are relatively unreliable. I've still got some compact fluorescent lamps in my house and linear fluorescent tubes in my workshop which are over 10 years old and a few of them over 15 years. Even with with the epidemic of loadshedding followed by low voltage surges and generally appalling power quality these fluorescent lamps are still working fine.

I wish I could say the same for LED lamps but alas they're very unreliable and it's generally down to poor design, poor build quality and built-in obsolescence. You kinda expect it if you order lamps on Amazon or AliExpress but the majority of the LED lamps available over the counter from electrical wholesalers are equally as bad and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Don't get me wrong, there are well designed LED lamps with stable driver circuitry, good internal thermal management, decent power factor, good colour rendering but they're the exception rather than the rule and they're usually double if not triple the price of the rubbish options. When I was involved in relamping projects we installed hundreds of dimmable GU10 lamps in some premises and there were zero failures in the first 5 years so I know they can be reliable, it's just social, political and financial obsticles causing or allowing them to be generally unreliable.

I wish they would introduce not just electrical regs to ensure good power factor, low inrush currents and built in surge protection etc but also consumer protection legislation that it's illegal to sell LED lamps that don't last at least 3 years regardless of their usage pattern. Should any LED lamp fail within 3 years the vendor / electrical wholesaler / importer that supplied it should be financially on the hook not just for a replacement lamp but also for the item return costs and any labour costs including crane or cherry picker rental if required.

It should also be legislated that they're not allowed to dictate warranty validity on whether or not external surge protection is installed. What a load of horseshit. If the internal circuits of an LED lamp are well designed the risk of surge damage from supply instabilities can be adequately mitigated by decoupling control components and using stable power rails. Problem is when an electrical wholesaler attends the Beijing LED trade show and orders 100k of the cheapest LED lamps they can find the design they get means astronomically high failure rates and leaves them looking for any excuse they can find not to have to deal with the flood of warranty claims they get. Next thing you know there's small print somewhere on their website stating you're shit outta luck if your LED lamps only last 3 months because you didnt install 3 grands worth of class AB surge arrestors.

Anyway, apologies in advance because not sure how much of this will be tolerated by the forum bad word filters but rant over for now.

On 2024/10/30 at 9:22 PM, Marv said:

I wish I could say the same for LED lamps but alas they're very unreliable and it's generally down to poor design, poor build quality and built-in obsolescence.

LED lighting is revolutionary (wouldn't be able to run my house from battery at night without them!) but agreed: quality control is very poor. I've found even big-brand LED bulbs from (reasonably) respectable places like Takealot often fail prematurely. This makes the trend I've seen internationally, where some LED light fixtures don't even have replaceable bulbs, even more troubling.

 

I've had success with multi-filament style LED bulbs (where the bulb has multiple LED strips and hence the light [and heat!] is distributed amongst several current paths) - I haven't seen these fail on me yet (my oldest one is about 4-5 years) so I've been slowly moving us over to those each time my other LED bulbs fail.

3 hours ago, JayMardern said:

LED lighting is revolutionary (wouldn't be able to run my house from battery at night without them!) but agreed: quality control is very poor. I've found even big-brand LED bulbs from (reasonably) respectable places like Takealot often fail prematurely. This makes the trend I've seen internationally, where some LED light fixtures don't even have replaceable bulbs, even more troubling.

I've had mixed experiences with LED lighting. When I've bought a known (to me) brand name (Phillips, Osram, Verbatim) they have tended to go on the blink after a while. If I go to my local lighting specialist (LiteGlo in Randburg) and get lights from them, it's no-name brand or something you've never heard of. And those turn out to be reliable.

The LED tube replacements are what you describe - strings of individual LEDs. The others are mostly in opaque covers (except the Verbatim mini-spots) and so I'd have to cut one open to see what's inside, and I'm not cutting over a perfectly serviceable bulb.

I have some no-name LED external spots that cover our patio area, and they draw next to nothing and have been operating every day for 8 or 9 years now.

Edited November 18, 20241 yr by Bobster.