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Incandescent lovers, rejoice.

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,757
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
LED lights are awesome. They're small, efficient, they don't get hot like incandescent bulbs, and you can get any color, including "warm glow", from the same bulb. The only problem is that they're difficult to dim with existing switches.

That's the rub for us -- we have an overelaborate lighting system in the auditorium at work which uses nearly a hundred 60 watt incandescent bulbs wired into several different circuits going thru dimmers. CFLs and LEDs won't work with this system, and halogens burn too hot for the diffusers. I stocked up on regular 60 watt bulbs when they were disappearing, but then I discovered traffic signal bulbs -- they're special heavy-duty incandescents that work fine with the diimmers and can last up to twenty years before they need replacing. Which is a consideration when, to change the bulbs, you have to rent a hoist.

I bought four cases of traffic signal bulbs last summer, replaced all the bulbs at once, and am very pleased with the results.
 
That's the rub for us -- we have an overelaborate lighting system in the auditorium at work which uses nearly a hundred 60 watt incandescent bulbs wired into several different circuits going thru dimmers. CFLs and LEDs won't work with this system, and halogens burn too hot for the diffusers. I stocked up on regular 60 watt bulbs when they were disappearing, but then I discovered traffic signal bulbs -- they're special heavy-duty incandescents that work fine with the diimmers and can last up to twenty years before they need replacing. Which is a consideration when, to change the bulbs, you have to rent a hoist.

I bought four cases of traffic signal bulbs last summer, replaced all the bulbs at once, and am very pleased with the results.


I didn't know you could get traffic bulbs in that low of wattage. I figured they were all 150W or so. But yeah, they last like 10x as long as regular incandescent bulbs, though they're 10x as expensive. But when it's such a pain to change them, it's definitely a bargain. They also have "rough service" bulbs that supposedly last around 5,000 hours (much more than the standard 1,200 hours, but less than the 15,000 hours of the traffic bulbs), that are only double the price.

LEDs are great for theaters because they're so versatile, but they require their own elaborate control systems, which can be prohibitively expensive to retrofit.
 

William G.

One of the Regulars
Messages
158
First off, YAY! This is the best news I've heard in a while.

And the traffic bulb thing... wow. I never would have thought of that. Kudos!
 

dnjan

One Too Many
Messages
1,690
Location
Seattle
I bought four cases of traffic signal bulbs last summer, replaced all the bulbs at once, and am very pleased with the results.
Such an intelligent thing to do at work (replacing them all at once), but so difficult to do at home.

We have two bulbs over the bath tub. Pain to replace. One goes out and I replace it, knowing the other will go out within a month. But still I wait until the second one goes out to replace it.
 

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