Pub Lighting Circuits

Use 130 Volt lightbulbs, they will last longer. filiment is a little stronger

130 Volt, not watt

Could the bulbs possibly be brands of inferior quality?

If not, check the supply voltage at the lamp location to see if it too high (I believe you have 240 V. in the UK). If it's close to 250 volts or greater, it may be the major contribution to short bulb life.

In the USA, the nominal voltage has been creeping up over the past few decades because the electric companies like it that way. ( 110, 115,

120, 125 volts) Anything over 125 volts is going to shorten the life of standard incandescents.

If high voltage is your problem and the electrical authorities won't do anything for you (like changing the taps on your transfomer or providing better regulation), you might consider putting some dimmers in for your incandescent bulb circuits. A small reduction in brightness is likely to have a dramatic extension of the bulb's lifetime.

You can't dim the standard compact fluoruescents unless you have a special ballast however.

Beachcomber

You could be particularly close to the lv transformer on a leg which has a lot of recent load increases further out - and they have put your voltage to the upper limit to compensate. Or large loads have gone and they haven't reduced the voltage to compensate. You can ask the local distribution company if this is the case - I have found them very honest and reasonable to deal with.

You could be buying the cheapest imported lamps. Like with anything else, you get what you pay for. Energy saver types usually come with some form of minimum life warranty and the supplier should "happily" take them back and provide replacements.

Old wiring should not affect lamp life - but may shorten yours.

Lamps normally fail on switch on - so, if you must switch them on and off, use a dimmer switch.

Vibration will kill cheap lamps to - so, try to minimise it. If you can't, fit the lamps intended for it - they cost more but will last a lot longer.

Really dangerous and probably not applying is if the springs on the light fightings have got tired and the telescopic connectors are not making a good enough contact with the lamps. This can be very bad for business.

You can get long-life incandescent lamps which will indeed last a long time. However, they give out less light and/or use more power and the extra cost in electrickery is usually more than the cost of the extra numbers of replacements needed.

I dont think so, at 240v I wouldnt imagine they would last 5 min. Take a look at the msg header, Its from a UK poster.

------------------------------------------------- Ted Rubberford. 'The Man In The Red Latex Skintight Suit'

Work out how many hours per day they are switched on. Work out how many days it takes for one bulb to run for 1000 hours. Divide this by the number of bulbs you have. This is the expected number of days between each bulb change on average.

I suspect it will be close to what you get in practice. The large number of bulbs and the long running time will give you quite frequent bulb replacements in that sort of environment. It would be interesting to know what all your figures are above.

If you are replacing bulbs, say, twice as often as the calculation would indicate you should, then it would be worth starting to worry about the cause.

There are a few bulbs in the UK rated less than 1000 hours. These are the tubular filament lamps with two end caps, which are rated

750 hours as they are single coil filaments in vacuum rather than gas fill (and they're horribly inefficient and very susceptable to vibration too).

By the way, I have a patent on that special ballast.

But as I remember it a 10% or 20% over voltage will cut the life of a incandescent bulb by about 50%. The cheapest way to control the voltage is to get a voltage regulator. I use one in my recording studio. I do not use it to control the voltage. The studio is on a busy street and there was a 6 story building down the block whose elevator motor put a lot of transients on the line . This caused a lot of line noise..

The Sola regulator cleared the problem up. I forgot which it is a 5 or 10 KW unit.

Actually the tennent put it in and because it was wired into the circuit, when he moved he could not take it with him so now it is mine.

It helps rent the building and the new tennents all seem to like it. It was particularly useful when they recorded with a big AMPEX recorder. Now of course they all use computers to do their recording.

quote Old wiring should not affect lamp life - but may shorten yours. endquote

:-) ;-(

Very often Sue the cost of replacing bulbs far exceed the cost of the bulbs.

Absolutely right! My fault in equating his description of his pub with most of the ones around here - where the owner will be doing the replacements as part of his normal 25 hour day...or sending his wife up the step ladder to do it.

I'm not so sure about this problem, could be anything

Serve me up a whiskey sour while i ponder it.

if your using flourescents you've got to make sure the wires are right on your lamp sockets, black to black & white wire to white wire { or to the less darkend wire in old wiring.

i think he's buying bulbs from the 99=E7 store I'd buy 1 of the real expensive Long Life bulbs and 2 of the regular bulbs and place one of those Bulb Life Extenders in the socket of the cheapies you've been buying, mark the date, and see how long each of the last ... and save.

Low voltage condtions, current spikes from when the guys at the pinball or one arm bandit hit a Special or Jackpot may open up a Gate for overly excited current to pass through the neutral or return., the greedy bulbs maybe trying to suck off more than they can work off of and burn before their time.

it's such a shame what 1) 100 watt bulb does to your budget., three 60w bulbs equals 180w; I'd change them all with the little curly flourescents. asap.

RQT

| I own a pub and am currently spending a fortune on replacing blown bulbs | varying from 40W spots to normal 60W bulbs and also energy savers too. They | seem to blow at random thoughout the pub (which has 3 separate circuit | boards) and the wiring seems old. Any ideas as to why they blow so often?

With Europe having adopted an official standard of 230 volts nominal, where

220 and 240 volts are within range, you could have a case where your local voltage is still 240 (it is compliant) but the bulbs you buy are now made for the center of the range so they work anywhere in Europe, and not just for the 240 volt UK power. Check the VOLTAGE rating of the bulb. If it says 230 it probably really is 230. Longer life bulbs may be relative to that, and effectively only 240 volt rated, despite pre-EC long life bulbs being 250 or 260 volt rated.

Most bulbs blow when they are first turned on. Is that always happening in this case?

You said random. If all bulbs are approximately just living a shorter life, then the voltage as described above can be the issue. However, if some bulbs last a long time and others blwo very soon after first use, you could have a number of issues. One of them can just be cheap bulbs that have less quality and less consistency. Another can be the time they are turned on (voltage varying with other loads and through the day). If there are motor loads running, the bulbs could be seeing a added voltage when they first turn on due to backfeed from the motor when the bulb has its own inrush current, further boosting that inrush, and increasing the chance the bulb will blow.

What brand of bulbs are they? Where are they made? What is the actual rating of voltage written on them? Are they plain incandescent or halogen?

Find an online light bulb seller, preferrably in UK, and see if they have any options for special higher rated voltage bulbs. Buying in bulk from them may even save you money.

Or find a US based online light bulb seller than can ship overseas to you and has 277 volt bulbs (a common commercial/industrial voltage here). Those should be dimmer and last longer on 240 volts.

That is a great idea!

Filamant lamps in Europe are still made for the local voltage, 240V in UK.

On 7 Jan 2005 21:02:51 GMT Andrew Gabriel wrote: | In article , | snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net writes: |> |> With Europe having adopted an official standard of 230 volts nominal, where |> 220 and 240 volts are within range, you could have a case where your local |> voltage is still 240 (it is compliant) but the bulbs you buy are now made |> for the center of the range so they work anywhere in Europe, and not just |> for the 240 volt UK power. Check the VOLTAGE rating of the bulb. If it | | Filamant lamps in Europe are still made for the local voltage, 240V in UK.

But are they all that way? Couldn't the really cheap ones from eastern Europe be just generic EC 230 volt ones, or worse, their local 220 volt versions? Of course they can't do that for the US market since neither

230 nor 220 would sell very well here. But I have bought very cheap light bulbs (about 1/4 the cost of the name brands) made in Poland and Czech Republic and imported here. They seemed to last as long as any, though the quality of light was unimpressive. Since they would have to make them specific for the US voltage, they probably get it right on target.

I would like to get my hands on some 100 volt bulbs from Japan, though. A shorter life, but a glorious life.

Many moons ago, we used a nightligt in the bathroom using 7-1/2 watt GE bulbs for that purpose. Seems the life was 3 to 5 weeks. I don't remember the cost, but probably between $2 and $4US for a 2-pack.

One day I was at a post Christmas sale and saw Christmas tree bulbs for $0.10 a pop. These had the same base as the night light bulbs. I bought a dollars worth (10 in Montana, no sales tax). These were from SE Asia, don't remember the country. The first one I tried lasted 15 months in the nightlight. Go figure.

Well, they're just about all made in eastern Europe, but they are still made for the target country's supply voltage and expected lamp life (1000 hours in UK).

Use your regularly available lamps, and bump up the voltage to them by 20%. Easily done with a 24V transformer rewired into auto- transformer mode. Should achieve much the same effect.

Define 'often'.

Also, what sort of service does your pub have? Not being familiar with UK wiring, its possible with a 3 phase service to have a poor neutral connection in your service and, as a result high voltages on one or two legs.

Before hiring an electrician, just make sure that you don't have an overly optimistic view of how long bulbs should last.