The New Lighting Ban - Your Thoughts?

[Erik Sine]

Most of you all may know by now of the new ban on T12 lamps for T8's in general lighting except for specialty areas like signs.

What are your thoughts? Don't care, do care...no thought?

Here's my thoughts, and you all know I always have a thought on everything!!

This is more of the "Do Nothings" doing "something" when he should be doing "nothing".

A take away from the consumer, the government picking a winner. The MFG's go along to play along, and they at the same time can cash in on the process of a "need" to replace...or fill a need because it's "Mandated".

This is not a huge take away by any means, but it is the government putting a screw on us again and treating us like children, in turn our childhood stretched out even further because we don't know better even as adults.

The truth is, we hear all this mumbo jumbo about how bright T8's are over T12's, the lumens blah blah blah. Well, it's true to a certain perspective.

I'm sure a marketer out from Edison, or SDG&E took some VIPs (like the CEC) into a facility room and pointed to the Fluorescent lighting fixtures above in a room that had both T12 & T8 fixtures...pointed to them above and said "see how much brighter they are?...and they are xxxx lumens compared to the inefficient T12's" Seeing is believing am I right? Sure T8's are brighter, to the comparison at your local Home Depot, even a 5 year old with a sucker in his hand would tell you the same thing. After all.....100 lumens above another is HUGE.

Lumen's is such a fancy word, it's numbers are striking when used in marketing and expressing.

But what does Lumen's matter and compare when it comes to usable light? Hmmmm??? Lumen's are done/measured in a testing lab with a funny looking sphere

Sure the T8's are bright when you look up, just as LEDs are at the point of light. But what if you measure the usable light where it's needed? I did this. We did this in our site testing here "Project Facilities"

I didn't get a huge number of foot candles when measuring with a light meter on a table/counter top or floor when a fixture went from using T12 lamps to T8's on the floor. In a matter of fact, it only jumped 5 foot candles from the T12 to T8 on a 8' ceiling. That number gets bigger as you measure closer to the fixture, but again..."usable light"....not "wasted light" We don't use the light above our heads unless we need a light to show as a point of origin, a marking.

I only bring this up because up because I've seen the "good" news of how some T12's lamps will be spared in our industry to a point and it's been in a recent thread on halo lighting.

My thought for the week.

[Snoochie]

Most of you all may know by now of the new ban on T12 lamps for T8's in general lighting except for specialty areas like signs.

What are your thoughts? Don't care, do care...no thought?

Here's my thoughts, and you all know I always have a thought on everything!!

This is more of the "Do Nothings" doing "something" when he should be doing "nothing".

A take away from the consumer, the government picking a winner. The MFG's go along to play along, and they at the same time can cash in on the process of a "need" to replace...or fill a need because it's "Mandated".

This is not a huge take away by any means, but it is the government putting a screw on us again and treating us like children, in turn our childhood stretched out even further because we don't know better even as adults.

The truth is, we hear all this mumbo jumbo about how bright T8's are over T12's, the lumens blah blah blah. Well, it's true to a certain perspective.

I'm sure a marketer out from Edison, or SDG&E took some VIPs (like the CEC) into a facility room and pointed to the Fluorescent lighting fixtures above in a room that had both T12 & T8 fixtures...pointed to them above and said "see how much brighter they are?...and they are xxxx lumens compared to the inefficient T12's" Seeing is believing am I right? Sure T8's are brighter, to the comparison at your local Home Depot, even a 5 year old with a sucker in his hand would tell you the same thing. After all.....100 lumens above another is HUGE.

Lumen's is such a fancy word, it's numbers are striking when used in marketing and expressing.

But what does Lumen's matter and compare when it comes to usable light? Hmmmm??? Lumen's are done/measured in a testing lab with a funny looking sphere

Sure the T8's are bright when you look up, just as LEDs are at the point of light. But what if you measure the usable light where it's needed? I did this. We did this in our site testing here "Project Facilities"

I didn't get a huge number of foot candles when measuring with a light meter on a table/counter top or floor when a fixture went from using T12 lamps to T8's on the floor. In a matter of fact, it only jumped 5 foot candles from the T12 to T8 on a 8' ceiling. That number gets bigger as you measure closer to the fixture, but again..."usable light"....not "wasted light" We don't use the light above our heads unless we need a light to show as a point of origin, a marking.

I only bring this up because up because I've seen the "good" news of how some T12's lamps will be spared in our industry to a point and it's been in a recent thread on halo lighting.

My thought for the week.

Erik;

I have said this Ad Nauseum,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I always go back to my business curriculum in college and one thing always remained in my crowded brain from a marketing class that I had. Government regulation always has and will always be the best marketing tool ever invented. Want something brought to market and capture consumers, get government to mandate it. Car insurance, motorcycle helmets, you name it. Get government to endorse it and you got a winner. It just depends on which side of an issue you are on. T12 good....T8 better....LED even better. Want to make a splash, invest in a lobby group, purchase access to our elected officials and get your product or service to market.

Bottom line to all this? It ain't gonna change so roll with whatever happens to come along and try to use it to your advantage. I guess you could say that I am a Defeatist but I choose to label myself as a Pragmatist.

Best

[tdewitt]

I don't really think it's the lamps per-say they were going after. I think the real target is the Ballast used to run the lamps. You can't tell me that these little electronic ballast consume as much energy at those 85 pound magnetic ballast did. I recently went into an old store that was purchased for a temp location for a drug store while the other one is being built. They called and said that they had LOTS of lights out. I went in there to survey and found them all to be F96T12 single pin lamp fixtures. We decided to go two directions.

Since Phillips has designed an F96T12/CW/Supreme lamp that will meet government standards we decided to use that lamp where the ballast was OK but the lamps were out. Where the ballast were bad we converted them to T8 ballast and lamps. These were the fixtures that line voltage went to one end of the lamp and then to the ballast. So when I went to replace the ballast I quickly found out why the ballast went bad. Another company had been in there and must of sent one of their FNG's or just a complete dipshit because the fixture had already been converted to the new T8 ballast but had been wired incorrectly with line voltage going to the secondary side of the ballast causing it to catch fire inside the fixture! How it didn't trip breakers I will never know. but it was also left with T12 lamps. Ended up being a hell of a gold mine for me......17 fixtures out. Replaced 10 ballast and lamps with the remaining being just lamps.