Commercial Lamp Supplies News

If you have any of the little security lights outside or uplighters indoors that use the shorter linear tungsten halogen lamp then we can now change these for low energy long life lamps as well as easily as you changed your normal size ones.
The lamp goes straight in to replace the current lamp but only uses 9 Watts.
It works perfectly with photocells as well as PIRs and comes on instantly.
I know it doesn’t matter but it also looks rather pretty we all liked it when the Rep brought it in.
Remember your uplighters they often have this type of lamp and they run away with your money you can change them very easily as well.
You’ll find them in the new product section.

A rep brought the Energy Wizard to us and was very enthusiastic, as reps always are, about how good it was.
He said just plug it in and you will save at least 10% of your electricity consumption.

No one in the office believed him, we work on the basis that if it seems too good to be true it almost certainly is.

We have been proved wrong and have had to eat our harsh words.

We use quite a lot of electricity here and in order to make sure we are not wasting it we have two smart meters installed so that we can monitor our usage by the hour if we want to, they are very accurate.
We plugged the energy Wizard into a spare socket in a spare room and left it for a week and carried on as normal.
A week later we down loaded the figures from the smart meters and low and behold our consumption was 11.2% less than the previous three weeks.
Now we know energy consumption varies, the weather changes, temperature fluctuates and people do different things each week, but even allowing for this we cannot explain the results other than that
It must be working.
We don’t know how, there is a lot of info on the manufacturers web site, which is

www.ecotek-ltd.com

Anyway to test it further we have turned it off for the next week and we will see if our consumption returns to its former level.
If it does then I for one will have to eat my hat for I was sure it couldn’t possibly work.

All this fuss and bother stopping us using normal pearl light bulbs to save a little energy and we can all save at least 10% buy just plugging in one these devices which don’t interfere with anything you do in the house.
Why didn’t the government come up with this rather than passing all these silly laws stopping you using the pearl and opal light bulbs that you like using.
How many power stations could you close if you reduced overall electricity consumption by 10%?
And it is painless you just plug it in; it doesn’t seem to effect anything we do either at home or in the office.
At our rate of savings it will pay for itself in just under three weeks, normal domestic users will take a few weeks longer, to get their money back.
Just how many years it will carry on working we don’t yet know but I do know it will earn it’s keep many many times over.

Now I have access to alot of lightbulbs and lamps so what do I use in my kitchen?

I use an activa daylight fluorescent tube!

If you arent a big fan of the current trend of lighting your kitchen using low voltage spotlights in the ceiling then a fluorescent fitting is the easiest way to go. I also have a morbid fear of the dark so I have an emergency battery pack in my fitting (and a perminent live feed to it) so if the power goes off on comes the light! Its a useful thing.

I use an activa natural daylight tube because it tricks me into thinking Im standing in the sun when Im doing the washing up! It also shows up colours really nicely and accurately. It is a very gentle light on your eyes and combined with a high frequency fitting is a very efficient and pleasant way to light your kitchen - or any room where you have a fluorescent striplight doing the illuminating such as in offices or a workshop.

Activas also help combat Seasonal Affected Disorder or SAD syndrome by tricking your eye (and therefore brain) into thinking it has seen much more daylight than it actually has.

We have had customers who have been experiencing headaches that have gone away after they changed to activas. We also use them in our office (well not right now because we are trialing some other tubes but as a rule we do - and I cant wait to have them back!)

So if you are looking for a way to lessen the winter blues that is energy efficient, has excellent colour rendering qualities and is easy to switch to (just take out your current tube and replace it with an activa) then give the activa a go!

Get your Activa here

Ok, so it sounds a bit crazy but it does actually seem to work!

Its a new product shown to us recently and all it is is a plug with some electronics in it. All you do to save your 10% is plug it in so not too much work!

Dont ask me how it works because obviously the manufacturer doesnt want to give all their secrets away but the blurb says this:

“The energy wizard uses a combination of filtration and correction techniques to improve the efficiency of various appliances and circuits. In addition, the intelligent technology optimises the voltage and current demands thus reducing the active power/kWh demands and achieves over 10% savings on doomestic energy bills”

It has been verified by an independent test house but that isn’t enough for us so we are testing it ourselves and it is definately making a difference. Once we have finished testing it we will add it to the site but if you ‘d like to give it a go anyway then give us a call and you can order one over the phone (01822 860 110) they are only going to cost around £30 so could be well worth the investment!

We will update the blog in the near future

We have recently found some great new Lamps and Fittings that offer very good energy saving

They are basically great big Low Energy bulbs and instead of being 30 watts they are 125 and 150watts!

The great thing about them is they can be retrofitted into existing fittings so there is no need for expensive replacement of perfectly good light fitting bodies. They can be used to replace metal halide, sodium (SON) or Mercury lamps. They also have the massive advantage that they require no control gear. This is great on 2 fronts - one it means there is less to fail and two it means you can change the power and colour of the light without having to change the fitting.

They come in two colours cool white and warm white

They are particularly useful if you wish to change orange sodium (SON) light to a white light. Until now the only way to do it was to change the control gear but with these lamps all you have to do is bypass the existing control gear and get power to the lampholder

We can not only supply the lamps themselves but also a complete Hi Bay fitting which includes the lamp for very reasonable cost.

There are also many other products from the same manufacturer including lamps that will fit in Low Bay fittings, street or car park lights and very useful adapters that convert a Giant Screw base into a large screw base which is very good if you want to reduce the wattage of a fitting - we will be adding these to the site as soon as possible

Low Energy Industrial Lamps

Low Energy Industrial Hi Bays

If you would like to know more about any of these lamps and fittings please get in touch with us

We hear a lot in the media about how easy it is to save energy by changing to low energy bulbs but some people just dont like the light given off by fluorescent lamps. Some people even get headaches because of them so what are they supposed to do?

Well there is a way to save some energy and not change to fluorescents - a whole new range of what Crompton call Energy Saving Halogen lamps are now available!

Energy Saving Halogen Lamps

These lamps are just redesigned (more efficent) versions of the filament lamps we know and love

They are dimmable and are definately NOT fluorescent. It is easy to change over to them - just take out your old bulb and pop one of these in - job done

They wont save you as much energy as switching to a fluorescent low energy lamp but for example you can use a 70watt Energy saving halogen bulb to directly replace a 100watt old style bulb so you get a saving of 30 watts with the added bonus of double the lifetime too!

Of course if you dont mind fluorescent bulbs you can change to a 25 watt helix bulb and save even more but its up to you what sort of light you prefer!

Helix Low Energy Bulbs

Please call us on 01822 860 110 or email us if you would like any advice on how you can reduce your lighting energy burn - or anything else lighting related for that matter!

We’ve been looking for what seems like a long time now and Megaman have finally come up with an LED lamp that we think actually does the job properly!

It is designed to replace a 35 watt Twist and Lock 240 volt Halogen Spotlight and we think it works well. It is only 7 watts!

The problem with most LEDs is they are great at lighting up a spot and tend to have a narrow beam angle which is not so great when using them as an ambiant light source. When you increase the beam angle they lose power and are just not bright enough. The other problem is they are usually a very cool white which is quite harsh and not at all like the warm yellow colour of traditional tungsten filament spotlights. When the manufactuers try to make the light warmer again the LED loses power and its not bright enough (this is all our opinion from seeing many many samples but you may have had a different experience - if you have then please tell us about it!)

This new Megaman LED lamp adresses both of those problems. It has a good 35 degree beam angle and is really a warm white colour - it achives both of these without losing too much power. So we were very pleased to see it!

It is more expensive than the other LEDs we offer but you are getting a much better product that we believe is a viable replacement for the 35watt GU10 lamp. As always we would suggest you try one to see what you think and then if you like it you can change more lamps over.

Megaman are very realistic about the life of their lamps and give this one a 20,000 hour rated life (which is around 4 1/2 years burning it for 12 hours a day) and all the time it is saving you energy and therefore money.

All in all we think it is a great lamp!

Megaman LED

We’ve just added a new product which will come in handy during the cold weather. It is a freestanding patio heater at a very reasonable price (we think so anyway!)

Its easy to assemble and will have you warm and toasty in no time - just put it together and plug it in!

Great for use in a garage or workshop or if you like to sit outside to read the paper in the dry (but rather chilly!) spring evenings

You can have a look at it here

Freestanding Patio Heater

Ceiling Spotlight Fittings

We have just added a great new product - you know how everyone has spotlights in their kitchen these days? Well one of the problems with them is whenn you want to change them it is very easy to damage to ceiling when you pull them out. Then you are left with a much bigger hole than a normal size fitting can cover.

Also alot of houses still have the old style eyeball downlight fittings which usually have a big filament reflector lamp in it. It can be hard to find fittings that will replace these easily - until now!

This new fitting is great as it has a larger than normal face plate that is 150mm wide so will cover alot of ceiling damage. It comes with both a 240 volt ‘twist and lock’ lampholder AND a 12volt spotlight lampholder so you can switch to whichever type you want.

The lampholder is not in a fixed position either so you can put in a low energy type twist and lock spotlight such as the megaman 11 watt GU10 lamp which is a great low energy alternative to the 50watt filament version

Megaman Low Energy Reflector

But if you prefer the filament version

Energy Efficient Halogen Lamps

Alternatively you may prefer a low voltage spotlight

Low Voltage Spotlights

The fitting is available in brushed chrome, chrome and brass

The ‘ordinary’ halophosphor tube is the latest product to be dropped by the manufacturers

We have got in stocks of the ordinary white colour but have been unable to get large stocks of either cool white or warm white

But dont panic!

The reason the halophosphor tubes are being discontinued is because they are not as efficient as triphospher tubes. So if you are currently using a halophosphor or ordinary tube you can easily change to a triphosphor tube without any modification to your fitting - just take out the old lamp and put in the new one - no more difficult than that.

Triphosphor tubes have several advantages:
They are (on average) around 10% more efficient than halophosphate tubes
They have better colour rendering (colours look more ‘accurate’)
They maintain their light output their whole life (standard fluorescent tubes lose light output as they get older, triphosper tubes maintain an almost constant output as they age)
They have a much longer life (for example Crompton Halophosphor have a rated life of 9000 hours and the triphosphor has a rated life of 15000 hours)