Friday 16 October 2020

Lightbulbs

Guess what one of the highlights has been for this week? 
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Any ideas?  I bet you won’t guess it.
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We had to change a lightbulb on Tuesday.  These days, it’s a big event.  Seriously.  It’s the first time in forever.  I can’t remember the last time a lightbulb went.  They all have low-energy bulbs that last for years.  This one has (probably) been in place for 5 or 6 years.  I’m trying to remember when we bought the light fitting it’s in.  It was bought specially for it.  (The light fitting only takes screw bulbs, instead of the more usual bayonet fastening.)

Unlike some of the older low-energy lightbulbs, it didn’t gradually brown out, getting slower and slower to obtain full brightness. It’s always stayed bright.  Instead, when I switched it on in the morning,  it started flickering really fast.   Naturally, I turned it off and put on a side light. (It’s dark when I get up.).  Tuesday evening when DH tested it, it flickered for a few seconds and then stabilised for an hour or so, before flickering again.  That was enough for him to dig out the spare lightbulbs and swap a new one for it.

When I think of how often we used to change the old, incandescent lightbulbs, this one was worth its money.  In six years, we’d have probably used 6 incandescent bulbs at £1-ish each, so this one has saved us at least as much money as it cost to purchase (£3-ish), as well as whatever it has saved in electricity.

The old one is now sitting in a box in the hall, along with other things that need to go to the local “recycling centre” (otherwise known as the tip or dump).  It’s going to be there a while.  Thanks to Lockdown, you can’t just drop in there on you way to somewhere else.  You have to book a slot in advance and each slot is only 10 minutes long.  When one of my colleagues booked her slot, she had a two week wait!  Imagine if you had a car full of stuff?

- Pam

2 comments:

Jackie said...

The new bulbs while expensive do last an extraordinarily long time. Thank heavens.


God bless.

Christi said...

I have a long story about the day I asked my husband to change the burned out lightbulb in the fixture over the front door. Changing that one bulb took the whole afternoon, at least two trips to the hardware store, and there were multiple unflattering comments about the persons who built and wired this house. I'm very wary now about "simple" jobs.