Anyone out there who uses these? I’ve just put a couple in the kitchen and am planning to also replace the bathroom ones with them tomorrow.
Question is – do they really work? In the sense of them lasting twice as long (or longer) than conventional light bulbs. This is what the guy in my neighbourhood electrical shop told us yesterday. But they also cost more than twice the price of the already rather expensive ceiling ‘spotlights’ we had going (which cost more than twice as much again as a conventional light bulb).
Annoyingly, all the ceiling lights in the flat are these small spotlight fixtures, which do the job I guess, but they also have a tendency to overheat and the metal lightbulb connection to the socket then gets ‘heat-welded’ together, so more often than not the only way to change a light bulb is to smash the bulb with a hammer and pry the metal part out with a pair of needle nose pliers (whilst precariously standing at the top of a very rickety ladder). Not terribly user-friendly. One other bonus with the twirly bulbs is that they never get hot so we won’t ever have to smash them to bits just to change them.
My flat was ‘done over’ by an architect who lived here before us. Presumably he didn’t understand lighting at all or just thought flat spotlights in all the ceilings were somehow ‘clean looking and aesthetically pleasing’? But frankly the new twirly lightbulbs in the kitchen not only look cute but actually give off better ‘all over’ light than the stupid spotlights ever did. And I think they will also be better in the bathroom.
I’ve always preferred indirect lighting in the living room and in bedrooms – nice floor or table lamps strategically placed to make a room ‘glow’ – to me ceiling lights are only needed in these rooms whilst cleaning and needing to see every corner of the room.
Anyhow, any thoughts on these twirly lightbulbs? Are they really worth the money?
casa azahar 
Yes, they work. I use them all over the place. I have one, for example, in the dingy space I do my laundry down in the basement and I leave it on all the time so that I don’t trip over the soiled towels in the dark. If I remember correctly, I put one in down there about two years ago and I’ve not had to replace it yet.
They use a heck of a lot less power as well.
The only drawbacks I’ve come across are that some lampshades just will not work on them and there’s a sometimes disconcerting delay between throwing the switch and getting the light.
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The delay is a bit disconcerting. My mother has three of these twisty jobs in a three-bulb light fitting in the loungeroom. She switches on a couple of lamps at the same time, so that the lamps provide light while the main fitting (an ugly thing that I’ve hated for decades) comes to life. The three twisty things don’t all light up at the same moment even though they’re on the same switch.
Once they all wake up, they do a good job.
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I don’t use them in the apartment because I find them too bright. But I have two out in the foyer- one on the first floor inside the entry door, and one up here outside the door to the apartment. They’ve been out there for a little over four years- the one on the bottom comes on automatically in the evening and stays on all night.
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Yeah, I thought the delay was a bit disconcerting at first until Nog explained it to me (though it’s only a second or two).
As for them being too bright, surely that depends on the wattage you buy? The ones we bought said on the box that they are the equivalent of a 60 watt bulb, but the guy in the shop said they end up more like 50-55.
az
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Aha! Discovered why so many people say these bulbs are too bright. When we went back to the shop yesterday to buy more twirly bulbs for the bathroom the guy (different guy from Saturday) asked if we wanted ‘white’ or ‘yellow’ ones. And since the ones in the kitchen looked white to us, we got white ones.
Gaaaaa! We’d need to wear 😎 with those suckers on – a very harsh ‘blue white’ light indeed, even though these bulbs are only 9W (compared to the 11W ones in the kitchen). So back to the shop to exchange them . . .
Meanwhile, also discovered that since the twirly bulbs are narrower than the spots they leave a bit of a gap in the fixture opening – perhaps big enough for a you-know-what to fall through???
It’s always *something*, isn’t it?
az
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Just back from the shop. Exchanged the ‘white’ twirly bulbs for ‘yellow’ ones. Well, that’s what the guys at the shop called them. On the package they are called ‘daylight’ or ‘warm light’.
And re-checking the gap left, it would take a you-know-what seriously wanting to get through to push its slimy way through the opening. I had at first been worried about you-know-whats just falling through by accident.
It’s just that you never know what evil might be lurking up there in the false ceiling area! 😮
az
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Ugh, I had never thought about that. The ceiling in the kitchen has recessed lighting and it had never crossed my mind that critters could come through the fixtures… we use fluorescent flood lights in those lamps so we have no gap, and I can tell you there’s no way in hell I’m going to change that now you’ve got me thinking about you-know-whats! God forbid we should be sitting at the table eating one day and *something* drop down onto the table.
I’ve only ever seen two you-know-whats in this building, and saw both while people were moving in downstairs, so I’d assumed they came in with the cardboard boxes. We, thankfully, have nothing like those huge flying suckers you see in the Southern states. My parents live in central Florida, and those awful Palmetto bugs (the giant flying ones) turn up in their kitchen cupboards from time to time.
Thanks for sharing that there are two different kinds of “twisty” bulbs. We may look for the “yellow” ones and give those a try in the lamps and overhead fixtures.
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>
Something similar happened to a friend of mine when we were sitting in the Irish pub near here. Apparently they had fumigated recently and suddenly this huge beast (yes, one of the giant flying ones) dropped out of the rafters, landed on her shoulder, and then commenced scuttling down the front of her – a true GAAAAAA! moment.
Anyhow, don’t fool yourself that your building isn’t heaving with these things – you would probably only see them when the colonies in the walls get to large and they start getting kicked out. Lovely thought . . .
az
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Yesterday was total rip-off day. Or at least left me feeling totally ripped off.
Went to get some colour photocopies made for some biz promo stuff – cost a fuckin arm and a leg and found out it would have cost half as much if I’d done it elsewhere, just up the street . . .
Then went shopping for some hairspray and saw the same skin moisturizer I’d bought a couple of days previously was like – 2€ cheaper!
And if that wasn’t bad enough I was rooting around in a EURO shop and saw something similar to my twirly lightbulbs for less than half the price! Well, okay, they didn’t have any with the small screwy-inny whatsits. But man!
Just felt like everywhere I went yesterday I was being told I was some sort of major JERK because I’d paid way more for everything I’d recently purchased.
Have you ever had days like this?
az
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Have to say the twirly bulbs are working great and no critters have got through the gaps and these ‘yellow’ ones really do give off a nice soft light.
Just not sure why the ‘delay’ thing only happens in the kitchen. In the bathroom they come on straight away.
So now what – they’re going to last about five years or so? On the package it shows one twirly bulb = 8 normal bulbs. On the other hand, they’re about seven times as expensive . . . really not sure if they end up being more economical.
Ah well, who cares – they’re awfully cute. 🙂
az
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What a neat 💡
A twirly tube chandelier made by anhaga (for his painting studio) from a single bulb ceiling fixture, 13 y-sockets and 18 twirly tube light bulbs.
It uses less power than two 100W bulbs and gives out the light of fourteen 60W bulbs – anhaga says when it’s on it’s like being outside in full sun. 😎
chandelier
chandelier
chandelier – lights on
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Twirly tubes have made it to our livingroom now. There are three of those ceiling ‘potlights’ over the bookshelf (next to my computer table) and all three blew within a few days of each other, giving me a good excuse to change them all to twirlys.
Especially after I spent half an hour at the top of a rickety ladder bashing them in with a hammer and digging them out with needle-nose pliers (grrrr).
Problem though … one of the potlights has a bent socket thingy and I don’t know if it can be fixed or if we’ll have to replace the whole thing. I know that blicky repaired that same fixture a couple of years ago (I think for the same reason) but neither Nog or I can even figure out how to remove it, let alone fix it. 😕
But I must say that the two twirlys now up there look great and I am very relieved that I won’t have to change them for a few years.
They also show off the ferns very nicely (the ones I had to move from the balcony and are now on the top of the bookshelves). With the potlights they were always in shadow.
Think I’ll try googling ‘repairing potlight fixtures’ and see if I can find any instructions . . . either that or we’ll have to wait for blicky to come and visit again.
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Yay! 🙂
blicky to the rescue!
Sounds relatively straight-forward, but I’ll wait until next week before I try it. We were only able to get two twirlys yesterday and the shop won’t have any more in until Monday. Gee, something to look forward to…
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It’s always nice to have something to look forward to, isn’t it?
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Well dang! 😡
One of the first twirly-tube bulbs we bought last June (for the kitchen) has burnt out already. This can’t be right – that’s only 7 months and we were told they would last for YEARS. Hell, even the stupid potlights last longer than that.
So we’ll have to get back to the electrical shop soon and find out what’s what. I sure don’t want to have to splash out that much twice a year ( x 8! ) just for light bulbs.
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What happened was the guys at the electrical shop said they’d have to send the lightbulb back to the manufacturer for testing. Whatever. So a week passed and then they did replace it with a new one. Yay!
But a weird thing about these twirly-tube light bulbs (as opposed to the straight tube ones) is that even though they come from the same manufacturer they are always slightly different sizes. Some are a bit longer and thinner and others are shorter and wider … even though they are the same wattage.
So the kitchen ones don’t ‘perfectly match’ anymore, but oh well. I’m probably the only one who’d notice.
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