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Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 8,443
Likes: 3
Trumpy Offline OP
Member
A Few questions here,
When was the ES27(?) lampholder introduced to your country?.
What types of fittings are they pre-dominantly used in?.(Currently)
What is the maximum wattage of lamp, allowed
in your fittings using these lampholders?.
Are there Regulations to require that the Phase wire, goes to the centre terminal of the l/holder?.
Your thoughts please- [Linked Image]:

Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 1,498
Likes: 1
C
C-H Offline
Member
>When was the ES27(?) lampholder introduced
>to your country?.

When bulbs were introduced. Guess why it is called Edison? [Linked Image]

>What types of fittings are they predominantly used in?.(Currently)

All large fittings that take bulbs. (Including mercury lamps) The smaller ES14 is also popular. (In a few cases bayonet cap sockets are used as they're non standard, preventing theft.)

Only fittings intended for low-energy lamps of various types use special holders. These lamps are often horribly expensive.

>What is the maximum wattage of lamp, allowed
>in your fittings using these lampholders?.

Plastic: 60W

>Are there Regulations to require that the
>Phase wire, goes to the centre terminal of
>the l/holder?.

No. For wall mounted switches, you are required to switch the phase wire, not the neutral. (You may of course switch both if you want to.)

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 11-26-2002).]

Joined: Dec 2001
Posts: 2,498
T
Member
Same answer as Sweden.
Metal ones ? old ones seem to have no limit at all, didn't have the chance to take a look at a new one.
Used almost everywhere, except for small table lamps, etc (ES 14), only exception being fluorescent tubes and metal halide elements. Compact fluorescents with ES 27 (E27 here) screwshell are pretty common.
It is, as far as I know, strongly recommended but not mandatory to wire the phase to the bottom contact.

Joined: May 2002
Posts: 382
H
Member
In South Africa, the standard sized Edison Screw fittings are used exclusively on spot-lights and flood-lights as well as some imported free-standing lamps like angle-poises. These latter lamps were obviously the easiest for me to adapt when I moved to the USA. I have no idea when they were first
introduced into South Africa but I would suggest at the beginning of electrical time. I would think that this connection method pre-dates the bayonet cap which is by far the most common light-bulb configuration in South Africa.

Wandering slightly off-topic ...

Two combined lamp and ceiling fans were installed in my new house in South Africa, they were made in China (what isn't!?) and had Edison screw fittings for the lamps. One of the first jobs I did after moving in was to pull an additional wire into the conduit between the unit and the switch box so that, with an additional switch, I could separate the working of the fan and lights. These had been combined by the installer.

My experience with this brings to mind discussions on international wiring standards presently being undertaken on a parallel thread. The unit was 230V (and labeled as such) but had in addition to the green/yellow earth wire had a blue, a black and a white wire. This was very unusual for South Africa and confused me. It had also confused the installation electrician as he had combined the black and blue wires on the fan unit and connected them to the black neutral wire in the ceiling box and the white wire was connected to the red feed coming in from the switch. I have seen red, brown and white wires used as the switched feeds in various places around the country and so at first glance it looked OK but the combined neutral did look very odd.

It was of course wired exactly the wrong way round with the shell of the Edison Screw live when switched on. It was only after having visited the United States that I could see that North American wiring colour conventions had been used on a 230V, Chinese made, South African fan/light fitting. These colours were exactly opposite to our conventions.

A tester soon sorted out the mess and to my (then) surprise white turned out to be the common neutral, black the feed to the fan and blue the feed to the lamps. With North American eyes it now looks perfectly correct. Still at the ime .... [Linked Image] [Linked Image] The other fan had been installed exactly the same.

I am surprised that these units got passed the South African Bureau of Standards and were allowed to be imported as coded. The grey [Linked Image] market I assume.

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 7,520
P
Member
The standard ES fitting has been around a long, long time, but for some reason Britain opted to use the double-contact BC (bayonet cap) type for most standard domestic bulbs.

The ES bulb is found here in some fittings, probably more so these days with the sale of the same fictures throughout Europe.

IEE Wiring Regs. specify that the live/hot shall be connected to the center contact.

As for the maximum rating, it depends upon the construction of the lampholder and the fitting in which it is located.

Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 8,443
Likes: 3
Trumpy Offline OP
Member
Paul,
A few years ago,a customer, had me remove a lamp,for him for replacement,from a fitting in a shop, this was an internally-silvered lamp, with the bottom part of the bulb glass silvered, upon withdrawing it, I noticed it was not a standard lamp, it was a BC22 type base, but it had Three location pins on the sides of the brass cap, spaced at 120 degrees,looking at it from the top.
Can you or anyone else please tell me, how
common,this type of lamp configuration is?,
as I had never seen it before then,nor have I seen it since.
Strange, but true. [Linked Image]

Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 7,520
P
Member
Trumpy,
I know the type of base you mean. It's very rare, but I've run across it a couple of times; I think they were the "Fireglow" type of bulb, such as might be fitted in a domestic heater to give the coal-effect.

Very difficult to obtain replacements for these, so if I came across another I think I'd recommend replacing the holder with the more usual BC type.

Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 8,443
Likes: 3
Trumpy Offline OP
Member
Thanks for your advice, Paul, as I said this occurred a few(4) years ago, I simply changed over the existing fitting to a R80ES
spot fitting, no tears, no problems.
Tried to source the bulb,at the time, no-one even knew it existed.
Go figure! [Linked Image]

Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 1,691
S
Member
I remember reading on some lightbulb collector's website (yes there are people who collect old type lightbulbs) who said that the London Tube uses a special type of bayonet fitting for their signal light bulbs (to discourage theft).

Apparently the bulbs have three locking pins on the base instead of the usual two. Not that there's probably any trouble with taking a needle file and obliterating the offending pin. [Linked Image]

Joined: May 2002
Posts: 106
J
Member
In addition to your lamp cap details,

our local coucils street lighting gangs install an MBFU 125 watt lamp in a three pin baynet type cap as standard, in a few areas
only now, ( most are being changed for either High Pressure Sodium or Metal Halide)

The MBFU type lamp is a ballast free mercury lamp that has an average lamp life of 10,000 hours plus, then the lamp starts to fail and lamp output goes down,
a good reliable lamp and has its uses in other places as well, ( we still have a few around one of our customers sites, but they are getting on a bit now, the lamps mot the customer).

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