Take a look at this:

Coil Lamp

Any comments? How safe is this thing?

Don't know electrically how safe it is(UL listed portable luminaire?) but it certianly is not safe for my eyes or my wallet.

Put a 'designer' sounding name on, & you can sell anything!

I like it!

Heck, if this becomes standard, maybe we'll be able to change the NEC, so household receptacles can be 50 ft. ... or even 100 ft. ... apart!

I can see all the worrysome 'what ifs'. As a customer assembled product, I suspect it would be problematic getting it UL listed, no matter how sound the design. After all, UL places a lot of stock in their factory inspection service.

Then again, the homeowner won't have to look far to find an extension cord.

Reno:

You seem to forget...a decent extension cord already comes with a UL label!

Heck, you should see how some enterprising 'sign shops' hang all kinds of UL labels on their sign boxes!

I can't disagree with that! Ditto for some very expensive (can you believe some folks consider $150 cheap?) listed fixtures.

BTW, saw a floor lamp (torchiere) the other day, 3 bulb, candelabra base, little glass shades, kind of butt ugly in my opinion....price tag hanging on it was $979.99

Guess beauty is still in the eye of the beholder!

I would say they lost their U/L listing when they cut the receptacle off the end of that Carol cord and put a lamp holder on it.

I wouldn't buy it but I wouldn't be scared of it either.

Looks like the coiled cord has enough air space not to get hot. With a single cfl (even if they put an incandescent in it) it still draws so little current there's no voltage drop issue. And I'm not worried about "after market" wire splices. I make them all the time.

I've got a sink made out of coiled garden hose I'm selling for $500.

er..it may not have occurred to the designer, but the idea of a lamp is to provide light. The clue is in the name. It's also the main reason why all those mundane, clay-footed fuddy-duddy-dinosaur designers in the past made shades from translucent or transparent materials. This thing obscures at least three quarters of the CFL's already sparse lumens that are projected horizontally. If what you desperately need is a dim circle of light on the ceiling and have $150 burning a hole in your pocket, this is the baby for you! Alternatively, why not wrap an existing lampshade in spirals of insulting tape and save $$$!

There never was a listing for the lamp; having a listed cord does not make it a listed appliance - though plenty of manufacturers have tried to trick customers that way

Just for general information: I was wrong; this product could, in theory, become a listed product. It would undergo a pretty simple investigation as well, probably costing the maker about $1000. (UL will make its' money off the lables).

Lamps tend to be art objects anyway. Electrically, none should cost more than $10, including the bulb. It is what holds the lamp holder that costs the money and that is usually 50 cents worth of wood, clay or pot metal, put together in some imaginative way.

Do you remember the movie with Sandra Bullock (or one of her clones) where the girl makes lamps out of stuff in her daddy's hardware store and sells them for huge bucks at the end.
I have to admit, they do sell an interesting assortment of lamp parts at the big box for making your own lamp (or making hash pipes)

No switch, good thing it fits a CFL. LOL

Looking at the lamp ad again, it looks like the extension cord is sold to be used intact, without cutting off the female end. The ad shows an adapter that plugs into the extension cord and allows the bulb to be screwed into it. So presumabily all components are UL approved and utilized for (close to) their intended function. The excess cord is just coiled in a unique manner.

If that is what they are doing, I agree. You could come off the receptacle, into a plug/receptacle switch, then into a plug in lamp holder with all listed parts.
It really then just has you buying the lexan frame as the unique part.

Beachboy, that's where you have to actually look at the lable.

The cord is listed as a cord. Using a listed cord does not make a listed lamp.

Creative? Sure. Ugly? A matter of taste; assemble one on a job site, and I bet the framers will think you're a real McGyver!

I'm still laughing at maintenance guy's coiled hose sink!

How cold do you figure the photography studio had to be before the extension cord would hold that perfect shape for the picture?

I don't have a problem with it from a safety standpoint, I just wonder how that ridiculous thing will look the first time the A/C goes out and the house heats up to 85 degrees?

-John

Of course, you can only leave it plugged in for 90 days, then you have to replace the lamp with a permanant receptacle.