Living Room Lighting Setup Fail | 56 Cold Cathode Fluorescent Light Bulbs
I wanted a brighter, more efficient lighting configuration for the living room. Since the bulbs needed to be dimmable, cold cathode became more or less the only option. I remembered purchasing a large quantity of low wattage CCFL bulbs several years ago when I first started stashing away older lighting sources that I knew were quickly becoming extinct.
Among those bulbs were the TCP CCFL03CL27K 3-watts bulb. I've used these bulbs over the years in the bedroom lamps and found their quality of light to be absolutely phenomenal. Reasonable dimming range, good color rendering, easy on the eyes, no flicker, more or less incandescent quality. They're high efficiency and long-lasting. The 3-watts bulbs have an 'incandescent equivalency' of a 15-watts bulb.
There are 8 light fixtures in the living room, each previously fitted with a 39-watts halogen PAR20 bulb, which has an 'incandescent equivalency' of 50-watts. These provided sufficient leisure lighting, but insufficient and uneven task lighting. One of these CCFLs per fixture wouldn't be anywhere near enough, but 7 per fixture would!
I checked my stash of bulbs and found I had somewhere in the range of 30-40 bulbs, which would not be enough. I checked on the EBAY for what I thought was the original listing I bought the bulbs from years ago and found they were still available. I ordered more, enough to fill the room, and also ordered 7-way splitters for each fixture.
This setup would have given me a total of 56 3-watts cold cathode bulbs in the living room, with a power draw of 21 watts per fixture and an 'incandescent equivalency' of 105 watts. In total, the lighting would be consuming 168 watts of power and outputting an 'incandescent equivalency' of 840 watts, nearly double the light output at half the power of the previous setup with the halogen bulbs, which drew 312 watts and output an 'incandescent equivalency' of 400 watts.
This would have been perfect, if not for the fact that the lights that arrived were not the same as the original ones I purchased. After reviewing the listing I purchased, the listing depicted the bulbs I received, and not the ones I purchased. I truly have no idea how this transpired as the model number and pictures are completely different than what I had.
Sadly, this seeming ideal setup was a complete failure that ended in total confusion. I still have not been able to figure out how or why I ordered that auction. I will continue to investigate and update if I figure it out.
I had enough bulbs to fill half the room, and it worked great. The lighting was bright, even, and efficient. It's really a shame I wasn't able to obtain enough bulbs to fill the whole room. So now it's back to the drawing board for the living room lighting...