Specialist light bulb fittings stole my energy saving choice

Wavechange,
P.S. Thank you for the information on the fluorescent lamps. I thought that maybe my eyesight was getting less sensitive!

Sorry but I have to correct some of the letters and replies to your query. The 3pin (3BC) bayonet that you are talking about is not the same 3pin (B22d3) bayonet that some of the replies are referring to. The 3BC is a fairly new energy saving option produced by MEM UK that has been in circulation for about 10years the most, and the other B22d3 has been used for many-many years in different applications, including street lighting, flood lighting, electric heaters and so on. The difference between them is the layout of the pins.

In my house:
BC – 33
ES – 2 (damit! Couldn’t find a nice robust fitting with BC)

BC has always been the standard fitting as far as my experience goes in any property I have had experience of in UK.

Frankly, I haven’t found that the eco bulbs last very much longer than the incadescent.

And, luckily, It’s not too diffiult to continue to get incandescent as yet – just not from the mainstream stores.

Hi. We’ve just discovered three BC3 fittings in our property. They are 15w each but want to change them to a lower 3.3w LED BC22 bulbs. Has anyone seen this and/or tried this:-

http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/07/21/how-to-fit-a-normal-bulb-in-a-bc3-fitting/

Not sure if I should try this..

My daughter just moved in to new Housing Association property and it is all the new light fittings. Only problem is none of her light shades will fit. The diameter of the shade fitment is too small. We have tried to think of a way to resolve it so that she will not have to replace all her shades – they are not cheap – and the ones she has are really nice.

Are we missing something here – anyone any ideas??

I hate the ES or SES lamp holders, I prefer the European bayonet fittings but it seems that mass production and cheap products are winning over good quality and now even over some British lighting manufacturers.

Without reading the comments let me state a few things.
a) The bulbs are stupidly expensive and it will pay you to immediately replace all those stupid 3 pin fixings with either screw or standard 2 pin bayonets. This is a trivial exercise (less than 5 minutes per fitting) and easily handled by anyone with eyesight (brains optional, it is so simple).
b) The whole thing is the UK government setting out to jointly bend the British over a barrel and to support German manufacturing (the only people that make the bulb).
c) The ‘environmental’ benefit is zero because of the cost to the environment of transporting these bulbs.
d) There is a petition on the epetitions website to get this stupid law removed. It is pointless, damaging to British industry, expensive to British consumers and bad for the environment (I’ve just ditched two fittings and replaced them – this adding to the CO2 footprint by the required manufacture and disposal).

Keep your light bulb stash, replace the fittings, it is cheaper and better.

I realise this is an old thread, but I came up with a solution to this problem which is cheap, easy and doesn’t involve damaging the fitting (and so is suitable for renters, like myself), which I wanted to share:
1. Go on Amazon/Ebay etc and search for a “B22 to E27 adapter” or “B22 to Edison adaptor” (it’s the same thing). This is an adapter to allow full-size screw-in bulbs (which are widely and cheaply available) to be put in a normal UK 2-pin pendant fitting. They cost less than a pound each.
2. When it arrives, get a pair of pliers and yank one of the two side pins out of the adapter, so it has only one pin.
3. Insert the adapter in the pendant in your ceiling. You will need to check the two electrical contacts are lined up as there are 3 choices of pin slot to put the one remaining pin in.
And voila! You can now put cheap, widely available screw-in bulbs in the ceiling. 🙂 because it has only one pin securing it, the bulbs lean at a slight angle, but they are secure and many lampshades will hide the lean if it bothers you.