I spent a really interesting morning at Plas newydd yesterday with David the House manager and Iain from Heritage Lighting fitting the latest generation of LED conservation grade bulbs.

We have been reporting back regularly on the progress being made (via Plas newydd as the Guinea pig site) in the development and incorporation of conservation grade LED bulbs to our sensitive showroom areas. This latest generation of bulbs comes following practical “hands on” testing by David and the property team -

“what is the light output like?”

“How easy are they to install when standing atop scaffolding towers or ladders?”

We moved beyond the aesthetic, conservation and energy saving testing to ensuring that the end users are happy with the practicalities of using the bulbs as well as longer term maintenance aspects.

David spent most of the morning climbing up and down ladders testing how robust the bulbs were when treated “a little bit rough”.

Previously we had fed back to Iain that when screwing in the bulbs at height, whilst balancing, some of the covers had come loose as people had the tendency to over-tighten.

We also found that we needed “one size to fit all” as we saw slight variations in production of the lamp bases we had which meant bulbs worked in some fittings, but not in others.

These issues have now been addressed with the latest generation having increased tolerences for differing fittings. I also like the fact that you can now unscrew the covers of each bulb allowing easier installation, as well as increased practicality of changing the type of cover in order to create different effects – smaller for under lamp shades, golf ball type.

I am sure that development of colour rendition, styles and colour of bases, and more efficient LED chips (as these new generation have) will continue as we incorporate more bulbs across the Trust.

We also had a bit of a eureka moment when we saw the latest bulb Iain brought with him, but more on this from Keith later.