From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Best Additions/Improvements to your RV
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 05:02:30 EST
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel

sbourg wrote:

> We have flourescents, too, but they came with the design. I agree
> about the lighting, and do not care for it as they are installed
> on the ceiling. 

It takes some looking but if you can find them, fluorescent bulbs
made with 2800 deg kelvin phosphor is very pleasing.  This phosphor
was formulated to imitate incandescent lighting.  Has a lot of red
and orange content.  This phosphor is fairly new but the bulbs are
available - I have 'em in my bathroom at home.  I'm slowing
replacing the lighting in my unit with neon lighting using 2800 deg
white tubing.  Only differences between fluorescence and my neon is
I can fit my neon in and around objects and it never burns out.

John

From: John De Armond
Subject: Re: Best Additions/Improvements to your RV
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:50:24 EST
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel

sbourg wrote:
 
> John, I don't know offhand which are the 2800K tubes, but I did
> find some replacement ones that were listed as 'natural light',
> and put them in the flourescent fixture above our cabover bed.
> The resulting light is noticeably dimmer than the cool-white,
> although more pleasant. Not at all like incandescent bulb color
> though.

Those are full spectrum lights that try to mimic the light from the
noonday sun.  They have a nominal color temperature of about 5200
deg K but that's only part of the story.  The spectrum is smooth
throughout the visible range plus there is plenty of longwave UV to
stimulate the fluorescent components of objects just like the sun. 
These lights are wonderful!  I have 'em in the light table in my
studio, in my bedroom and wifey's vanity (for accurate color
matching and makeup application respectively) and over my drawing
table.  The ones I buy from my sign supplier have an even better
color rendering index (CRI) than the ones at Home Depot - about 98
in this case.  Sunlight has a CRI of 100.  Regular "daylight"
fluorescents have a CRI in the range of 85.

> 
> The ones I have used to replace most incandescents in the house
> have a light that is very similar to incandescent - and quite
> warm and pleasing - rather yellow - and very bright. The tubing
> is tightly helically coiled on top of a screw base. about the
> most compact I've seen, though the smallest (15W/60Wequiv) is
> still taller than the incandescent equivalent. I have also used
> the 75W and 100W equivalent ones (18 & 25W). From Lights of
> America they run about $10 at K-mart, about $8 on sale around
> town. If you think the smaller 15W tubes for RV flourescent
> fixtures are available in this color, I'll keep my eyes open.

That's pretty much the same phosphor.  They've addressed the
complaint that you had - that fluorescent light is too harsh.  The
2800 K phosphor is biased even a bit more toward the red end.

> All this playing around with flourescents has cued me to a
> characteristic I never noticed before - they put out at least
> twice as much light after a minute or two as when first turned
> on.

Yup.  The light contains a mix of argon and mercury.  When first
lit, the argon makes some UV light which makes the phosphor glow. 
But the UV production pales compared to what the mercury puts out. 
The mercury has to warm before it vaporizes and starts
contributing.  Once the mercury becomes warm, the light output
increases tremendously.

This is, in fact, why fluorescent lights and neon (uses the same
materials) gets dim in cold weather.  When I'm making neon tubes
that have to work in cold weather, I put some neon and helium gas in
addition to argon.  This mix generates more heat which keeps the
mercury vaporized in colder weather.  Unfortunately, because of
government meddling (purported energy conservation), fluorescent
lamps don't get this mix.  Really aggravating in my restaurant
because I can no longer get lamps that will burn inside the reach-in
coolers.
> 
> Curiosity prompts on a previous post of yours re dual wheels as a
> future project. Since you must already have them, what did you
> mean?

My MH came with a single wheel rear axle.  Duals was an option.  The
RV is very light weight - ready to camp weight on the truck scales
is only 7200 lbs.  The rear tires are right at their rated limit and
the wheels just a little bit over.  Though this worked OK for the
previous owner for 15+ years, I'm not comfortable with it.  I've
located the correct dual wheel axle for this rig and plan on
installing it in the spring.

John