American ban on new incan bulbs

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1pet2_9

Active member
Looks like this new ban on incans might have a minor effect on Christmas:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerr...ulbs-starts-next-week-heres-what-to-know/amp/

I don't care about the politics of it (it was bipartisan), but it looks like this would inhibit retailers from selling replacement incan bulbs--say, for C9's. All existing incans are, of course, grandfathered in and are not banned. It says certain specialty bulbs are not included in the ban (so my 750W spotlights at the theater are not impacted), but I don't know for sure if things like C9/C7/C5/C3 are impacted. But nonetheless, retailers might not know for sure either, and might just not sell them.

This might nudge a few people forward to go LED. It beats having a light go out and it's a little too difficult to replace it. People who can't afford to switch might need to make sure they get ahold of replacements sooner than later.


Edit: I did a little digging on the exact language of the ban, and it looks like colored incans are still allowed, but regular, white C9's et al would fall under the ban. I don't think retailers and manufacturers would care about the difference between colored and white (which is a color...) much. So anyway, availability of replacement bulbs will probably go down soon.
 
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Very interesting. I phased incans out of our house (except for a few stragglers that rarely get used) nearly a decade ago, And most of my display is LED as well, but I still have some classic props that are incan that it's good to have replacements for.

Some of my household lights are several generations away from incans... first with CFLs (which I never did like but used some due to the energy savings), then LEDs, and now I'm starting to upgrade to nicer LEDs in the common areas.
 
I still have a bunch of incan decorations and strings which I've kept working for many years. I know they sell those little packs of "spare bulbs" but they are stupid expensive for just a few bulbs so I've always just waited for the deepest discount sales and bought strings of colored and clear and saved those for later spares to replace bad bulbs in the strings and decorations I still use in my display. It's a bit tedious (and kind of tough on the finger tips) but this approach has worked for me. For the leftover unpopulated strings, I've cut the AC connectors from each end for use in DIY light projects. The rest either goes to the trash or copper recyclers. I've literally replaced thousands of incan bulbs over the years to keep the strings working and usable. So if you want to keep the older strings and decorations going, go out and buy up those leftover sale strings with the bulb types you will need!
Anything new I buy of course is LED, but I still have quite a few loved decorations I keep nursing along.
 
... Oh yeah...
And make sure you get those spare strings in the voltages and wattages your existing strings and decorations will need. Wattage is pretty important... if you plug the wrong wattage bulb, even if it's the same voltage, it will either be very dim, or immediately pop.
 
OptykMuse said:
I still have a bunch of incan decorations and strings which I've kept working for many years. I know they sell those little packs of "spare bulbs" but they are stupid expensive for just a few bulbs so I've always just waited for the deepest discount sales and bought strings of colored and clear and saved those for later spares to replace bad bulbs in the strings and decorations I still use in my display. It's a bit tedious (and kind of tough on the finger tips) but this approach has worked for me. For the leftover unpopulated strings, I've cut the AC connectors from each end for use in DIY light projects. The rest either goes to the trash or copper recyclers. I've literally replaced thousands of incan bulbs over the years to keep the strings working and usable. So if you want to keep the older strings and decorations going, go out and buy up those leftover sale strings with the bulb types you will need!
Anything new I buy of course is LED, but I still have quite a few loved decorations I keep nursing along.
Click to expand...

I've always done the exact same thing. I actually had to go out and buy a few strings this year just for spare bulbs for my old stuff. Now that I think about it I think I still need to track down some 3.5V clear bulbs (35/70 et all string count) as that's what my 23-year-old Merry Christmas sign still uses and I'm running very low on spares...
 
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