Comments by "SeanBZA" (@SeanBZA) on "Ringway Manchester" channel.

South Africa with an 87% non compliance rate, where the vast majority of people do not pay, and have no intention to ever pay. the standard way they used to detect was to simply have a list of valid licenses by street, and simply see which ones had more than 5% of houses without one, and drive past at peak viewing time, and knock on the doors, to see if there was the tell tale flickering light and the sound. But now those are no longer done, mostly because the ones doing that knock are sort of becoming an endangered species, and doing it in most areas will result in them becoming very unhealthy very rapidly.
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@bwhgs2 Still plenty of old stock around, just need to buy some and keep them safe, though with 35W SOX having an operational life of over 20 years it is not too much of a worry. Show me LED that will last as long.
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@cplcabs Most camera IR is poor, you really want light near the camera, no matter the colour, so as to get decent contrast. External IR sources work out a lot better, as there is no spill over into the camera from rain or spiders.
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@bwhgs2 I run based on what you see still running with zero maintenance by me. Street lights from 2010, only a few original ones still alive, if you consider at least half the LED units are dead, the rest still light up. As to the rest shortest life was a week, and they all got changed out after a year, with the replacements lasting typically 6 to 9 months. Phillips fittings, not the cheapest, but they get killed by the heat and poor power quality, while the HPS units only fail from MVA and when the fixture rusts apart and falls out. The SOX and SLI ran since the 1980's with zero maintenance, and only got replaced with HPS when the rail yard was cut in half to build a stadium, where the stadium high pole lights did double duty and lit the track as well. Built for 2010 World cup, and still has original lighting on them. Yes might only have 3 of the 6 400W HPS still working, or less.
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@BedsitBob they send letters, here is is a series of SMS messages, and the occasional phonecall, which is never answered.
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@privateinformation2960 Reply it came with the house, and the only reason is is still there is you have to return the house in same condition, and thus it has to be there, as otherwise it would have been scrap metal years ago.
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@peterloftus6259 That law does not apply by me, the local version is toothless as well.
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@jamie59685 Told, I would guess they would be given a practical demonstration, using the clipboard they were holding, put there with great force, sideways, and applied till it went in and stayed in.
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By me in South Africa the council never used SOX lighting, they moved from incandescent to mercury vapour, adding in the ballasts to the existing fixtures, then replacing them with new integrated fixtures. Residential went from 150W incandescent to 90W mercury vapour, while main road went from 500W to 400W mercury. Later on there were "upgrades" to 400W HPS lights, with relamps getting a blend of HPS and MH lamps. Now they are slowly using up the stocks of lamps and fixtures, using them for spot replcements, after doing some replacement actions to replace whole streets with LED, 77W and 130W for main roads, and 35W for smaller streets. The only user of SOX was the railways, with them using it in the yards as light, only later on going to HPS lamps. they even used it in stations on trackside, passenger areas being done with flourescent fittings. Only place I saw SLI lamps ( the rarest low pressure sodium lamp) was in underpasses with a rail overhead, used to provide light 24/7 in there, though those eventually were replaced with MV and then now LED fixtures.I do remember travelling as it got dusk, and you saw the rail yard light up from the high masts in a neon glow that changed to monochromatic orange as the lamps warmed up. Only reason SOX lamps fail is the filaments wearing out, or the glass seals get eroded away by the sodium metal dissolving the soft glass that is used, as quartz glass is resistant to the sodium, but the seals have to be a borosilicate glass, and this does get attacked, which is why these lamps are always run with the base elevated, to keep the liquid metal away, and slow down the erosion. the lamp runs really hot, the metal has to melt and give off vapour to operate, so early lamps had a Dewar flask to keep them hot after warming up, while later ones used an Indium metal coat to reflect the heat back onto the inner arc tube, no second outer glass Dewar needed.
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