Hello,

     I thrift local store recently had a sale and I was able to get away with about 20-25 Sylvania F96T12 H.O. "Cold Temp" tubes, for free!  They were originally shipped to an electric supplier, and then to our local Costco.  One of the boxes is actually labeled, "Bakery Meat Freezer."  Pretty cool I think, though I suppose this means they have converted from these big guys to some LED replacement -- I'll have to check next time I'm there.

      Anyway, one line down on the etching from the numerical designation, it says "For cold temp use only."  Well, most of the year it is cold in my region but, does this mean they might overheat or something if used in a regular temperature?  Perhaps there is a different gas formulation in the tubes that might be sensitive?

     Tell me what you think.

     Sage

The lamps are rated to operate below 60F, so yes, above that they will technically be overheating, i.e. operating above the rated temperature.
Now the question is, what that actually mean. I don't believe much it will affect the reliability (lifetime,...), as I doubt they are using any different materials compare to the normal temperature production. More likely it will be just degraded performance, like light output and/or color quality.

IIRC the main reason for the distinct labeling was to satisfy a piece of legislation that required F96T12/HO lamps for general lighting to be either above a certain CRI OR be of the reduced wattage energy saver type. In this case 95w instead of 110w. Now unlike standard HO lamps, energy saver HO lamps perform quite poorly in cold weather where HO lamps were mostly used so the old full wattage lamps were still allowed to be produced as a exemption, however with a modification to the etch to mark them as cold weather lamps.

Ironically the 95w energy saver F96T12/HO lamps are no more as they are discontinued either by the manufacturer in order to streamline product lines or by subsequent legislation so you only options for F96T12/HO lamps are the "outdoor" variety or the high CRI variety, both of which are rated at 110w.   

The rest of the HO line wasn't subject to this legislation since they were more niche products compared to the 8ft HO lamps and don't have separate cold weather SKUs.

"IIRC the main reason for the distinct labeling was to satisfy a piece of legislation that required F96T12/HO lamps for general lighting to be either above a certain CRI OR be of the reduced wattage energy saver type."

Exactly correct! "True" cold temperature tubes had an extra glass jacket. The F96T12/HO/CT tubes you are looking at are just regular F96T12/HO tubes that are labeled differently to remain EPACT92 compliant. I know from ~30 years of experience using them in all temperatures that they work just fine and last just fine at warmer temperatures.

The "kältefest" lamps from Narva had simply an increased Argon pressure. This made them more susceptible to undervoltage, they would fail to start when a standard lamp would still come up. Where this was no issue these lamps were broadly recommended for outdoor use, their operation was not limited to cold environments.