Bulbs
I’ll have to get some of these:
I bought 15 (or 18?) bulbs for $75. Each bulb saves about 40 watts. I estimate 3 hours per day of usage. Over a year, that means I save 657 kilowatt hours (356*15*3*40/1000). At fifteen cents per KWH, that’s a dollar savings of $98.55. Cool. I will recoup my $75 in less than a year. (Except for the NY state cost of electricity, most of these numbers are my own estimates, reflecting a mix of bulb sizes, replacements, and daily usage. A key point – each swirl CFL bulb uses only about one-quarter as much electricity as the bulb it replaces; a 15 watt swirl casts as much light as an ordinary 60 watt bulb.)
And, apparently, they’re environmentally friendly.
September 6th, 2006 at 8:57 am
I just installed some of those yesterday. We didn’t have enough money in the checking account to buy enough bulbs for the whole house at once (plus our groceries), but we made a start. They were selling for 4 for $10. Only $40 more and we can convert the whole house.
They also last much longer than an incandescent. I’ve been using a longer non-swirly in my reading lamp for over 10 years. I think officially, according to the manufacturer, they’re supposed to last at least 7 years.
Now someone just needs to come up with an air conditioner that uses 1/4 the energy of our current a/c.
September 6th, 2006 at 9:47 am
This is a great idea with a problem. The light from a florescent is an extremely thin and awful colored strip of the visible spectrum. I doubt it will be the thing to read under. Incandescent is a much wider spectrum slice and a more natural color. Outside…no problem. Inside they emit a blue-green light that gives you eyestrain.
An indoor shooting range I use converted. You can’t see a thing downrange. You can’t see your front sight. You can’t sort your own brass off the floor. It’s amazing how bad the light quality is.
So, don’ think this doesn’t have a quality cost. I was going to put one in the light fixture that lights up the cars in the driveways….but that light is there to see if someone is fooling with the cars. I left the regular bulbs in.
September 6th, 2006 at 10:52 am
We use them in a couple of lamps in the living room. I’ve tried them in other places (like the lights on either side of the bathroom mirror and in the kitchen tracklights) and didn’t like the quality of the light, which is sort of cold and that makes colors look a little off. Try a couple of bulbs before you change the whole house over.
September 6th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Something like 80% of the bulbs in and around my house are CF. I haven’t had the problems with flickering, humming, or off-colored light that many have complained about, and the costs have come down quite a bit in the last couple of years. I have bulbs that I installed in my front hall, kitchen, bedrooms, and bathroom back in 2003 which I have never changed. I do notice that the bulbs don’t seem to last as long outdoors; two or maybe three years at most. But that’s still a lot better than incandescent.
Another unseen advantage of CF: They operate a lot cooler, which is great in the summertime, when bright light bulbs would literally heat the room.
September 6th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
We tried switching to the CF bulbs, but nearly half of them have died a little over a year later. Maybe we just got a bad bunch, but we weren’t impressed.
September 6th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Well, there are flourescent lamps that cast a more natural light spectrum; unfortunately they are about four times as expensive and last half as long as normal CF lamps, so they aren’t often used at home.
A lot of offices however are switching to them, because they found that office workers are more productive and efficient, with fewer sick days, under a more natural spectrum of light.
September 6th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
What about the new LED lamp bulbs?
They use even less energy, as I understand it – even so they are pretty expensive.
September 6th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
At the behest of a friend, I recently did a lighting inventory on my house. The initial result was “Jesus, my house has a lot of light bulbs.” The actual counts were:
54 CF
3 “Old School” fluorescent
6 Incandescent
September 6th, 2006 at 7:45 pm
My house is full of newer CFs. The only place I have incandescents is in the bathroom, in conjunction with a single “natural light” fluorescent, because that room is white with black marble and has *no* natural warmth to the light color like my yellow/red kitchen and hardwood floored rooms do.