Compact Fluorescent Lamps

Excellent article. Very Good stuff.

I have all CF's in the house. I have one outside in a little enclosed fixture. All of them work great plenty of light. In fact my living room lighting consist of 3 lamps with CFL's in them. It's plenty.

I DO have incandescents in two places. I have two in the attached garage and I have 2 in the 6 bulb chandelier above the dining room table. The only reason they are in that fixture is that it has a dimmer switch and it ate the CFL's in a couple of months.

I imagine that there were people who complained about "dangerous lead acid batteries" in cars when they got rid of the hand cranks too...

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I get plenty of light from my CFs and I have them all over the house. Maybe those that are too dim aren't the equivalent wattage that you want or that you need. The packages show what they are equivalent to. I probably have the numbers wrong, but just for the sake of discussion, a package might say 13W fluorescent = 60W incandescent.....

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I live in Illinois, we had a huge increase in electric bills in December. I went a binge to save energy. I was disappointed with performance of CFB's, especially in the cold. I don't see how any state could mandate them. I did, however, discover an added benefit. My doublewide would went thru light bulbs like candy, in several fixtures perhaps one a month, CFs have lasted for months now. So in my case they have paid for themselves by outlasting regular bulbs. Let me bring up something I read on Free Republic site. A Fellow from I think NJ said NJ & one of its counties were debating on who should pay the bill for an interstate interchange lights on one interchange. He calculated the bill was $400+ @ a month. ONE INTERCHANGE!! What's up anyway that consumers are being herded into certain behavior and government isn't getting its own act together.

It sounds like it's the temps that affect the performance. Is that your conclusion too? It hardly ever gets cold where I live.... Zone 8, ya know.

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Hi,

I think that the cold weather performance depends on the brand. I use CF's outside, and they work down to below zero (Montana). Some of the packages give the operating temperature range. I try not to use outdoor lights at all except when we are actually doing something outdoors at night.

I buy our CF's at Costco -- if they have a problem they go back. I guess any place with a good return policy would work.

We use about 30 CF's -- this cost us about $50 (with some rebates), and they save us $117 a year -- hard to beat that
http://www.builditsolar.com/Referenc...ion.htm#Lights

I have often wondered what that interchange lighting costs -- it seems excessive to me (both the lighting and the cost).

Gary

Well - the package we have left says "same as 60 Watt, but uses 14 Watts". All I know is we have 4 of them in a ceiling fan light fixture in our living room (open globes), and they are next to useless. We are just waiting for these to die so we can get real bulbs to replace them. I THINK they are the only ones we haven't gotten rid of yet. We have learned to leave them off and turn on the table lamp instead, so we hardly ever use them anymore. They will probably last forever at this rate! They aren't saving us any electricity (due to not turning them on), so we've decided that they will be the last we use. We were thinking we needed some target practice anyway....

While I don't want Uncle Sam in it either - he is already there.

He could give out these bulbs, if they are more efficient, or he can pour more and more money into the coal companies or the oil companies.

I can't see with the squiggly bulbs. In the overheads with 3 of them in a fixture, I do pretty good, just for general housework, etc. For a reading lamp, I can't see.

My son says he tried them and they hurt his eyes.

I had a email the other day about the dangers of Fluorescent lights. I wish I still had it to reference here. I remember it saying something about fluorescents having some kind of gas in them that if broken in your home could cost as much as $2000 for chemical cleanup. Also something about how 2 light can contaminate 6000 gallons of water. They sound like they can be pretty dangerous if broken. Kind of scared me since I have several of them in my home.

[QUOTE=Scrounger]All I know is we have 4 of them in a ceiling fan light fixture in our living room (open globes), and they are next to useless. We are just waiting for these to die so we can get real bulbs to replace them. /QUOTE]

Yep, you have just jinxed yourself. Years from now, your Great-Grandkids (whoever inherits your house) will be saying "These are the light bulbs our Great-Grandparents put in this ceiling fan light and LOOK, they STILL work!"

The CF's have come a long way from several years ago. The ones years ago would hum, and after they were in use a while seemed to lose their lighting power and didn't put out the light they first did. I use them even though they don't really seem to put out the light like regular bulbs, but when you have a wife and kid who "can't remember" to turn the lights off . . . . . .

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"Everything happens for a reason."

Also, I have heard of the danger of skin cancer from flourescent bulbs, not sure it is this kind or not.

I just broke one in a small bedroom lamp -- something else to worry about.

Can I have all your stuff when.. well, you know... since you're doomed and all.....

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??????????????????

Ok, I got another copy of the email with this link to a page about it.http://www.newstarget.com/021916.html The problem is that some reports say they are good, and some say they are bad. How are we suppose to figure out who is telling the truth about it? Just something else to wonder about...

Ya got to do some research, and understand the perspective of the particular talking head.

The CF bulbs use less electricity per lumen than the incadescent type bulbs. If power consumption is your perspective, CF bulbs are better.

The CF bulbs contain mercury. Mercury is toxic. Incadescent bulbs do not. If mercury pollution is your perspective, incadescent bulbs are better.

Make no mistake, CF bulbs do contain mercury. And mercury, while a natural element, is a man made toxic problem. Lots of folks are very confused and think that if something is natural is must be perfectly safe. Plutonium is a natural element, that doesn't make it safe to eat. Mercury is man made toxic problem because of the way we've redistributed it.

The mercury content of the typical CF bulb is roughly 1/2 that of a conventional 4 foot flourescent tube. Now we've probably all busted a flourescent tube, and lived through the experience. That doesn't make it a recommended healthy practice. The breakage of a CF bulb is something to be aware of. As is the entertaining disposal problems with them right now, as virtually no place is equipped to handle recycling them.

Now, That's about as Reasonable and Well thought-out Explanation of this
situation, as I have heard.
We don't have to get crazy and fear everything new.
We just have to do some real study, of our own, rather than going off with only half the information.
And we need to realize that there are Folks on both sides of the Question,
with an axe to grind.
It's generally a financial axe, hunnh.

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We replaced all of our bulbs with the CFs but with a 9 YO son who likes to throw things we're afraid one will break. The recommended cleanup I've heard isn't a comfort so I called waste management for how to dispose of them. They said throw away one or two a week in your trash or bring them all to the hazardous waste recycling center in August. Don't want to put them in the landfill, but wonder if they won't just send them there anyway!

Anyone know about halogens? I have 5 bulbs in my kitchen.

Incandesent bulbs contain lead in the solder used to construct the bases, and shouldn't be landfilled because of the lead. If the elctricity is coming from a coal burning power plant, the amount of mercury put into the atmosphere to power the bulb during the life of a CFL, plus the mercury in the CFL, is less than the mercury put into the atmosphere to power the equivelant incandescent bulbs. So in the long run, using CFLs puts less mercury into the environment, and even less if you recycle the bulb. And if you are generating your own power, or interested in saving money, the CFLs are the way to go. Our power usage dropped noticably when we switched to mostly CFLs.

This is a good example of hyperbole over fact.

Lead is inert and non reactive. While it is certainly devastating to the brain when ingested or inhaled, laying in a landfill it does not harm. It doesn't evaporate, it doesn't disolve. It just sits there. That is the reason there is not a national prohibition on disposing of lead in landfills. In fact, the US EPA quite actively encourages certain lead disposals in landfills. You can read the June 18 2003 Federal Register notice to that effect here.

Federal Register notice encouraging the landfilling of lead paint

My sense of humor was totally on vacation -

As to my 'stuff' - you would make my husband very happy if you would come get it - doomed or not.