Fluorescent light bulbs are not what they advertise

I find your comparison interesting; however, I think LED's should be included in the comparison. I have used all 3. I have several kinds of LED lights on my off the grid mtn property. The 12 volt versions are far better than 12 volt CFL's, and forget 12 volt incandescent (headlight, tail light, etc). LED plant lights are superior also. Their % of light used by the plant is over 90 compared to halide and flourescent which provide only 15%. One difficulty is the LED plant lights need to be about 4" from the plant. I also have an LED black light which I use to locate rodent trails. They are also quite common on automobiles. Costs are dropping and some of the US manufacturers are getting on the wagon quickly. So my perspective is forget both CFL and incandescent. Start hollering for LED's with better performance and price.

I know one thing...the Cree LR6 bulbs for recessed lights BLOW CFL's away in light, and use less power to boot !



The initial cost isn't cheap....we paid $65/bulb from an online dealer, BUT:

50,000 hr life and 10.5 watts power use. IF you do the math, they are cheaper than 16-18w CFL bulbs over the course of their life. PLUS way brighter, instant on ( no 'warm up' )and you can put a dimmer on them.

Paul, there are so many issues in your article I would like to adress, but I would have to write an article of my own.
I would like to quickly touch on the toxicity issue, as this is a pet peeve of mine.
(Please note, I'm not trying to be "mean" to you, just pointing out another view.)
I do agree with you that we should focus on more ways to reduce our environmental impact, but unfortunately, the general public just don't care. Regulations are currently the only thing to make a difference continent wide, until average joe wakes up.

The following is an exerpt from a letter to the editor I wrote, printed a few months ago.

It is true that CFL bulbs contain small amounts of mercury. They contain approximately 1 to 5 mg per bulb. While this fact may sound worrisome, this is nothing compared to some watch batteries, which contain approximately 25 mg of mercury. There is also a much higher amount of mercury contained in dental amalgam (fillings).
Yes, CFL’s should be disposed of properly. So should many other common household products, such as batteries, paint, pharmaceuticals and electronics. Thankfully, many retailers have stepped up to the plate and offer recycling programs for CFL’s. You can take your bulbs to the Home Depot, to name one, who facilitate the recycling of these bulbs, and the mercury contained in them. They even provide you with bags.
It is also important to note that the largest cause of mercury emissions today comes from fossil fuel energy plants. By using energy efficient CFL’s we reduce the amount of energy needed to power our lights, and therefore drastically reduce the amount of mercury being emitted into our atmosphere.
Of course there is the reduction in greenhouse gasses from using these bulbs as well. According to Environment Canada, replacing even one 60-watt standard bulb with a 15-watt CFL in each of Canada's 12 million households would save up to $73 million a year in energy costs and reduce greenhouse emissions by nearly 400,000 tonnes.
The compact fluorescent bulb may not be perfect, but it is a huge step in the right direction until newer technology is perfected. It is an unfortunate fact that some brands of bulbs do not contain disposal warnings, and I agree that this should be regulated. However, if every product on the market had to warn the consumer about it’s health and environmental hazards, I think we’d all be too afraid to ever leave the house again. Perhaps this is what we need to help make a real change in caring for our health and environment.

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The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. -Spock / James T. Kirk
Live simply, so others may simply live. - Ghandi

My experience with Flourescent bulbs so far:

1. They only last about 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of time as they're suppose to.

2. The older they get, the dimmer they get.

3. A 100 watt flourescent bulb does not keep the Well House warm enough to keep the water thawed.

Give me the darn incadescant bulb back!

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

I just spent an entire day this week cleaning out the wasp nests and bat guano from 8 recessed can lights in the ceilings of our porch roofs. Does the Cree LR6 fixture have a solid lense that covers or encloses the can light cavity? If so, I might be really interested in these! There would be no way that wasps or bats could make their homes in the fixture.

Does the Cree LR6 work at sub-zero temperatures?

Thanks

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

A relative fan of CFLs here.

I buy the ones on sale, for about $1.25 ea.

We like the short ones, as they will fit inside glass globes, or other tight spots.

Some we have installed, died in a few months. Others have been going strong for several years - about the same as the chincy incandesents made nowdays.

Any of the CFLs we use, even in below zero temps, will come up to full brightness in 30 seconds or so.

We'll take the 50%+ savings in electricity.

If we need a bulb to heat, we use an incandesent heat lamp.

Has a lot to do with the type of load a fluorescent fixture provides to the transmission line. Lots of factories have lagging power factor from inductive (motor) loads. Incandescent provide basically unity (resistive) loads while fluorescents provide a leading power factor.

The more lagging your power factor the less voltage regulation you have on a transmission line. In other words, you will see more voltage fluctuation with lagging power factor. Factories pay a penalty to the power company based upon their lagging KVA.

I hate cfl's. Absolutely hate them. In the few fixtures we have that haven't been converted to 4 foot tubes the cfl's last at most a month before burning out. Incandescents have lasted several years. At $8.00 a pop (the cheapest ones I could find) I just cannot justify the purchase of a cfl when I can get 4 incandescents for $3. The life of an incandescent will vary by manufacturer as a cfl does. But in the fixtures where I have incandescents the light is used for only a few minutes at a time. The exception is a light that sits on the bookcase which has a shade with those little metal loops. I have broke more than 1 cfl on those loops, never broke an incandescent in that fixture. IME, the cfl's lose quite a bit of brightness rather quickly. It seems they are never as bright as a 60 watt incandescent. The bases of cfl's do get rather hot, in some brands hotter than an incandescent bulb.

As for the incandescent ban, Wal-Mart has already stopped carrying incandescents. Ban or no ban they will soon be very difficult to get.

Paul, (and any others interested in lighting) the person who I feel has done THE best job of studying and understanding lighting, and then disseminating that information is Don Klipstein. I've been reading what he has written for a number of years, back from when we were on usenet. his website is here: http://members.misty.com/don/light.html As you know, I can be picky, but I've never found reason to challenge ANY of Don's statements on the subject. If I suggest anything on the subject that is contradictory to Don, Don is probably right, so just go there and have fun.

Nick Pine. Ask Solar Gary in the alt energy forum about Nick. I debated with Nick on a number of subjects. With most anything he has a basic program showing the math and calculations. Some of his ideas were as off-the-wall as some of mine, but I'm pretty sure in one usenet post he calculated how much mass of cold air is lost when a fridge is opened. IIRC, the amount wasn't significant, and could be avoided just by hanging plastic at the front of each shelf. The frozen or cold water used a lot of energy in getting it cooled, and the benefit was more that if the power failed, stuff could stay colder much longer.

Nick's comments are available with a web search on his name and "energy"

A BIG caution with LEDs - if you plan on using them, think seriously about investing in a whole house surge protector. They REALLY don't like overvoltage conditions and electrical funkitude.

Palani, I was waiting for PF to come up. PF isn't a big deal to the power companies except in rare instances. Adjustments can be made at the pole or in the equipment to compensate. Time of use is a much bigger issue, to minimize peak demands and purchased power. The person to discuss all of that with is Neon John (John de Armond) Do a web search for his web sites, and a post where he discusses PF is in a thread here: http://www.electronicspoint.com/pass...n-t180522.html Be prepared for a medium dose of geek.

I had switched ALL of my light fixtures over to those neat CFL's WAY back when. Back in about 2002 LONG before they were mandated, Long before there were tons on the market, long before any negativity about them.
I did so to SAVE money on my electric bill~! Period.
and as far as that tiny bit of mercury. so what~! They go in the garbage as easy as the old regular lights did when burnt out.
Now Yes I have replaced a few over the years and now I only buy the Bright White ones WAY brighter then the older CFL's were. Better bright white light.
I remember not too many years ago those Long Tubes we just busted them up when put in the dumpsters, no big deal. And even yet today I have helped in breaking them up in a dumpster, that were from my friends vending storage warehouse.

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Oh my, dishes yet to wash and dry

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Strawhouse thanks for beating me to posting about the "mercury" thing.
I get really annoyed when some one sounds off on "Oh you have to have a HazMet team come if you break a CFL" . . . .really absurd.....

I have more mercury in the Timex on my wrist than in a CFL.

My first (Phillips) CFL was used with a timer, and was on 4-6 hours a night . . . . . .lasted 7 years............

I bought a led 'bulb' from C Crane (25$ ??) probably 4 years ago It is aimed at the ceiling and provides one heck of a bright night lite for the kitchen and living room.
It is 12 voltDC and has been on constantly for all that time (4 years). . .love it.

CF . . . led's are not temp sensitive like cfl's
It is true some cfl's wont even 'come on' in zero type temp's

I have a 1 watt LED night light which runs 24 hrs a day. I put the first one on regular house 120 and it burned out after a power surge shortly after 1 year. Now I have a 1 watt night light on a surge protector and it has been running 24 hrs a day for 2 years. The 12 volts LEDs have never worn out or burned out, but I do not use them 24 hrs a day.

i started switching out incandescents for cfl's for one reason...i was tired of changing light bulbs. even with only the few i have installed now, the cfl bulbs have paid for themselves already. some of the incandescents would only last for 3-6 weeks. i haven't lost one cfl yet and i have had three installed for about a year and a half. another three were installed a couple months back...when i was finally able to find them small enough to fit into some of my fixtures.

i can't speak to the brightness, although i suspect they are a bit dimmer than i would like, but the power usage was spot on. i tested them with my kill-a-watt meter.

i will still use incandescents for outdoor usage...porches and sheds etc.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

Yep....the lens/trim ring come as a unit with the "bulb"....it's that metal can looking thing you see in the photo.....nothing is going to get in from the under side, so as long as it can't get in from the upper side of the "can", you wont get bugs. That was also a selling feature for us.

We have a couple of recessed lights over the master bath vanity, and those $(%^#$^# Asian beetles would use them as a "home"...then when my wife was doing her face in the morning, they would fly out and get in her hair....this stopped that....and the quality of light BLOWS the CFL's away by comparison.....she was complaining about the bluish tint to the CFL light....these are true bright white.

As far as I know, the LR6 is not affected by temperature like the CFL's....

It does seem like incandescent bulbs have become cheesier over time. I'm surprised that there are not incandescent bulbs now that last 10,000 hours and use half power for the same lumens.

Batteries: the mercury is harder to get at - but, of course, another place to be concerned.

Amalgams: yes - that is another problem. I avoid those too.

Energy savings: Yes - CFLs do use about half the energy per lumen. They claim to be three to five times more efficient, but I think that is just marketing hype.

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[raising chickens] [diatomaceous earth] [permaculture] [rocket mass heater] [lawn care]

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I only use Day Light CFL's and only from MaxLite. I used to own my own lighting supply company and I put these in my house almost the day they came out and many of them are still running. And that was over 10 years ago. This is in all my rooms and even in rooms that you just turn them on and off in a matter of minutes. Yes, some have burned out, but I now purchase lamps from a real lighting supplier who stands behind the warranty of the lamp. Most of my replacements have been free (they'll only replace the original lamp once).

There are still places I won't use them, like outside in my unheated spaces. CFL's are not designed for -0F temp's.

It's all in the Filament. You can by your cheap lamps that have a filament strung between 2 supports, or you can have a U shaped filament with multiple supports. The more supports the long the life, as well as less voltage. Many of the longlife lamps are designed to run off of 130 volts, since homes are built to run on 120 volts you end up with longer life. Throw those to things into one lamp and you can end up with 20,000 hour incandescent lamps. Litetronics used to make a great 20,000 hour lamp, not sure if they still do though.

Harry (or anyone else), we plan on switching to CFLs soon in our quest to reduce our electrical consumption but we have fairly constant power fluctuations and go through incandescant bulbs on a regular basis. Are CFLs better or worse for a very rural and shaky electrical grid?

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

Salmonslayer, I think you'll find CFLs roughly the same as incandescent in failure rate. What you CAN do is buy the ones with guarantees and keep the supporting paperwork. While it might not pay for lights, there are "line conditioners" that are able to hand larger loads than a UPS and keep voltages within a specified range. You might want to invest in one for any electronics. Also, complain to your power company and public service commission if the fluctuations are unreasonable. Poor line conditions have been known to damage equipment and start fires.