Why? They are of NO use in the other rooms and cost more than they save! Why? Because a CFL is designed to be used for longer intervals and I use them only in rooms that have lights turned on for long times. Obviously, the kitchen/dining room combo and the living room are two places that have lights turned on for several hours. In my case, the master bedroom is also where the computer lives, and seems to be in use for many hours each day. Where you use them lots, leave them on until you are completely done for the day or are leaving the house, don’t turn them off as you leave the room only to turn them back on 15 minutes later.

In other rooms, the lights are on and off almost a much as a Christmas tree blinker. Turning off and on a CFL will kill it quicker than anything, so I don’t use it in places where I expect that activity.

Other places that CFLs don’t work well: The bathroom for one. High humidity places don’t work well. You can get by with bulbs in here if you have a fan and run it for several minutes after hot showers, etc, to get rid of the humidity. Dimmers: A big no no, unless you have a bulb designed for a dimmer. Otherwise, that bulb will die in a year or less. Outside: Also a big no no because of temperature (and where I live in Florida, the humidity), except for special bulbs. I found a yellow CFL designed for outside that also does not attract bugs.

I do agree with the bit about Home Depot bulbs over Walmart bulbs. I bought a 4 pack of 60 watt equivilent bulbs for about $9, the same price as Walmart wanted for 3. The Home Depot brand is called “N:Vision” and I like it lots!!! Also, the Walmart brand uses 16 watts each, the Home Depot brand uses only 14 watts each (I know we are only talking about 2 watts, but hey, while we are saving, lets count each watt). On top of everything, the N:Vision has a 9 year warranty (10,000 hours), more than double what the Walmart brand had. In addition, color makes a BIG difference!!! I didn’t know there were that many shades of white!!! (I’m a man, therefore I only see 7 colors, plus black and white….I have no idea what “periwinkle” is!), and not all shades of white are flattering. The Home Depot N:Vision bulbs I buy are “soft white” (2,700k) and seem closer to a soft white incandescent bulb, not as harsh as others. The N:vision bulbs also “warm up” quicker than the other CFLs seem to.

Finally, CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury. Don’t panic and call the Hazmat team, its not that much. I’ve been told its about 1/100 of the amount in a small medical thermometer. But, it is still mercury, it is still extremely hazardous to Earth life forms, it still adds up in the environment and bodies of life forms, and should not be thrown in your regular garbage. All CFLs should be recycled. In my area, many of your hardware stores, especially ACE and True Value will be happy to accept your bulbs even if you don’t buy anything from them. But, what man can visit a hardware store and not buy something!!

So don’t worry about the payback time for your compact fluorescent lamp, and don’t even worry too much about paying $8 for one instead of $4. Each time you decide to replace an incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent, you’ve effectively just decided to save about $30.

Payback time is a bad way to think about this stuff, because it often leads to decisions not to adopt technologies that are actually more than worthwhile.

For example, most people are pretty ambivalent about about installing a solar collector array for hot water heating, on the grounds that the five to seven year expected payback time is quite long.

But analyzing this a different way, things look better: if I’m currently spending $400/year on energy to make my water hot, and I’m trying to decide whether to spend $2000 on a device capable of cutting that back to at most $80/year, I’m looking at a yearly saving of at least $320; that is, I’m getting at least a 16 percent rate of return on my $2000 investment, and I’ll keep on getting that for the collector’s expected 20 year service life.

Plug in your own numbers, and see what sort of rate of return you come up with. Even a ten year payback time is a 10% rate of return, which is respectable.

Since we’re always taking photos of our two very fair-skinned toddlers, we’ve went back to incandescent bulbs in our family and dining rooms. That way when we send pix to the grandparents, they don’t call us in a panic.

These bulbs are perfect though for all utility areas which is where I use them. Also, LED nightlights are extremely lowcost and effective.

Definitely go through Home Depot. The only bulbs in my house that aren’t CF’s are in ceiling fans (cheap fans – voltage wasn’t regular enough) and in the garage door opener, and the savings per month are great! (about 80 bulbs now)