People worry about the cost of using incandescent bulbs. They’ve been around for decades. They should be very inexpensive to produce by now. They come packaged in cardboard. Florescent bulbs are often in elaborate plastic packages to protect them from breakage. And you can’t tell me producing those little curley-cues costs less than a decades old normal bulb. Now you can recycle both packaging materials, but what do you think costs less to make and recycle? What kind of carbon footprint does packaging everything in plastic make?

I also spent three years in a computer lab at the Marine Institute. That was enough to convince me that fluorescent bulbs were not in my future. The (quite noticeable) constant buzzing and flickering did me in by the end of a three hour lab period. Sucks the energy right out of you. I would never buy those things myself. Sooner use a Coleman lantern. Tonight I’m staying in a rented room with CFL’s and the room is so dark (with 4 of these things on) that I’ve turned on an incandescent desk lamp to compensate. Its a Reveal series and has lasted for years. I’ve had some of these bulbs since about 2006, or before. I bought a few packs when they were on sale. And I love them. I believe that the reason so many of the incandescents fail so fast is that the later ones I’ve seen are engineered as cheaply as possible to push a worldwide change to fluorescents.

Where is the savings if you have to have 4 bulbs on to realize the light output of one incandescent? Another thing I’ve noted is that even when people are “serious” about saving money and the environment, etc, they often have no qualms about leaving these CFL lights on ALL night; because obviously they burn no electricity.

Well, each one in here is a 13 watt bulb. That’s 52 watts over a total of maybe 10 hours left on… only 520 watt hours, sure. If I don’t leave a 100 watt bulb on for 10 hours, that’s ZERO watts I burned. I grew up shutting off lights I wasn’t using. At least with incandescents, people who really want to save money turn them off (maybe its too bright to sleep with them on) because they’re aware of the cost; but I think with CFL’s, sometimes people are lulled into a false sense of how much they are really using.

So I don’t like them at all. I did read one interesting book by Buckminster Fuller once (called “Grunch of Giants”). In it he explained that the uber-rich are always dreaming up new ways to get their hands into our pockets. He mentioned that as time goes on, the cost to make things or to provide services should get lower and lower; and they do, but the end consumer never sees it because the number one priority of these companies is to make money for their top tier investors, and that means squeezing whatever they can from me and you. Even if it means “developing” new-fangled ideas like ethanol from corn or cheap mercury filled light bulbs (that come in too much plastic packaging) that devastate your health and that you even have to pay to dispose of (in some cases). So how many times do they get ya here? Let me count the ways!

The electrical problems seem to go away as soon as the bulb is changed out. I always take a rag to them after installing to get my oily prints off of them. They are GE bulbs made in China.

Then you’re buying garbage bulbs, handling them improperly, or have electrical problems in your house.

I don’t think I’ve replaced a CFL yet in my house (I have at least 4 installed), have lived there nearly 3 years (2 of them were there before we moved in), and each one gets daily usage. One of them is even outdoors and has operated in temperatures from 0F to 90F.

They also don’t seem to fit Obama’s theme of keeping jobs in America since almost all CFL’s are imported from China while most incandescent bulbs are still made here.

Oh, speaking of CFL’s from China, way more Mercury is lost to the environment in their production there and long range shipping here than goes into the CFL’s. This means that even if there is an impossible 100% recycling program, way more toxic Mercury will get into the environment and into kids than could be saved from power plant reductions.

By the way, I did see a medical show on CNN several months ago that was based on British Medical Association studies indicating a link between CFL’s and migraines, etc.

Maybe we should just wait the few years for LED’s to make it to primetime.

As Jeffeb3 Says earlier on,

2) “new CFLs don’t flicker. If you aren’t judging your bias on a recent CFL, then don’t talk to me about it.”

(Well, actually, technically, they do flicker. But they do it 20,000 times per second. CFLs operate in the 20,000 Hz range.)

With all due respect I have serious doubts that any human, Autistic or not, can detect flickering at the rate of 20,000 cycles PER SECOND. I think you are associating the negative quality of flickering (from older style fluorescents) with the CFLs. It ain’t happening. If it is, maybe we can do a Discovery network program about it.

If you are for real, and autistic, and can detect that, then I apologize. Otherwise, forget it.

Sorry.

don’t turn them ever by the glass, it’s fragile. turn them only by their bases.

re: the mercury in the bulbs:
cleanup procedures are still evolving. Check out recent (2008) articles on it, I won’t go into it here. basically, air the room. Never vacuum, instead uses adhesive tape to pick up residue. Put the shards in a glass jar and seal it. The mercury will seep through plastico ordinary plastic. Mark the glass as as Hazardous waste.
if you’ve got kids or rambunctious pets, consider not putting them in table lamps that can get knocked over.

Currently, sorbent materials are being developed and marketed which will neutralize (bind up) the mercury from lamp spills. They are not on the market yet, though.

re: the energy spent to start them up–

these days it is negligible. So turn them off every time you leave the room if you want, you’re not wasting energy by starting them up again. It takes between 2 and 10 seconds of their level running energy for them to start up.

well, they are solid state devices, and most are designed to be used in open fixtures so they can stay cool (high heat loosens the solder connections on many circuit boards, killing the device.

If they are in enclosed fixtures, it will shorten their lives.

I write the date of purchase on them w/ a marker, and a code, and write the same code on a receipt and file it. If it dies before the warranty, I can get a replacement for free.

I recently replaced almost every bulb in my home with CREE LEDs using between 3 and 12 watts of electricity each. The LEDs aren’t glass bulbs so they don’t break, and they do not contain mercury.

[...] your local power company giving them away. My first CFLs were from a giveaway at a local festival. Here’s a good post from Get Rich Slowly about the cost and cost savings of CFL bulbs. Also, here’s one sponsored by a power company that has some good [...]

[...] We’ve been focusing on reducing our energy bill lately. For example, my husband has been looking into switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs. [...]

However, I do seem to have an awful lot of burnouts. I think that is due to my current house’s wiring….regular bulbs burn out even quicker. Luckily, we are moving next month.

Second thing….pay close attention to the fixture you are placing it in. Before I knew better, I used to put a CFL in one of the small overhead light fixtures that had a fulling enclosed, small glass shade. To say the least, we were replacing the CFL every two months.

In our new house, I have 6 similar but slightly larger fixtures in storage areas (still fully enclosed), right now I am using incandescent bulbs, but will be changing them out to LED bulbs one at a time (still pretty expensive at $50 a bulb….but for 10-15+ years of use without need to change out…it is worth it, not to mention way lower wattage than even CFL’s)

CFL’s are largely made in China. Incandescent bulbs are mostly made here. Buy a CFL and help send lots more money and thousands of jobs to China.

Shifting a KWH of production from here to there results in much greater pollution there and here from their very dirty coal power plants; over 2,500% in SO2, over 1,300% in mercury, about 400% in the Nitrogen Oxides, and over 40% in CO2 (nearly 100% based on some estimates).

Even more pollution comes from their mining for the mercury, processing it, building new plants to make the CFL’s, shipping the CFL’s here using bunker oil which is 1,000 times dirtier than regular fuel oil, etc.

The major increase in CFL production in China will result in the building of new very dirty coal power plants there. In almost no case will the supposed savings in energy use with CFL’s forestall the building of new power plants here since residential lighting usage is most always at off-peak hours.

You pay for the lower-priced or free CFL’s in your taxes or as part of your utility bill. There is no free lunch with these things. If they are really cheap and unsubsidized CFL’s, you better beware. As Philips Lighting of China warned in a May 2005 internal technical memo in reference to mercury and lifecycle cost; “…it’s worse to use such cheap ‘energy saving’ lamps to replace incandescent lamps. Also it’s more expensive…” This is in reference to the use of cheap CFL’s even in China with its mostly very dirty coal power generation.

If the Ikea recycling program is the model, we are in real trouble. Check around at their stores. About two-thirds of the bulbs in the CFL bins are incandescent lights and the bins are not sealed. Mercury vapor from broken CFL’s gets out. Only a small percent of the CFL’s they sell are recycled.

In states like California and cities like Seattle, CFL’s are legally hazardous waste. It is illegal to throw them out unless they are treated as hazardous waste. Properly disposing of them is a bit of a hassle at best and near impossible at worst. Last I checked, you have to call and make an appointment to drop-off your CFL’s at the hazardous waste site in Seattle.

What the hell. Who cares? You might still save a buck. You sure aren’t going to save the world or our kids.

Also you get more warning (usually) of a burn-out, so you can change the bulb (as infrequently as it is) at your convenience, instead of a disaster (“dad! my light doesn’t work, I need it fixed now!”).

Finally, if you have enclosed light fixtures, I find that putting incandescents, even at the rated wattage, can fairly quickly start to cause problems with the plastic bulb holders in the fixture due to heat buildup, which can mean anything from a fire hazard to having to replace the fixture. Obviously using 1/4th the wattage, with much less heat, means this isn’t a problem.

Overall, with the cost going down, the reliability going up, the warm up period mostly disappearing, and a huge variety of sizes, shapes, wattages, and colors, CFLs can work for most people and applications.

My goal is to find least expensive options for transforming my family’s consumption patterns while maintaining or improving our standard of living. Watch us compare our monthly 2007 and 2008 electric, water and gas bills.

Find out for yourself from our real-life experiences.

peace,
jlw

The idea is great, and we would love to replace our normal bulbs with ‘em, but for one problem… they just don’t work.

We’ve bought various cfls over the years, many claiming to match or exceed the 100w lumens of a normal bulb… Put one in our living room lamp, and sitting in the chair right next to the lamp, you don’t have enough light to read a newspaper with.

Over and over again we did that same experiment and over and over again we were met with disapointment… Now we hear that the govmnt is going ahead with plans to phase out normal bulbs… So that means we’ll need 4 times (or more) as many light sources in the room to get the same lumens we have now… Any energy savings will be nulled out by the increase in number of lights being used. This is nuts!