Hey guys and gals,

After purchasing a house last month, I've started to try to increase the effiency of this entirely-electirc structure. There were no CFL-type (Compact Florescent Light) bulbs in the house, and so I've been finding the 60W equivelent bulbs (13W rated) for around $8 for 6 or $6 for 4 depending on store & brand. Anyone have better luck with a certain brand than another?

Also, there was a huge 300W bulb in the center of my garage, along with two sets of florescent lights and a 60W fixture. Guess the prior owners liked light out there.. So I put a 100W equivelent (27W rated) bulb in it's place and it's nearly as bright! I think areas like that are the most important to be replacing bulbs overall. It's hard however to swap out working bulbs like what I'm doing. Hope I'm not throwing money into the wind...

 

I like them.

Out here the utilities are supplementing the costs of the bulbs. Maybe you can find a deal out your way too. One store was offering 75 watt equivalent, I think 18 watt, for 25 cents each, limit 100 bulbs and 100 watt equivalent dimmable ones for 50 cents each, limit 100.

The dimming ones are pretty cool and work well. And both types are instant on just like incandescent bulbs.

I have some touch lamps that won't turn them on, but all other lamps work well and there is no delay on startup. They are also very good in drop lights in the garage, cool running and durable.

We bought 240 of them. Enough for our current and new house for a lot of years plus more to give away. I plan to go back and get a couple hundred more to give away to customers.

 

Unless we just have a bad set of bulbs, I can't stand the CFLs.

We've got the flood/spot style CFL bulbs in most of the recessed lighting in the house. All of them take at least 5-10 seconds, some take up to 30, to get to full brightness. I guess the bright side is that when I go to the bathroom at night, I get gradually increasing lighting. Although it's not always good for the aim if you're in a hurry.

The only CFL that actually starts right up are the two regular style bulbs in one closet.

So now a question for the CFL experts, it is true that if you don't leave them on for a period of time after turning them on, you're shortening their life? I've heard they needed to stay on for 15 minutes after being turned on, but more often than not, these lights are being turned on for a few seconds, then right back off.

 

I started replacing our bulbs with CFL when we moved into this house (got almost half the house done now, just buy a package when we go grocery shopping) and they don't bother me, but we use the regular style ones (can't remember what wattage), they come on instantly, haven't noticed any difference in the electric bill yet, but then I don't really use a lot of light as we have decent natural lighting.

 

Only downside, is safe disposal of said lights.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=7431198

since that was printed, there have been steps made for proper disposal of lights containing mercury, but still. Tough call.

I have yet to be overly impressed by them, but thats just me. They do work well for some applications.

 

IMHO I think we should jump over the CFL bandwagon an put the money in LED's

 

I replaced all of the incandescent lamps in my house a few years ago and the first thing I noticed was both the wife and I have more migraine headaches, I can see them strobe.

I had replaced 41-100-watt incandescent bulbs and replaced them with 41-27-watt CFL's reducing my consumption by 2993 watts.

Here is what I have noticed:

I have been replacing these CFL's at work for retrofitting the House Lighting on our buildings and the first thing I have noticed is that I replace them almost 3 times more frequently that a standard incandescent bulb and even better when I use a 130 volt commercial bulb.

I have had more fixture fires using CFL's where the electronic ballast would burn up and catch fire.

I had one in my bathroom catch on fire about 6 months ago; I had smelled plastic burning and went to investigate to see flames rising from the fixture.

The lamp overheats when it is installed in an enclosed fixture, they cannot be burned in all positions.

I have more ugly fixtures because the CFL is larger than the standard A-type lamp so they stick out.

They do not last in a Fan Lamp until the vibration kills them.

They are noisy RFI around sensitive equipment.

They are slow to warm up the full brightness, almost as bad as High Pressure Sodium.

They do not work in colder temperatures; there is a minimum strike temperature.

Do not work well with Occupancy Sensors.

But the good things are: let me think,

Low power consumption, I use them in my work lights in my truck to run off my inverter, I made fixtures and used 42-watt CFL’s

When you buy them, choose them by the Lumen output, they are not all the same and also by the color temperature, Daylight will be a lot brighter than a Warm White.

 

We've replaced ALL our bulbs on the property with CFL bulbs. About 200 in all. The 60 or so in the barns are all enclosed in explosion proof fixtures, no problems with those. The outdoor arena has 22 CFL floods, all exposed to the weather. No problems with those either. There are a few in the house that no matter what wattage we use or which brand, will burn out within a few weeks of installation. I dunno what's up with that. All of them are slow to come up to full brightness, but I can wait 5 minutes, (tops), to have full lighting. We save about $100 a month on our electric bill, which is running about $600 now instead of $700.

chaikwa.

 

I fully agree that LED technology is the way to go, but in the mean time, I am having really good luck with CFL's in my house. I bought my first home a year ago from Holloween. A month after I bought the house I replaced all of the bulbs with CFLs and it dropped my energy bill big time. They have already paid for themselves at least once.

One thing I can suggest is pick up a few different brands, and color temperatures. See what you like and go from there. Just going into the store and buying a few dozen, or a few hundred may leave you dissapointed.

As mentioned, mine take a while to get to full brightness, but I don't have any aplications where that is an issue.

One thing that really drives me crazy about the "trendy" lighting such as CFLs and LEDs are the increasing amount of cheap, poor quality producs. For example, I have a MagLite that I had been wanting and LED bulb for. The ones from MagLite were pricey in my opinion (~$30). I ran across one at Target for ($6) that claimed to be the brightest, most cost effective LED replacement bulb on the market. I dropped it in and that was absolutely the dimmest bulb I have EVER seen. Not to mention the light was darn near purple. VERY frustrating. I brought it back and put the $6 towards the MagLite bulb. I am VERY happy with it. Asside from the better light, I use the heck out of that light and have yet to replace the batteries.

Okay, off the soap box...

 

FWIW, we re in the process of doing a complete interior makeover.
Having almost all the lighting replaced with can lighting.
Asked the contractor what lights were going to be used and was informed they are going to be CFL s.
We already have a few in some table lamps and they work good.

 

"When you buy them, choose them by the Lumen output, they are not all the same and also by the color temperature, Daylight will be a lot brighter than a Warm White."

Jim's right...
The marketers use some confusing "wattage" comparisons to incandescents but the lumen output is something that is verifiable.

The main objection I have to generic CFL's is the color temperature. The majority of them have been tailored for light at 2700degK color temperature (warm white)so they blend-in with incandescent lights better. I find the 2700K CFL light duller and dingier than incandescents they replace because of the nature of the interrupted, limited spectrum of light created by the phosphors. Because of that, fluorescents cannot give quite the color discrimination capability of an incandescent (or especially a halogen) lamp they are replacing. I immediately noticed it in my walk-in closet when selecting dress clothing that "matched".. What LOOKED like matched under CFL light, was wrong in daylight. I eventually found a CFL that gave better color rendition but it was SO slow to warm up to full brilliance and color temp.
The CFL industry is finally beginning to supply some slightly "cooler" CFL's that are more pleasing to my old eyes. The 4200+K lamps are way too cool (blue) for me but the ~3200K lamps which I like, are still rather hard to find.. Buy one of each and see what I mean before you go spend a bunch on them.

The other objection I have is the overheating/burning problem they exhibit.
Those CFL's that are screwed into a marginal or "old" lamp socket sometimes cause the socket or switch contacts to burn up even though it is drawing less watts. The type of electrical load the little cheap CFL ballast presents to the supply is not uniform like a resistive incandescent lamp. It draws narrow "pulses" of rather high current at the peaks of the 120VAC waveform and can finish-off an old flaky socket that has seen 20yrs of 100watt lightbulbs. The "dimmable" variety of CFL's seem to be quite a bit easier on old sockets and lamp switches than the non-dimmable kind, all because of the special nature of the ballast it contains.

The actual burning-up of these cheap chinese CFL's is a bigger concern to me. The older (better made) CFL's like Phillips would blow an internal protective fuse when the ballast went and never did I have any "burn" like some of these cheap chinese made CFL's have done. Boy! do they stink up the place!!!

I still have plenty CFL's in my house but I have gone back to "Halogena" halogen light bulbs for the better color rendition they give in certain locations in my house.

K.

 

People,about the LED's for home lighting,who is selling them and,are they price competitative for the energy used in relation to bulb life?Are they color corrected or do they run in the cw/dl/ww spectrum?Thanks

 

Currently, the only place I've seen them is on Ebay. I've used LEDs at my house for low-voltage outdoor use. I bought a few 110V units for indoors, but the light isn't dissipated enough and ended up looking like a disco ball hanging from the ceiling.

I know of a few more lighting technologies coming down the pipeline that will be the cat's meow if they work as promised.

But, for now, I've converted the house to CFL's almost everywhere. I even found a few dimmable CFL's. They sure seem to last a long time, as I had been replacing bulbs in my ceiling fans every three months. I now got the special CFL's for fan use, and they've been in there for over two years. Plus, they aren't they spiral-twisted style, so they look OK exposed.

garrett

 

Figures Garrett,you sillycon valley guys have a lock on the good stuff 1st.

 

I've been using them for years. I tend to buy the 100w bulbs more than the 60's. In most of my applications, they will fit and I like things a little bright. They still only draw about 26 watts so the fixtures rated for 60 don't even feel the draw.