Today I finished changing out 33 lightbulbs for CFLs.

[Engineer]

I've seen several mention it takes extra energy to make CFL bulbs. I've watched the Chinese video of the factory and from what I can tell, it wouldn't seem to use that much more than regular bulbs. I'm not sure of the glass content of CFL bulbs vs regular as that would be the main determiner of which used more energy (melting all that glass).

I guess it also depends on how long the CFL lasts. If they were all to last 5 years or more at normal (6 hours per day or so) usage, I would think CFL's would use less energy overall.

I can see LED's using more energy overall to make but they should last 10 years and easily use less energy than any other bulb on the market, manufacturing energy included.

 

[lxskllr]

I've seen several mention it takes extra energy to make CFL bulbs. I've watched the Chinese video of the factory and from what I can tell, it wouldn't seem to use that much more than regular bulbs. I'm not sure of the glass content of CFL bulbs vs regular as that would be the main determiner of which used more energy (melting all that glass).

A lot more material goes into making a CFL, as well as toxic substances. They also weigh 4 times as much as an incandescent, so it costs more to ship. I don't think the global energy savings comes anywhere close to what it says on the box. It may, or may not be a touch more efficient, but by the time the mercury and plastics are figured in, I think it's close enough not to matter.

 

[Triumph]

I'm wondering why I'm the only one that seems to see the irony: throwing away 33 perfectly good incandescent lightbulbs to replace with CFL, rather than waiting until each one goes out and replacing them individually. Seems incredibly wasteful.

Plus why would you worry about CFL's in closets and the like, where they get turned on what, once a day for maybe 2 minutes? I'm sure you have closets in your house that don't get turned on more than a couple of times a month. What a waste of perfectly good light bulbs.

 

[lxskllr]

I'm wondering why I'm the only one that seems to see the irony: throwing away 33 perfectly good incandescent lightbulbs to replace with CFL, rather than waiting until each one goes out and replacing them individually. Seems incredibly wasteful.

Plus why would you worry about CFL's in closets and the like, where they get turned on what, once a day for maybe 2 minutes? I'm sure you have closets in your house that don't get turned on more than a couple of times a month. What a waste of perfectly good light bulbs.

That's like that disgraceful cash for clunkers program. We're really saving energy now... :^S

 

[SunnyD]

I'm wondering why I'm the only one that seems to see the irony: throwing away 33 perfectly good incandescent lightbulbs to replace with CFL, rather than waiting until each one goes out and replacing them individually. Seems incredibly wasteful.

Plus why would you worry about CFL's in closets and the like, where they get turned on what, once a day for maybe 2 minutes? I'm sure you have closets in your house that don't get turned on more than a couple of times a month. What a waste of perfectly good light bulbs.

Who said anything about throwing them out? I have 2 boxes of "spare" incandescent bulbs stashed away in my garage now. And if you had been paying attention, you would have caught the part where I said I still haven't changed out the bulbs in the closets nor outdoors nor a few other strategic places in the house.

 

[Bateluer]

I spent a ton of money and replaced all of my lightbulbs with GE brand CFLs. Took about a week before 1/3 of them were dead. A month later over 1/2 were dead. (I'm not using dimmers or anything).

I have not been happy with the results so far.

Odd. My cheap walmart GE CFLs have lasted nearly 5 years now. Obviously, they aren't on all the time, but still, thats a long time.

 

[Zebo]

I prefer incandescent and have a pallet saved up for eventual ban. Real black body light, like the sun, not screwy spikey spectrograms like alternatives.

There are some good alts in LED which cover whole range we see but they are $48 ea.. that's a lot of electricity one can buy with ~100 lights to replace.

 

[her209]

Plus why would you worry about CFL's in closets and the like, where they get turned on what, once a day for maybe 2 minutes? I'm sure you have closets in your house that don't get turned on more than a couple of times a month. What a waste of perfectly good light bulbs.

That's what HE said?

 

[Triumph]

Who said anything about throwing them out? I have 2 boxes of "spare" incandescent bulbs stashed away in my garage now.

Where they will likely gather dust, the net result being the same, they are wasted.

And if you had been paying attention, you would have caught the part where I said I still haven't changed out the bulbs in the closets nor outdoors nor a few other strategic places in the house.

You said "And the sad part is that I still haven't finished - I haven't swapped any of the closet bulbs out because I'm out of CFL's. I sell have 4 bulbs outside, then 7 closets, the pantry and one recessed light to swap out."

Meaning you are planning on replacing the lights in your closets with CFL's. Maybe you should reconsider doing that.

 

[SketchMaster]

A little off topic, but is anyone using LED lights? Not sure if I want to use them for my main lighting (unless they have gotten better on the luminance vs. $), but I have been thinking about throwing them into lamps for when I'm just surfing the web/gaming and want enough light to move around the room.

 

[lxskllr]

A little off topic, but is anyone using LED lights? Not sure if I want to use them for my main lighting (unless they have gotten better on the luminance vs. $), but I have been thinking about throwing them into lamps for when I'm just surfing the web/gaming and want enough light to move around the room.

That's something I'm interested in too. The dim light sounds great. I hate bright lights, but they're a little spendy for an unknown quantity. I like an amber type glow from my lights. A candle on steroids would be perfect for me.

 

[killster1]

they are 25 cents each and seem to be lasting anywhere from 5 months to multiple years. I think the 25 cent ones cant be trusted for quality, but damn they are cheap. Grocery store been selling them 50 cents a 2 pack for 4 years now and they are very bright yet low watt and cant even tell they are cfl.

I dont know how much you guys spending on these and best brand etc but id change any bulb that would let me with them closets etc.

 

[Kanalua]

CFLs last forever.

I've replaced all of the incandescent bulbs in our apartment with CFLs 5 years ago. Since then I've moved once and took all my CFLs with me.

I've only had one go bad...in 5 years.

 

[BoomerD]

A little off topic, but is anyone using LED lights? Not sure if I want to use them for my main lighting (unless they have gotten better on the luminance vs. $), but I have been thinking about throwing them into lamps for when I'm just surfing the web/gaming and want enough light to move around the room.

I picked up some LED candelabra base bulbs for the fixtures on the front of the house. They don't put off much light, which is OK by me. They're more decorative than functional anyway. I tried CFL's for the application, but since they're on a cheap photocell, the CFL's didn't last very long. The LED's have been going just fine for about 3 years.

 

[PhoKingGuy]

I bought a 6 pack of GE CFLs from target that actually said Made in USA on them about 5.5 years ago. All 6 are still kicking right now even though I leave one of them on for a good 6-8 hours a day.

 

[Jeff7]

I thought about doing this in my place but 80% of the lights in the house are on dimmers and all 14 recessed lights are running 130v bulbs atm which seems a little odd.

They'll just run much longer on 120V, maybe as much as 10,000 hours.

I prefer incandescent and have a pallet saved up for eventual ban. Real black body light, like the sun, not screwy spikey spectrograms like alternatives.

There are some good alts in LED which cover whole range we see but they are $48 ea.. that's a lot of electricity one can buy with ~100 lights to replace.

It's horribly inefficient light though. And most of that blackbody radiation is in wavelengths that we can't see at all. The human eye can pick up 3 dominant wavelength ranges for determining colors, so why not tune our light sources to target those specific things, and save a lot of power in the process? Match the output to the inputs.

A little off topic, but is anyone using LED lights? Not sure if I want to use them for my main lighting (unless they have gotten better on the luminance vs. $), but I have been thinking about throwing them into lamps for when I'm just surfing the web/gaming and want enough light to move around the room.

From what I've read and seen, it seems like a new light fixture is needed. The screw-in base is well-suited for lightbulbs which have a filament that's running at a few thousand degrees, and it helps to keep that thermal energy inside the bulb. LEDs don't like to get very hot at all, and so they need the opposite thing - they need a very good thermal path to get heat away from the emitter as effectively as possible. They also have power supply circuitry which should be kept cool as well.
Everyone's trying to make retrofit bulbs, but they frequently come nowhere near matching the brightness of what they're striving to replace, simply because the manufacturer needs to keep the power levels low in order to keep from damaging the LEDs, since the socket they're trying to screw into outright sucks for thermal management.

 

[Fritzo]

I spent a ton of money and replaced all of my lightbulbs with GE brand CFLs. Took about a week before 1/3 of them were dead. A month later over 1/2 were dead. (I'm not using dimmers or anything).

I have not been happy with the results so far.

You have a lot of power surges or something? Mine are going on 5 years now.

 

[SunnyD]

Where they will likely gather dust, the net result being the same, they are wasted.



You said "And the sad part is that I still haven't finished - I haven't swapped any of the closet bulbs out because I'm out of CFL's. I sell have 4 bulbs outside, then 7 closets, the pantry and one recessed light to swap out."

Meaning you are planning on replacing the lights in your closets with CFL's. Maybe you should reconsider doing that.

Yeah, I'll replace them... when the die. Duh.

 

[Leros]

You have a lot of power surges or something? Mine are going on 5 years now.

Not that I've noticed. I don't have any problems with my normal incandescent bulbs.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Whether you like them or not, CFLs are here to stay. The idiots in washington instituted bans on general incandescent bulbs that start taking effect over the course of a few years. No more 100W starting in 2012, 75W in 2013, 60W in 2014 IIRC. Special bulbs like 3 ways, floods, and candelabra bulbs are exempt, but still....

CFLs are great for some lights (the outdoor light that comes on at dusk and stays on for several hours, or a couple other lights around that get turned on and left on for most of the day like the light at the base of the basement stairs). Others, screw CFLs, give me an incandescent.

 

[Triumph]

Yeah, I'll replace them... when the die. Duh.

That is not implied at all from your original post. Unless all 33 of your incandescents burned out just today, there's no reason to believe that you'd wait for the last few to die before replacing.

 

[CallMeJoe]

...CFLs are great for some lights (the outdoor light that comes on at dusk and stays on for several hours, or a couple other lights around that get turned on and left on for most of the day like the light at the base of the basement stairs). Others, screw CFLs, give me an incandescent.

The outside photocell-controlled lights are the only place I've had CFLs die.

 

[fatpat268]

That is not implied at all from your original post. Unless all 33 of your incandescents burned out just today, there's no reason to believe that you'd wait for the last few to die before replacing.

What are you going on about? When one of his incandescents (that he didn't replace) eventually die, he has a stock to replace them. They're not being wasted. They'd be wasted if they were thrown in the garbage never to be used again.

 

[Triumph]

What are you going on about? When one of his incandescents (that he didn't replace) eventually die, he has a stock to replace them. They're not being wasted. They'd be wasted if they were thrown in the garbage never to be used again.

You didn't follow the conversation correctly.

 

[Engineer]

Plus why would you worry about CFL's in closets and the like, where they get turned on what, once a day for maybe 2 minutes? I'm sure you have closets in your house that don't get turned on more than a couple of times a month. What a waste of perfectly good light bulbs.

You don't have kids, based on this post.

Ironically, even though I routinely find my kids closet lights on at various times of the day (sometimes on for 10 to 12 hours at a time), the bulbs in the closets have NEVER burned out in any of them in my home. They were also some of the first bulbs that I bought.