Re: OT: free CFL bulbs (fwd)

Jim MacKenzie wrote:
> Conversely, the two non-task lights in my living room (general room
> lighting only) have had CFL bulbs for over two years and work well.
> These lights tend to get turned on when we get home from work, and tend
> to get left on until we go to bed. This is a perfect application for a
> CFL.

Here's my experience. When I first moved out on my own, I went ahead
and replaced all incandescent bulbs with florescent ones. At the time,
single bulbs were $20 or so; within a year, some were as cheap as $8
each. I have no idea what the incandescent ones cost because I've never
purchased any (ever). I use florescent everywhere: my room lights,
front room lights, laundry area, TV room, entrance way, bathroom, etc.

In 7 years, I have had 5 bulbs burn out, and 3 be destroyed in some sort
of accident (EG: people hitting the bulb with something while
entering/leaving the house, movement during one of my many moves, etc).
It's hard to judge the power usage, since I have 3 computers on 24/7
(~600-1000w, depending on what the loads are).

When my bulbs do burn out, it's because the ballast is shot. This
happened a lot more quickly on the ones in the bathroom (which is on for
a few minutes to an hour at most), vs. areas like the rooms (where
they're usually on for a few hours at a time). A lot more quickly means
that the life of the bulb was only 2-3 years from me installing it. If
you ran a 100w incandescent for 3 hours a day you'd get roughly a year's
worth of service out of it. The 2-3x increase is not as striking as the
6-11x you normally see (in terms of service life), but it's still worth
it (to me) since those bulbs are (as Scott pointed out) down to $1-2
each. I think that makes it "on-par" with an incandescent in terms of
replacement cost, while still being lower on energy cost.

Even with the initial higher costs for the bulbs back when I first
started to use them, the average amount is roughly $22 a year in bulbs.
  That number will likely be down to $10 a year when I do have to
replace the majority of my bulbs (the cost metric is also skewed because
of the early $20 bulbs vs. my modern $6 for 3 60w versions or 1 100w
equivalent at Wal-mart).

The way colour temperatures vary by mfr is best illustrated by this picture:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/CFBulbs.jpg

It's best to buy a few different kinds and see which ones you like best,
and relegate the ones you don't like to laundry room duty. :)
Received on Tue Mar 27 00:24:59 2007