Letters to the Editor
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searching out CFL options
The CFL options at most local hardware stores and grocery stores, where most people have traditionally bought light bulbs in the past, is amazingly small set of the variety of options out there for CFL bulbs. By doing some searching on the internet, one can find a bunch of vendors that offer a wide variety of CFLs (and other bulbs). You can choose from the following options:
- wattage
- base size
- form factor
- color (soft or bright light)
- dimmability
I've been able to find bulbs with softer light for general illumination, and whiter light for task lighting, in various styles for open fixtures like ceiling fans as well as decorative styles for bathroom fixtures. It's a little more work, and you have to wait for delivery, but you can get the bulbs appropriate for a lot of applications.
They are still some reasons to use incandescents, and people should be able to choose what they want rather than have it forced upon them. But the options are out there, you just have to go find them.
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Popular Mechanics
did a comparison on a bunch of CFLs last year, and they all performed favorably compared to incandescents, even in terms of light quality.
And yes, you can now buy reflector CFLs for dimmable recessed lighting. And I just googled "CFL ceiling fan" and there are quite a few out there.
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Dimmers
There are much safer ways to make your incandescent bulbs last longer and increase your savings while decreasing your waste. Get rid of your lightswitches and replace them with dimmers...
It's that simple. Running your lights at 90% will double the life of the bulb and the difference is nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. Run your lights lower and the savings continue to increase almost exponentially. The dimmers will generally pay for themselves within the year. Plus you don't have to worry about the toxins from the bulbs if you happen to drop them.
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but what about light quality
The incandescent vs. c.f. debate has been raging in my house for a couple of years now. Our main beef: the color of fluorescent light makes my husband feel sick (perhaps because it reminds him of hospitals which also make him sick).
I have tried buying "full spectrum" CFLs and they are no better.
Has anybody else experienced this?
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CFL's are great
If you're like me, lazy and you hate to change bulbs. They last thousands of hours. The downside is that I don't have fixtures that cover all bulbs, and if you have to look at them they're pretty ugly. On the upside you can use them at much higher output in enclosed fixtures normally limited to 60W because of the heat those standard bulbs generate.
BTW does anyone remember those tabletop student lamps with the 200W bulbs and a steel plate atop the shade? The kind you could heat up a quick meal on?
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Not exactly, phunkjnky
"Get rid of your lightswitches and replace them with dimmers..."
Please DON'T.
With incandescents, the efficiency (how much light you get out for each watt that goes in) is directly related to filament temperature. The hotter the filament, the more efficiency (more light per watt). The tradeoff is bulb life. The extreme is a flashbulb; very efficient but very shortlived. The reverse is a long-life bulb; they run the filament cooler, which sacrifices efficiency for life.
"Running your lights at 90% will double the life of the bulb and the difference is nearly imperceptible to the naked eye."
That depends on whether 70% is imperceptible to you.
Running an incandescent at 90% voltage will give you 70% of the light of 100% voltage because the efficiency drops faster than the energy consumption. If you can live with 70% of the light, use a lower-wattage bulb.
"Run your lights lower and the savings continue to increase almost exponentially."
No, they don't. The bulb life increases, but the bulb efficiency drops even faster. For example, at half voltage, the bulb gives only 10% of the light as at full voltage, but uses 40% of the energy, compared to 100%. So you're using four times as much energy per unit of light.
What *does* work is to use the right size bulbs for the application. And an off switch.
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German scientists exposed rats to constant fluorescent light for 4 weeks.
After 4 weeks, the rats were blind.
I use incandescents, and I'm looking forward to GE's new higher-efficiency incandescent bulbs.
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"Fluorescent" isn't the same as CFL
Lots of responders here comment on "flickering"; how fluorescent flickering causes them problems, etc. Maybe, but CFLs can't cause such problems; if you think it happens with CFLs it's probably a form of placebo effect. Sorry.
Just because CFL has the word "fluorescent" in it doesn't mean they flicker. If you can see the flicker in CFL light, apparently you're not human, since they flicker at tens of thousands of times a second, while an old-style long-tube/industrial fluorescent flickers at 60Hz (and that's also why they sometimes buzz - that's a 60Hz/120Hz buzz).
60Hz can be vaguely noticeable, but realize that televisions flicker at the same rate (kinda, there's also the issue of phosphor decay time) and movie screens typically flicker at 48Hz. Oh, and the monitor you're reading this on? If it's an LCD, it's flickering at somewhere in the 60-120Hz range, and if it's a tube, probably 60-85Hz.
As for heat: light bulbs are a poor choice, even in areas with no air conditioning needed. You're better off with a CFL and any other sort of heater; the worst-case default would be an electric space heater (which would be equivalent to using light bulbs). You may end up way ahead; even a standard air-source heat-pump is typically 200-350% efficient depending on outside temps, compared to 100% for electric space heating, and about 90% for incandescent light bulbs (the other 10% is light).
As for herps in cages: it's minorly more of a pain to have to have a separate heater from the lights (though it does let you keep them warm an have darkness). However, it's not more expensive to heat that way, and if you do it right it's probably less expensive. (A lot of heat from those bulbs went up and away from the cages.) (Note: I grew up in a house with 20-80 herps of various types at any time.)