CFL's...

In reply to tuna55:

It's 40% efficient at heating.

The bulb itself turns all of the energy put into it into heat, but the powerplant burns 2 1/2 BTU worth of heat for every 1 BTU that makes it to your meter.

chaparral wrote: In reply to tuna55: It's 40% efficient at heating. The bulb itself turns all of the energy put into it into heat, but the powerplant burns 2 1/2 BTU worth of heat for every 1 BTU that makes it to your meter.

so it's 100% efficient at producing a combination of heat and light for what I pay for. Perfect.

Not trying to say I only use inc. I only have one or two left in the house, but my failure rate on cfl is pretty high. Seems like many cost comparisons miss this pretty substantial detail.

tuna55 wrote:

chaparral wrote: In reply to tuna55: It's 40% efficient at heating. The bulb itself turns all of the energy put into it into heat, but the powerplant burns 2 1/2 BTU worth of heat for every 1 BTU that makes it to your meter.

so it's 100% efficient at producing a combination of heat and light for what I pay for. Perfect. Not trying to say I only use inc. I only have one or two left in the house, but my failure rate on cfl is pretty high. Seems like many cost comparisons miss this pretty substantial detail.

As has been mentioned, are you buying the cheapest CFL's? Or a decent brand?

The only place I've had bulbs last less than 1 year is in the bathroom because of the constant on/off.

I've got a bulb in a lamp next to me right now that is going on 7 years old. The back porch is nearly 4 years old. Everything else in the house is 2+ years old.

z31maniac wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

chaparral wrote: In reply to tuna55: It's 40% efficient at heating. The bulb itself turns all of the energy put into it into heat, but the powerplant burns 2 1/2 BTU worth of heat for every 1 BTU that makes it to your meter.

so it's 100% efficient at producing a combination of heat and light for what I pay for. Perfect. Not trying to say I only use inc. I only have one or two left in the house, but my failure rate on cfl is pretty high. Seems like many cost comparisons miss this pretty substantial detail.

As has been mentioned, are you buying the cheapest CFL's? Or a decent brand? The only place I've had bulbs last less than 1 year is in the bathroom because of the constant on/off. I've got a bulb in a lamp next to me right now that is going on 7 years old. The back porch is nearly 4 years old. Everything else in the house is 2+ years old.

Two brands, GE & Sylvania

I thought this thread was going to be about the Argos winning the Grey Cup.

jg

1988RedT2 wrote:

dculberson wrote: http://www.epa.gov/hg/about.htm From the horse's mouth.

Can't believe you'd cite a govt website as an authoritative source. LOL. I think you've got a credibility issue. And exactly how is my garage relevant to mercury in CFL's?

So a Canada.com article quoting some lady that got her info from the EPA is more credible than an actual EPA website? I don't think it's me that has the credibility issue. But it's obvious you have a position rather than knowledge, so I won't bother trying to discuss things with you.

@tuna55: it's only 100% efficient at converting electric into heat. I use gas heat which is far cheaper than electric heat. And my furnace is only running about 6 months out of the year, the other 6 months the electric heaters (incandescent bulbs) would be heating while the a/c is cooling, so it would be a nasty double whammy.

JG Pasterjak wrote: I thought this thread was going to be about the Argos winning the Grey Cup. jg

+1

I am dissapointed.

it's interesting so many people have a high failure rate on CFLs. I have replaced most of the ones in the house with them (Oven and fridge are incandescent, and some are now LED) and never had a failure in the past 5 years.

Friend of mine works on a tugboat for the army Corps of engineers.. they had a BIG problem with incandescents barely lasting a trip out and back.. CFLs brought that down to almost zero failures.. but then again, those lights are on 24/7 instead of being turned off and on

In reply to mad_machine:

I just replaced 6 of them. Most of them looked like the ballast had burned up. So far I've had about a 40% failure rate with them and none of them are over 5 years old. Fully enclosed fixtures seem to eat them fairly regularly. Probably not shedding heat fast enough.

very odd.. but then, none of my fixtures are enclosed. That may have something to do with it

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to mad_machine: I just replaced 6 of them. Most of them looked like the ballast had burned up. So far I've had about a 40% failure rate with them and none of them are over 5 years old. Fully enclosed fixtures seem to eat them fairly regularly. Probably not shedding heat fast enough.

This is the problem with mine. While hardly "fully enclosed" the can lights in my kitchen eat CFL's nearly as fast as incandescents. This in spite of the fact that there are holes in the top of the can and the bottom is fully open with no lens or cover of any kind.

I noted the price on a 5-pack of CFL's at Lowe's recently. GE brand. 20 bucks for the pack. For those who were schooled in the era of "new math" that's 4 bucks apiece.

I think the problem with your lights is cycling. Kitchens see lot of traffic so people are turning lights on and off all the time.

mad_machine wrote: I think the problem with your lights is cycling. Kitchens see lot of traffic so people are turning lights on and off all the time.

No, they're the lights we pretty much leave on all the time, hence the decision to go with CFL's in the first place.

tuna55 wrote: so it's 100% efficient at producing a combination of heat and light for what I pay for. Perfect.

This. So not only do I get good, natural style light, I can be rest assured that the heat they are producing makes their efficiency rating quite good in f(*kin cold Alberta

CFLs have their place, but not in my house.

Also, what surprises me is everyone's extraordinarily high failure rate of incandescent bulbs. I can't remember the last time I had to replace one.

In reply to tuna55:

No, it's not. It's 40% efficient at producing heat and light.

Once it gets to your meter, 99+% of the electricity goes to het and light, but some combustion powerplant somewhere ran at an efficiency of 45ish% and the electrical grid ran at 90ish% to get the power to your meter.

If you were to produce heat by combustion at your house, you could get into the 80s without difficulty and into the 90s with careful boiler/furnace selection.

This may have been mentioned, but Amazon has good prices on LED bulbs in all the common sizes - I've replaced several of our outside CFLs with $10- LEDs with no problems so far.

chaparral wrote: In reply to tuna55: No, it's not. It's 40% efficient at producing heat and light. Once it gets to your meter, 99+% of the electricity goes to het and light, but some combustion powerplant somewhere ran at an efficiency of 45ish% and the electrical grid ran at 90ish% to get the power to your meter. If you were to produce heat by combustion at your house, you could get into the 80s without difficulty and into the 90s with careful boiler/furnace selection.

Trust me I understand what you are saying - in the winter - I am happy with this arrangement.

Just to throw in my 2 cents, the best home lights I've found are ALZO Digital CFLs. I'm a big lighting geek, and I've tried a few dozen different bulbs for my apartments. None have really come close. I ruined/converted a few college housemates, too.

Ignore color temperature. That tells you very little as your brain compensates pretty quickly, the way the spectrum is simulated is more important. Color temp will matter if you have other lighting to match. Offices should be ~500K hotter than general lighting, bedrooms should be ~500K less than general. That said, I'm lazy and run the same color temp bulb and just use IKEA lampshades in the bedroom.

A diffraction grating is a cheap tool to compare lights, and the ALZOs give at least 9 distinct points along the visible spectrum, whereas your run-of the mill CFLs have a big spike in green, blue, red, and maybe yellow. This really makes a difference in being able to read or work on delicate things. Printed photos will absolutely pop like you've got real sunlight. I can read printed type almost twice as far away with the ALZOs as I can with a similar-brightness incandescent bulb. Back when I did more electrical stuff, I couldn't solder SMDs without them.

If you put the ALZOs in one room, walking out of that room into other lights will be depressing. Incandescent lights become dim yellow eyesores, and cheap CFLs become green broom-closet lighting. The only thing that compares are halogens, but they're too hot for general lighting.

The only downside is cost and about a 10% early failure rate. I've had a few bulbs fail within their first hour of use, but I've not had one burn out after that period, and I've been using them for two years.

I'm sure other bulbs have come on the market since I did the big comparison two years ago, but I haven't needed new bulbs since then.

Here's an Amazon search: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=alzo

Here's their webpage: http://www.alzodigital.com/full_spectrum_lighting.htm

Javelin wrote:

carguy123 wrote: When you hear the difference in generator note between turning on a traditional bulb and a CFL it brings home the energy savings.

Power costs how many cents per kilowatt hour? CFL's are how many dollars more expensive per bulb than incandescents? The math will never work, trust me. I'm all about lowering our consumption though (even though our power is all hydro or wind up here), so I'd love to switch to all LED's. That currently takes some cubic dollars.

Very few areas have that kind of wind utilization. I bet you use 20 times as much coal as wind for power. Nuke too. Could be other stuff like natural gas.

Jcamper

HiTempguy wrote: Also, what surprises me is everyone's extraordinarily high failure rate of incandescent bulbs. I can't remember the last time I had to replace one.

I'd have to agree with you there, I rarely replaced the old incandescent bulbs in our house. Since switching to CFLs a few years back, I'm replacing them constantly. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with our usage patterns (frequent on/off, kids running, jumping, etc.), but I think the incandescents held up better under the same circumstances.

I'm still waiting for the cost of LEDs to drop to something reasonable, as the cost of replacing everything with them is definitely cost-prohibitive.

I tend to replace with LEDs as time and money permits... one of those.. "I have a few extra bucks this week.. let's get one" kind of thing

CFLs are sooo 2000

FIPELs!! With this, even LEDs could be outdated.

For you math guys, prices at the store for the same line of GE bulbs just this morning, all around 1100 lumens:

Pack of 12 Incandescent: $4.00 ($0.33/bulb)
Pack of 4 Halogen: $6.87 ($1.72/bulb)
Pack of 2 CFL's: $7.87 ($3.94/bulb)

No sales, no gimmicks, no cross-branding, no value lines. These were all the same GE bulbs in the same brand and packaging on the same shelf space.

So how does that math work again?

I know there's super-cheap CFL's out there (I have a bin full of burnt-out ones) and free ones the gubbermint gave away (same bin), but for the same brand/reliability/warranty ratings?

Unfortunately the LED's were double-digits each

Javelin wrote: For you math guys, prices at the store for the same line of GE bulbs just this morning, all around 1100 lumens: Pack of 12 Incandescent: $4.00 ($0.33/bulb) Pack of 4 Halogen: $6.87 ($1.72/bulb) Pack of 2 CFL's: $7.87 ($3.94/bulb) No sales, no gimmicks, no cross-branding, no value lines. These were all the same GE bulbs in the same brand and packaging on the same shelf space. So how does that math work again? I know there's super-cheap CFL's out there (I have a bin full of burnt-out ones) and free ones the gubbermint gave away (same bin), but for the same brand/reliability/warranty ratings? Unfortunately the LED's were double-digits *each*

I'm 100% agreeing with you. And yes, 4 bucks each is the going price for CFL's around here. Might be that the radical regimes in say California are subsidizing them to encourage acceptance. And you know how these enviro-nuts like to surround themselves in a layer of self-righteous smugness.

Around here 40 watt equivalent LEDs are $9.95. I won't go below 60 watt equivalent so I'm waiting and watching.