LIGHT BULBS GOOD!!!

Since there is no one actually reading my blog, I figured I'd go on another tangent and report my general happiness with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs, or "CFL's" for short.

But first, a word for you people who think global warming isn't a hoax. CFL's contain MERCURY. Incandescent light bulbs (the old kind) do NOT. MERCURY is HAZARDOUS. You aren't supposed to even put your CFL bulbs in the trash when they die, you have to take them to a special place where they are dealt with specially. For the environment. Do it for the children!!

Here's another neat thing. I heard today on the news that GE is closing its last two incandescent ("not CFL") light bulb factories in the US. And they are going to open a BRAND SPANKING new factory to make CFL bulbs. IN CHINA.

Go GE! Go Green! (PS: NBC and MSNBC are owned by GE)

Now, back to the CFL bulbs. While our builder was busy building our wonderful house, we went out and bought a crapload of CFL bulbs from Lowes, enough to put in every interior fixture in the house. (CFL's do not work well in cold weather, so you really can't use them outside.)

"Hey builder guy. Since you've got to put light bulbs in our house, can you just use these so I don't have to go changing them all out later?"

"Do I get to keep the normal light bulbs I was going to put in your house too?"

"Sure. Whatever."

"Okay! I'll install your fancy CFL bulbs!"

We ended up with 20 (small margin of error on that number) candelabra bulbs in fans, about 20 normal edison-base-style bulbs in other ceiling mount dome fixtures (and a wall sconce) 9 in bathrooms, another 3 in bathroom heat/vent/lights and a shower light, and 6 in the kitchen/bar area.

The bulbs were the cheap kind you can get at Lowes. They were about $2 a bulb, and claimed "$12 per year energy savings." I don't know how that number really works- it would vary greatly based on the amount you pay per kWh, the amount you pay in non-kWh fees/taxes/etc, the amount of time the bulb is on vs. off, and in our case it also depends on the price of natural gas because we get a rebate (or surcharge) based on the month-to-month fluctuations of natural gas. By the way, natural gas is in the TANK so we get a rebate every month.

I can say that for a 2600~ sq ft house with a geothermal hvac unit, we pay about $100 a month to the electric people, and I figured out that around $40 of that is just fees. Even if we used no power at all for an entire month, we'd still be hit with a bill for about $40. In the summer/winter its about the same. It will go up a little if it gets REALLY hot or REALLY cold, but it's Oklahoma so that doesn't happen much, or for very long.

But you probably don't care about any of that. You want to know about how the bulbs did, right? Well, like I said, this was the cheap brand from Lowes. If you look it up on the interwebs you'll find a ton of people griping LOUDLY about the terrible company that made them and how terrible they are and how their terrible bulbs do not last. But here is our (REAL WORLD!) experience:

Out of the 20 fan blubs, we've had a total of 4 burn out within 12 months of installation. Mysteriously, all four were on one fan, but they did not go out all at once. The fan is balanced, by the way. I don't think the child who occupies that room is to blame. Just a fluke, really. But a little weird nonetheless.

Out of 20 of the "normal" blubs, 1 has gone out, and one has had this weird problem ever since we installed it. Sometimes, when you turn it on, it flickers until it has warmed up; about 5 minutes. Most of the time it does not do this. I never bothered to change it out because it's on a 10' ceiling and kind of a pain to get to. And it's the entry, so no one really cares about the flickering.

The one in this group that burned out, by the way, was in the laundry room. That light is probably on more than any other bulb in this group of 20, so it makes sense that it died first. (it's on a door switch and some nights the door gets left open!)

Out of the 9 in bathrooms, three have burned out. All three were in the bathroom with the 8' ceiling. (the remaining six are in our bathroom, but it has a 10' ceiling, so I think they aren't getting as much humidity as the 3 that burned out.)

I read that CFL bulbs do not tolerate humidity/moist environments well, and I think that is the reason that all three of these went out. The fixture they are in has upside-down globe things so all the heat and moisture gets stuck at the top of the globe, where the base of the bulb and its electronics are located. I accidentally bought 120v incandescent blubs to put in that bathroom, they burned out the following day. (yeah, should have got the 130v. What was I thinking?!)

Out of the 3 "odd" bulbs (HVL and shower) none have burned out yet, but we hardly ever turn on the heat/vent/light units at all. (The one above my shower is still working fine, but it has a plastic lens and gasket so I don't think it is getting any moisture. Otherwise it would probably be dead by now.)

Out of the 6 bulbs over the kitchen/bar area none have burned out. But these bulbs were a little more expensive. They are the flood-light kind that go into recessed cans. They don't really fit that well into the cans, they kind of hang down and out a little, but they provide a nice bright light. These are the CFL equivalent of a 90 watt bulb (23 real watts but as bright as a 90 watt bulb.) They come on very soft, and get to full brightness in just under a minute. Another interesting thing about these 6 bulbs is that they have a noticeable delay in starting- when you turn on the switch to a normal CFL bulb you hardly ever notice the delay from when you hit the switch to when the light actually comes on. I might notice that delay one out of 20 times I flip a switch-- it's a very fast response. But these flood type CFL bulbs take noticeably longer to come on, so much so that every time you push the switch to "ON" you notice that nothing happened. It's probably only about 1 second, or maybe 1 1/2 seconds, but it's enough that you think for that second-- "did I turn that on?" Then they pop on to a very dim state and start warming up to full brightness.

So, all in all, I think we've done okay, especially if the bulbs really pay for themselves in energy savings in 2 months.

Have you tried the new CFL bulbs or are you sticking with the old school bulbs?