I didn’t know there was a new law that would phase out incandescent light bulbs, and I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.
I need bright light to read - I read a lot - and I still haven’t found an energy-saving bulb that does the job. And now that I know they also release mercury when they break, I’m even less thrilled. (Ever try to clean up after a broken light bulb without using a vacuum cleaner? Not easy.)
But here’s hoping. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my bright lights while they’re here.
I use a damp paper towel for picking up broken glass including light bulbs.
aw c’mon susy - i use them, and they’re bright enough! if it’s not enough, use a halogen bulb, or get one of the full spectrum lights. be more careful when you handle bulbs. and i never in my life have used a vacuum for picking up glass - the wet paper towel method my mother showed me when i was a kid works great. i guess that only works on hard floors, but i’ve never broken one on the rug. that’s pretty hard to do.
i think this is a great thing.
Energy efficient light bulbs are simply flourescent bulbs repackaged to fit in the same sockets as incandescent bulbs. They are available in power ratings that will supply equivalent lumens to what an incandescent bulb provides.
Try http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls for more information.
Also, these new bulbs are going to send all our jobs to China:
http://news.clevescene.com/2008-01-09/news/screwed-by-the-bulb/
There are a couple of other problems I’ve come across with the CFL’s. First is that they don’t turn on right away like a regular old bulb. But instead take a minute or so to build up to normal light. The second problem is you can’t use them in a fixture with a dimmer switch.
I thought you knew that the only time you should be reading is during daylight hours; the only book you should be reading is your King James bible; you should be in bed when the sun goes down, not poking around in the shadows up to no good, reading BOOKS. Who do you think you are anyway, to criticize the decisions of your corporate overlords? Handmaid’s Tale, here we come.
..
OK. that was snark, but not really. I was just channeling Mike Huckabee for a moment. Besides, how will you have the strength to read when you can’t afford food because it’s all going to happy motoring? Perhaps we could all just read by the light of our car headlights? The Oil Age version of civilization is beginning to fall into chaos, get used to it.
One thing I’ve also heard about CFL’s is that a common argument is that they don’t give off as much heat as an incandescent. However, they do give off heat mainly from the base itself, as opposed to the bulb itself.
However, I use them and have them in almost every socket in my apartment.
If you’ve got money, you might as well hold off and wait for the next generation LED lights, which will use about half the energy of the best compact fluorescents. They’ll initially be expensive, but they’ll last forever.
And what’s with this category ‘Imaginary Global Warming’?
Because that’s how the right wing always referred to it. It’s meant to be ironic.
While it could just be spin, I’ve heard that the amount of mercury entering the environment throught the disposal of the bulbs is much less than the resulting reduction in mercury entering the enviroment from limiting the amount of electricity needed from mercury emitting power plants. In other word, use of these bulbs reduces mercury pollution.
Any truth to this?
I switched to CFLs a long time ago and have them in every lamp and fixture they fit into. My biggest complaint is that they are too bright. Maybe it’s just me, but I got the lowest-wattage ones I could find for most of the upstairs lights and they are still a little brighter than I necessarily like. I am, like you, extremely fussy about how much light there is, and the color/other qualities of the light around me. But I get migraines if the light is too bright or too vivid.
They do, as mentioned above, take a fraction of a second to light up, and get brighter after they’ve been on for a while, which can be disconcerting. But I like the color and quality of the light just fine, and they don’t flicker or hum like regular fluorescent bulbs. And they really don’t burn out very often in fact I’ve only had one burn out in quite a long time (after a weird power surge-flicker thing) and I used to go through quite a lot of incandescent bulbs for some reason. Plus I like to have lights on everywhere or I feel claustrophobic, and these really do burn a lot less fuel so I don’t feel quite as guilty about it when I notice that there are lights on in rooms I’m not even in.
You might find you don’t like them, but it might be worth it to try a few different wattages and experiment a little with lampshade colors & (especially) lamp placement.