Incandescent Light Bulb On The Way Out

I knew the change was coming over a year ago.

I actually converted most of my house to CFLs. Did notice a reduction in electricity usage. Yeah! Exception being lights that are in a cold location (i.e. garage), lights on a dimmer switch and lights in locations where real instance-on is necessary.

I never liked the color of softwhite CFLs, so the conversion used mostly day-light-balanced CFLs, The brighter white light makes up for slightly higher expense.

Also, found the cheaper CFLs (i.e. ones rated for 5000 hours vs. 8000 or 10,000 hours) seem to fail early (before 5000 hours) where te 8000 hours bulbs have yet to fail.

I know LED bulbs are even more efficient. I tried a few LED flashlights and find them annoying. The white color is beyond daylight balance and the light is too blinding for my taste.

zenium,
I’ve been replacing the old bulbs with CFL’s as well. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Regards, Ron

When we built our place in 2003, I put CFL’s in all of the fixtures except those on a dimmer. Although initially pricey for the bulbs (at that time, cheaper now) the electric savings compared to my old place has been noticeable.

I think most people will find purchasing soft white CFL’s vs. white or daylight labeled bulbs will eliminate the harshness. Soft white is very close to the yellow light of incandescent, in my opinion. In the past 6 years, of the 30 CFL’s we have in use, only two bulbs have burned out.

To give an idea of the possible savings, if I turn on all 9 fixtures in the kitchen (all fitted with 13 watt CFL’s equivalent to 60 watt incandescent) I am using 117 watts vs 540 watts if they were all incandescent bulbs, and the amount of light produced is blinding.

The dim-able CFL’s are still way overpriced but I suppose that will change as more people will be forced to buy them.

Thanks very much for the 411 Ron. I’ll just keep my old light bulbs indefinitely, since I have no intention of being ripped off paying some grossly inflated price, for some bogus unproven crapola. Edison and I still have many happy years to come. Caveat emptor!

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I HATE the CFL bulbs… it’s apparent that our friends in Congress haven’t put on too much makeup underneath fluorescent bulbs… and once their women start coming in looking less then flower fresh, they will regret it

What I want to know is if LED bulbs will be compatible with modern day ligh fixtures, because I refuse to go to CFL… on top of the make-up conundrum, it also gives me major headaches.
&%$@!!

We have been using CFL blubs for replacement since 2002 when a 75W equivalent cost $7.50. Thought we were halping to save the environment but evidently didn’t think enough. First, the 8,000 hour bulbs only seem to last for about 3,000 hours. Minor problem but … the disposal of CFL bulbs releases Mercury. One of the most difficult toxins to control. What are we going to do about that issue. I think that LED bulbs will be a good solution when the emited spectrium does not appear so harsh. My parents built a home in 1946 that employed floresent ceiling fixtures. Worked well then but the reading lamps etc were incondescent. Anyway this is just my opinion. BTW we removed the florecents in the walk-in closets (in 1957) because we couldn’t match colors using them. I am aware that you can now purchase color corrected floresent tubes for a price ($$$) but have never seen a screw base color corrected CFL.

Thanks for the comments everyone and for sharing your experiences with us.

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