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Palm Springs at 117 degrees, you think I would put sheets in a dryer???, no, dont think so.
Okay, LED bulbs would definitely make sense in palm springs. It gets so hot in the summers people bake their brains out!
But an interesting thing to consider is that Palm Springs is a desert climate, and as such, even though it can get very hot in the day, the nights are much cooler. There simply isn't any trees or moisture in the soil to moderate the temperature extremes between night and day. In January the night time temperatures drop to 7.5 °C (45.5 °F) on average. In June the night time temperature averages a moderate 25.3 °C (77.6 °F). Compare this to an average temperature of 42.3 °C (108.1 °F) in the day time in July!
So in this climate LED bulbs would make the most sense in places that get used during the day, specifically rooms without windows, but preferrably also in places where they will be used often if the initial cost is ever to be recovered in energy savings (so generally not in closets). I am not sure how many such places exist in a typical house. I suppose one could still make the case for using the LED bulbs in the night because, although the average night time temperature is cool, some particular nights will be much hoter than others, occasionally uncomfortably so. And the evenings, when people typically use their lights, will tend to be warmer than the average night time temperature since the house is cooling off from the heat of the day time.
CFL lights might not be the most advisable choice here because the people in Palm Springs are already being exposed to plenty of UV light from being outside in the intense sun. Sun burn is more of a concern in Palm Springs, especially for people of european ethnicity. It is probably not a good thing to be exposing people to even more UV when they are in their house in the evenings as it begin to get dark. I do not know what the exact UV levels are, but I remember reading one investigation that found that the UV levels were highly variable, even between identical bulbs in the same packaging, and that the UV levels tended to increase after a long period of use. UV levels ranged from under 1/20 to more than twice the levels in direct sunlight. But it can also be problematic to make a direct comparison between UV levels. The UV light in sunlight is over a broad range of frequencies, whereas the UV from CFLs tends to be concentrated in specific frequencies (253.7nm, some 365.4 (UVA), and a tiny ammount of 184.5 that manages to get through the glass tube). The higher levels of vissible violet light given off by CFLs may also be a potential cause of skin sensitivity in a small subset of the population, particularly for those on certain types of medication or vegetarians who eat large ammounts of certain fruits and vegetables. In any case, dermatologists in America and Australia generally recommend that all people try to avoid excessive exposure to direct sunlight during the middle of the day. For most people, the UV would probably not be an isssue unless they were under the lights for many hours a day, or used the lamp close to their face, for example as a reading lamp or work light. CFLs with secondary casings surrounding the inside spiral are also available, and the presence of the outside casing does much to reduce the ammount of UV that leaks out. But of course, these CFLs are a little more expensive and the secondary casing also detracts slightly from light output efficiency. An additional advantage of these double enveloped CFLs is that the outside casing difuses the light more, hiding the inside spiral from direct view and reducing glare.
While environmentalists often site the fact that incandescents waste 90% of their energy as heat rather than light, a fact they always neglect to mention is that CFLs still waste 70-80% of their energy as heat. Those energy savings don't sound quite as good when it is phrased that way.
I am rather partial to the idea of switching out bulbs depending on the season: LED bulbs in the summer and incandescent bulbs in the winter. The quality of light also matters less in the summer because one typically spends so much time outside in the nice natural daylight, and the days are much longer and the sun stays up longer in the summer, so we typically do not use artificial lighting into much later in the day. But in the cold winters, when I am inside most of the day, I don't think I would be able to stand relying on LED all those long dark evenings. For anyone who has ever gotten those LED Christmas lights, I think you might know what I mean. They just don't have the same warm glow, and it's more than just a matter of correlated color temperature.
Here is a picture of that LED bulb I bought:
$20. It better last me 14 years like the packaging says. It's only a 60 Watt equivalent, so not really bright enough to light any of my rooms.
I finally decided to put it in one of the outside lighting fixtures, since all the heat will be escaping anyway and be of no benefit to me. All my other outside fixtures have motion detectors, except this one, so an LED makes sense here if it is going to be left on all the time.
I work in a hospital boiler room, located next door to our morgue. Trust me, hospital morgue lighting isn't what you see on TV or movies. We use traditional fluorescent bulbs. However, when Tommy Lee Jones and the crew for the movie "In The Electric Mist" arrived to film a scene next door, they changed all the lights in and around the morgue. The lights they used created a dingy bluish light which looks different on film than it does in person.
In many California neighborhoods, especially tracts, clotheslines are not permitted---eyesores.
I know some people feel that way, and I don't agree.
But if they are so concerned with saving energy, (and they should be), one would think "eyesore" is a lot less important than being able to use something as simple as a piece of rope to save energy.
Since California has almost perfect weather, they all should have clotheslines in their back yards, plus the energy light bulbs, and think of all the energy they could save.
But to not have something as simple as a clothesline to save energy because some feels it is an eyesore, is somewhat silly.
So a good example would be me, I am not using those twisted light bulbs because in my apartment because i feel they look like an eyesore in my kitchen ceiling fan. I rather look at my clothes hanging on the clothesline than look at those ugly bulbs.
I've been using primarily CFLs for over 20 years and I haven't had a problem except in my yellow bedroom. I blame the odd shade of wall color more than the bulbs, but after switching to a different shade bulb, it's fine. Some of my bulbs take a few seconds to get bright, but the newer ones get bright right away. It wouldn't even occur to me to buy an incandescent bulb anymore.
These are the only lights are landlord as put in the house and wants used in the house. They give me awful migraines and the lightening is horrible. It is so hard to find old school regular lightbulbs and not the stupid energy saving ones.
These are the only lights are landlord as put in the house and wants used in the house. They give me awful migraines and the lightening is horrible. It is so hard to find old school regular lightbulbs and not the stupid energy saving ones.
It is now, when you find them, you have to stock up.
When I heard about the light bulb thing, I stocked up on regular light bulbs.
I don't want to be told what type of light bulbs to use in my home that I pay for.
Luckily I have a lot of track lighting that uses halogens anyway.
This is a great thread with lots of good information. A few years ago we purchased several of those spiral bulbs just to try them out. They produce very poor quality light. At the present time the only one I have been using is in a lamp that I use to read by in bed. I am wondering now if perhaps my eyes are sore and watery in the morning because of reading by this type of bulb. I am changing it out today for one of the traditional bulbs and see if I continue to have the eye problem. I think the reports of dangerous fire conditions would be enough for people to want to get rid of them. California seems IMO to be somewhat of a "nanny" state with this issue, but when it comes to real savings (using clothes lines) they just don't get it.
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