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Hello, Do the CFL light Bulbs save money ? I have them throughout my home and I did not notice a large reduction on my Electric bill. Has anyone else noticed a change ? The lighting is a little dim also and I thought about changing them out if I dont notice a big change in my electric bill. Thanks for any help you can give me. Bradshaw
I wouldn't know. I can't use them. I noticed I get really tired and stressed when trying to work in a room with them over a long period of time. I don't know what I'm going to do when they stop making incandecents. I'm stocking up for now. I was pretty much forced to start my own business in '94 because of all of my environmental sensitivities (perfumes/colognes, cell phones, EMF's, carpet fumes, gossip etc, etc).
CFL's are a waste of money. They take forever to get "warm," most of the time they burn out within 3 months, ect. Next house is going to be all LED's, die Edison bulb.
I switched to all CFLs three years ago, and only two bulbs out of about ten have burned out, and I bought the cheap supermarket brand. I do not regard the 1 or 2 seconds turn-on delay to be overly damaging to my quality of life. My electric bill went down about $10 a month when I switched over, so I figure I have already saved about $300 with them.
My vision is pretty severely compromised from a variety of ophthalmic conditions, and I do notice that I can read a little longer in incandescent without eyestrain, but that is easily overcome with an edison reading lamp.
The light from CFL's is not a bright as from the incandescents.................VERY hard to read.
In small print on the base of the bulb it says not to use in enclosed fixtures. That means I cannot use them in my kitchen, bathroom or porch lights. So what are you supposed to do when the incandescents are banned?
I put the ones I bought in the spare bedrooms in table lamps that I leave on when I am not home to deter burglers...........that is all they are good for. Light where I don't really need to see.
Needless to say............I have been hoarding incandescents for awhile now..........I have a big box full of them in the basement.
And, I will be throwing the CFL's in the trash unless they put drop-off containers in the stores where I buy them. I am not going to drive miles out of my way to get rid of old bulbs.
In small print on the base of the bulb it says not to use in enclosed fixtures.
Here's what life is like for people who take safety warnings seriously:
When they are ready to go to sleep at night, they crawl under their bed and unplug the extension cord attached to their reading lamp, and neatly coil the cord so there are no kinks, and put it up on a high shelf in a closet where the children and pets can't reach it, and there is a uniform temperature. According to the safety warnings printed on the extension cord, which tell you not to leave it plugged in when not in use. In fact, on the last extension cord I bought, there were 26 different safety warnings printed on several tags and stickers.
Are you old enough to remember when you would quake in terror at the thought of your father being sent to prison, if you fooled around with the label on an old mattress and it accidentally got torn off? A mental image of your dad looking like the picture of the thug in jail on corner of the Monopoly board? Kids were so traumatized that they couldn't sleep on a mattress, and they had to add the words "except by consumer" to the penalty of law warning not to remove the label.
The light from CFL's is not a bright as from the incandescents.................VERY hard to read.
In small print on the base of the bulb it says not to use in enclosed fixtures. That means I cannot use them in my kitchen, bathroom or porch lights. So what are you supposed to do when the incandescents are banned?
I put the ones I bought in the spare bedrooms in table lamps that I leave on when I am not home to deter burglers...........that is all they are good for. Light where I don't really need to see.
Needless to say............I have been hoarding incandescents for awhile now..........I have a big box full of them in the basement.
And, I will be throwing the CFL's in the trash unless they put drop-off containers in the stores where I buy them. I am not going to drive miles out of my way to get rid of old bulbs.
All CFL's are not created equal; there are different bulbs for different purposes, just like incandescents.
As to brightness, you have to buy the appropriate wattage for your intended use. In our living room lamps, I like bright light, so we bought 100-watt equivalent CFL's. Plenty of light for me to read, knit, and spin. We replace bulbs by attrition, so our living room and bedroom lamps are our only CFL's at the moment.
I love them for my outdoor lighting - four 5 watt bulbs. so 20 watts most of the night instead of 80 plus I only replace them every 2 or so years where the others only lasted a couple months - my old house only has one switch for a long dark stair and hall area so they works great there. 2/3 of my sockets have them. if the "warm up" time bugged me in the areas I use them, I think I would need counseling.
I am one of the early adopters of CFL bulbs. Back in 1982, though, they were not as "compact," more expensive and quite heavy. Used them first on outdoor luminaires because I got tired of changing bulbs in subzero weather. They took a long time to warmup when below freezing. But I was glad I did.
CLFs contain mercury. Sure, as someone stated in this thread, stores will take them back. But I'm going to guess that 95% (or more) of people will toss them in the trash. (Unless there's a deposit!!)
Fluorescents flicker. No, this is not a 'green' issue. But for some, this causes headaches and worse.
While fluorescens last longer than incandecents, over their lifetime, they dim.
They're not cheap to purchase.
Are the bulbs REALLY so much more efficient?!
Of course, the inefficinecy is related to the production of infra-red light---heat---but are they REALLY so much better?? And what about LEDs? Aren't they even more efficient??
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etc, etc).
I am not going to drive miles out of my way to get rid of old bulbs.
