Flourescent bulbs don't last as long as advertised (recycling, mercury, LED)

[Big-Bucks]

These flourescent bulbs don't seem to last as long as advertised. They save energy but incandescent lasted longer.

[SETI_listener]

Yup, electronic ballasts mounted directly over a coiled lamp equals concentrated heat and low life. Dimmable CFL that use cold cathode technology seem to be the best, but are more expensive. Those kind use a solid electrode instead of a fragile filament. You can distinguish true CCF from dimmable CFL by the pencil thin tubes. CCF is what is behind every LCD screen that hasn't moved over to LED.

[Pfalz]

CFL's should have never made it to market. LED's are much better on longevity especially if turned on and off frequently, energy use, heat output, durability and safety (no mercury). Once economies of scale are reached in LED bulb production, they will be just as cheap as CFL's.

[Catdancer]

No, the new CFLs certainly do not perform as advertised. I supervise 5 apartment complexes and we're changing the damn things all the time. The thing that I wonder is if we're going to have mercury problems from these bulbs in a few years. I realize the amount in these bulbs is minimal but what happens to the millions of those discarded bulbs in the trash?

The packaging says that they should be disposed of "properly" but who does? My father in law (an avid recycler) saved up 10 burned out CFLs and returned them to Home Depot....trying to do the right thing. He asked the girl at the customer service desk what they did with the returned bulbs, and she didn't have a clue. She called a manager who took the bulbs but it was evident that this was very unusual. Seems like nobody returns the bulbs..........not anywhere. They end up in the trash. Should this be worrisome?

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by Catdancer

No, the new CFLs certainly do not perform as advertised. I supervise 5 apartment complexes and we're changing the damn things all the time. The thing that I wonder is if we're going to have mercury problems from these bulbs in a few years. I realize the amount in these bulbs is minimal but what happens to the millions of those discarded bulbs in the trash?

Fluorescent bulbs have always contained mercury, but consumers didn't really notice until they started reading the labels of CFLs. When I was a kid I used to retrieve the blob of mercury found in burnt out fluorescent tubes put out in the trash, and at one point I had a small medicine bottle half full with about 8 fluid ounces of the stuff. Today's CFLs have tiny, tiny amounts by comparison.

My point is to pay attention to the warnings, and use approved recycling when it is available, but don't panic.

As far as the life of CFLs is concerned, the cheapies don't last as long as the more expensive brand name ones, no, and certain types of fixture are not very compatible. But if you follow to the instructions (WTH? Read the instructions?) you should be able to get good value out of them in most cases.

As to the idea that we should have skipped over them and gone straight to LEDs, that's a good example of hindsight being 20:20, when in fact at the time energy reduction policies were being formulated, that was not obvious at all. Good full spectrum LEDs were still in the future, theoretically possible but not yet realized, and they were still very expensive by comparison to conventional incandescents. Even today the quality LED "bulbs" are still several times as expensive as CFLs, and require more thought to justify relamping on a large scale.

[woxyroxme]

I have had fairly good luck with Sylvania and Satco CFL bulbs, the cheap no name brands will burn out in no time.

When you see TV commercials showing people installing the bulbs, they are doing it wrong, it is important that you hold it by the base and not the glass.

[jasper1372]

I agree. When they first came out we tried a few of them and were virtually in all cases disappointed by their performance. First of all, just as you said, some of them needed to be replaced in less than 6 months and were used in places where we knew they hadn't even come close to their claimed life hours.

Secondly, we found the quality of the light to be poor. Colors of things in our home all looked different, and if the bulb wasn't covered with shade etc..., they were blinding if you looked at them in an open fixture.

Initially the cost for them was rather high. Couple that with the above objections and we were spending way more per hour of life than we would have with incandescents.....so we stuck with traditional bulbs and basically skipped the entire "CFL craze" for the most part.

Now LED's on the other hand.....we've been quite impressed with those. We've changed quite a number of fixtures to use those and so far have been very pleased. We changed over the high use fixtures first since that's where you'll save the most the fastest and have been changing everything else over slowly as the prices come down on them.

[Dakster]

Do LED light bulbs take as long to reach full light as the CFL's do?

Wasn't a problem when I was living in Miami, but now that I am in Alaska.... The outside ones take awhile to get bright.

[sholomar]

LEDs did not have the lumens per watt to be effective market replacements until recently. Now that they do, the CFLs should eventually vanish as they are inferior in most applications where the light will be turned on and off frequently. They are best used in situations where they will be left on continuously such as a work or office setting.

[shadowfax]

Strange I have not had this experience using CFL bulbs. I can't honestly recall the last time I had to replace a burned out light bulb. I think it's been at least 5 years.

But I am looking forward to seeing LED bulbs become more common.