Posted on 03/19/2008 5:20:17 PM PDT by yorkie
BS
I do know that some people seem to have problems with them. Some people don’t like the light they give off.
I like how they’ve worked out for us. We have good wiring, our power coming into the house is clean and stable, and I like the fact that they don’t take 90% of the energy they use and turn it into heat. We don’t get hit by lightning strikes here so none have blown out. They don’t flicker and I can use them outside in enclosed fixtures. I even have floodlight shaped CFLs for my floodlight fixture.
So far I’ve been using them 3+ years, and so far none have failed yet.
I didn’t buy them because the econuts said to. I bought them to keep my energy costs down, and also to keep the house cooler, and cut potential fire hazards down. My energy rates have gone up every year but my bills are about the same so I consider that they have kept my bill from going up more than it would have if I stayed with regular bulbs. I also never bought these bulbs without them being on sale or getting rebates for buying them.
There are dimmable CFLs.
“if you drop or somehow break a CFL bulb, you would need a hazardous material cleanup team to come cleanup and dispose of the bulb.”
Truth, but who will do that?
It’s not true. You do NOT need a Hazmat team for a broken CFL.
I don't know about the eye irritation though.
At least for industrial plants.
My prediction is with those damn things containing mercury, all office buildings are going to be required to establish emergency procedures that will have to deal with any flourescent bulbs that are broken during the changing process.........
The only difference is that it takes a minute or so until the compact comes to full intensity.
Maybe an unrelated story, but a real dipwad where I work called in the hazmat team when they broke an old style mercury thermometer!
Actually the life of a bulb has more to do with such issues as voltage surges especially when the power company has the service drop voltage jacked up to about the upper limits.
I prefer incandescents myself but then again I have vision issues.
I have a problem with them because I have prescription lens replacements in my eyes. Whenever I go into stores like Meijers which has all the flourescents, it feels like I am looking thru a glaring fog..........
Give them time. And places like Wally World will sell the soon to come mandatory bulb disposal containers at their so called reasonable market price of course.
OSHA has their reality, the rest of the world has the real deal.
I stand at least partially corrected. (Kalifornia requires hazmat, I bet!) From GE:
Please refer to our state disposal policies page. In most states, fluorescent and compact fluorescent light bulbs used at home can be disposed of in the same way as regular light bulbs. While all fluorescent bulbs contain a trace amount of mercury, the quantity is so minute that disposal is not regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
However, if you are disposing many fluorescent lamps you should know that because they contain mercury they are classified as hazardous waste unless:
1. You, as the end-user, generate less than 100kg of hazardous waste per month (approx. 360 4’ T12 lamps)
OR
2. The lamps pass the EPA Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) Test.
If the lamps meet these criteria and your state’s regulation on TCLP is not stricter than the EPA’s regulation, the lamps can be disposed in the same way as normal waste. However, if the lamps do not meet the criteria to be classified as normal waste, they will need to be either recycled by a lamp recycler or disposed under the hazardous waste guidelines of your state.
GE Ecolux® lamps pass federal TCLP regulations and therefore, by federal standards, are not considered hazardous waste. However, you should check with your state regulations to determine if they are stricter than the federal regulations. Other non-Ecolux lamps are not consistently TCLP-compliant.
The bathtub curve applies. As long as you don’t buy the cheap ones you should get a decent lifetime out of them. I don’t mind the light they give off. As Secret Agent said to me, the big deal here is that there is much less wasted energy. So it saves on cooling costs in the summer, in addition to saving energy costs year round.
If you ever have to jump to generator power, you’ll be able to run your CFLs much longer than incandescents.
SAM: I agree with everything you said. I don’t want to be forced to buy them. But I want the option. On the other hand, nobody sells Pentium I’s anymore do they? Sometimes things need to get thrown by the wayside.
Florescents flicker at 60 Hz (the frequency of AC current). Incandescents don't. Some people may be sensitive to the flicker frequency
Back in the 1970’s florescent bulbs caused a backlash in workplaces. The complaints were numerous, eye problems, couldn’t see well enough, tiredness all sorts of problems. Many companies opted to allow office workers to bring in their own lamps, and some companies took out l or 2 of the overhead florescents to stop try to curb complaints.
One other l970’s complaints was that the paper bags had to be removed because there were too many trees being cut down. Plastic bags was the bag of choice and it was difficult to find paper throughout the l970’s.
It appears that the problems of the l970’s has come back at us again.
Wow, sorry to hear they bug you. But it’s not just CFLs but long tube fluorescents too. Those get to me after a time because I can hear those humming and unless you have a shade over them so you don’t directly see the bulb, they’re too brutal for use anywhere except the shop or the basement.
ANd don’t get me wrong, I’m not for banning regular bulbs. I think people should be able to buy the bulbs they want. Once they perfect the low voltage diode lights and they get to a price I can afford, I’d consider using them all over the house too. Right now they’re way too expensive for me, but they’ll come down in a few years. But I don’t care what kinds of bulbs people use. We should be able to determine this on our own without big brother govt forcing us to use certain ones.
As far as the “flicker” thing goes, the old old school CFLs used the house current in a kind of stone-age hookup. Yes, 60Hz will make you sick. Later, they used twice house current: 120Hz can be irritating too, depending on what else is in the room (periodicity).
But the new ones have super-high frequencies that most human eyes simply cannot detect. There are some unlucky souls who have problems, but most of the world cannot tell. Incandescents are something like 20% efficient.
I have a bunch of CFLs all over the place: modern units from Philips, GE, etc. They produce a warm yellowish light at about 80-90% efficiency.
Sometimes incandescents are necessary (ovens, fridges, dimming chandeliers, X-mas lights, high-traffic on-off settings, etc.), but they are the exceptions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.