Just relamped most of the house in flourescent bulb thingys..

Ren the devils trailboss

Ren the devils trailboss

Joined
Feb 27, 2001
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My total watts used with conventional light bulbs was 1845 now with the new green twisty flourescent bulbs with lower wattage it is 424 watts if every light is on and with teenagers that is almost the case. The bathroom lights are left on more than they are turned off...I am the light turn off guy..

The only difference I notice with these bulbs is that they are a bit dimmer at first till they warm up..then they are as bright as conventional bulbs..so no biggie..

So what I want to know. Those of you that have relamped your houses...have you seen a difference in the electric bill? If I could save a jackson or so a month I would be happy...

any experiences?
 
I have some, I doubt if you will see a measurable difference. Lighting doesn't use much electricity anyway, even with incandescents.
 
Worth taking a shot. They remind of of the Jimmy Stewart line in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation...something like '"These things are so dim they should be called 'darks' instead of 'lights."
Anyway, didn't see any difference in our bill and switched back to the old standbys. Of course, nearing sixty I need all the light I can get anymore!
Good luck,
Gargs
 
Ren that depends. Do you use other large elctric appliances? Things that **** your electric bill.

Electric Iron
Hair Dryer
TV
Washer/Drier
Electric Kitchen **** (Dishwasher, Stove, Oven, Microwave, High watt food processing equip.)
Central Air especially with A/C on


If you use a lot of those things a lot you won't notice much. You may not have to buy bulbs as often, Fluorescent last a bit longer usually.
 
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I put compact flourescents in every fixture in my house - inside and out, and I noticed a difference in my electric bill but then I live alone, rarely watch television, and only use a few lamps. I also don't use air conditioning and keep my thermostat set at 60 during the winter. Most of my friends are paying $250-$300 a month for utilities whereas my last bill was $146 (gas and electric combined) So...your mileage may vary.

Only thing I hate about these compacts is that I can't use a dimmer switch with some and they have to be disposed of differently, can't just chuck em' in the trash like you normally would. Other than that they're great...60 watts of light for only 13 watts of electricity. Sweet!

One thing that'll save you some bucks (trust me) is unplugging everything you can afterward, especially the television, DVD player, radio, etc.
 
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I have a house that was built in 1957 and still has some older switches, so I get some buzzing at the switch with the CF bulbs, particularly when you try to dim them down.
 
Ren, say your electricity costs 8 cents a kWh, that seems to be a good average without knowing exactly where you live. You just shaved off about 1.42 kWh's off your electric bill. Let's just assume that they are all on for 8 hours a day and there are 30 days in a month. That comes to around 30 bucks a month if I'm not mistaken.

Good job, that's a lot of money! :)

Me and my girlfriend use those bulbs, we have an energy efficient fridge and a couple laptops a TV and a hifi (both the TV and Hifi don't get used all that often) - besides the alarm clock that's it for electronics in our house. Our electric bill is off the scale it's so low - we just pay the 5 bucks minimum :D.

Also, the bulbs I'm using I really can not tell the difference between them and conventional bulbs except the shape. JMD, I'm not sure they are supposed to be fitted with a dimmer switch, I think that could be a reason for the buzzing :p
 
I've been using them for a few years. Don't really know if there is a savings since I moved into a house and made the switch at the same time.

Now-a-days you can buy some that are bright from the first instant. I find that more important in places like kitchens where you don't want a minute warm-up period to the optimum light output.

Also, imo, some sockets are not suited to cfls. Garage door openers seem to burn through cfls faster than normal bulbs. Also I want my light bright in the garage fast as well.
 
I've heard if you clean the flour out of flourescents you get more light out of them.
 
They make dimmable flourescents now.

I am an electrician. We changed a gas stations bulbs from standard to flourescent. He had about 70 65 watt bulbs (recessed lights) that were on 24 hours a day. To the 13 watt bulbs.

His bill went from 4000 a month to 3600 a month.
 
Compact flourescents arrived at a good time. Electricity prices have gone throught the roof in recent years, and these lights really do make a difference in the bill. The other thing about them is their long life.

The only places I don't use them are in places where I only need the light on for a few moments. Turning them on and off really kills the life span of these new bulbs, so they are best used where they will be on for longer periods of time.
 
I haven't noticed a big difference since I switched, but I live in a tiny apartment by myself. The ones in my ceiling have been making a horrible high pitched whining noise recently though. Not really what you want in your main light source.
 
Bufford said:
Compact flourescents arrived at a good time. Electricity prices have gone throught the roof in recent years, and these lights really do make a difference in the bill. The other thing about them is their long life.

The only places I don't use them are in places where I only need the light on for a few moments. Turning them on and off really kills the life span of these new bulbs, so they are best used where they will be on for longer periods of time.
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Which really makes them not worth the extra expense in many places in the house. :thumbdn: It boils down to a more expensive bulb that will burn out sooner, that is slow to give the max lighting.

I'm looking forward to the home lighting LEDs, they are looking better all around.
 
zenheretic said:
I'm looking forward to the home lighting LEDs, they are looking better all around.
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I just noticed some much cheaper LED bulbs at Amazon the other day for $5-10 depending on model and features. They look to still shoot very directionally though.

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If you really want to save money long term and have some money now, change out any old appliances you have and get some good power strips that you can link up all the gadgets that are plugged in. Shutting down those power strips saves a very surprising amount of power when you're not home. Keep things that are slow to boot up like cable boxes on a different power strip or plugged into the wall so that you don't always have to shut them off. Do the same for the VCR if it displays a clock or has settings.

As far as appliances, they can be killers. I never noticed how much juice my fridge in LA used until a couple days ago when I was paying the bill. I haven't been in LA for one billing cycle, and before I left I unplugged everything but the fridge. As it turns out, the thing uses 60 cents of power a day in winter, without anybody even opening the door.

Many utilities offer rebates to partially offset new energy/water efficient appliances and fixtures. When I get back to LA I'm going to get (I forget exactly) around $130 for recycling the old fridge and buying a new energy star, and the fridges that I'm looking at are the same size but use 1/4 the power and are purdier.
 
zenheretic said:
I'm looking forward to the home lighting LEDs, they are looking better all around.
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I plan to make the change from the fluorescent light bulbs over to LED ones as I don't feel the intensity of the light from the fluorescent bulbs is as bright as I want despite buying the highest wattage bulbs available.
 
zenheretic said:
Which really makes them not worth the extra expense in many places in the house. :thumbdn: It boils down to a more expensive bulb that will burn out sooner, that is slow to give the max lighting.

I'm looking forward to the home lighting LEDs, they are looking better all around.
Click to expand...

You know, I've noticed that the CFL's last much much longer then regular bulbs. At mums place she was having to replace her bulbs weekly in some places with regular bulbs and I put CFL's in months ago and they are still working. At my place I've not have to replace them once in the past year or so I've been living here. All of the regular incandescent bulbs died months and months ago.

Still, LED lights will be great when they come. Only thing with them seems to be the fact that the solid diodes only emit one wavelength of light instead of a whole range like in our incandescents and CFL's, making the light feel incredibly unnatural. Still, I remember when CFL's only produced that 'office cubicle' white colour, and now I have a hard time telling the light apart from regular incandescents.
 
I tried a few of them and gave up. Thr GE bulbs , as you can see from their website have a distinct green spike in the spectrum. This gave a green tinge to everything and when using the light for reading irritated my eyes. Doing some research I found I wasn't the only one that had eye problems with them.Spectrum is important !
The second possible problem is RF interference. One bulb gave a strong buzz throughout the AM broadcast band and others gave similar problems with the amateur radio bands !
I experimented also with LED lights and they are fairly expensive.Now you can get cool white, white and warm white bulbs. The warm white are much better for your eyes.
The future of home lighting will be Organic LEDs.Thes are already used in a few TV screens and some hand held things like the ipod.These lights come as a thin flat panel which could be mounted on ceiling or walls .LED technology is changing very rapidly !!!
 
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