We have the new bulbs throughout the house. I hate them, but they do put out a LOT less heat which is important when you live a place that's 102+ pretty much for 3 months. But they burn out ALL the time.

I winter we use the old bulbs. Which do NOT burn out all the damn time.

I tend to use the new bulbs everywhere except the bathrooms (where it gets the hottest, but the light matters most) and in the light fixtures that require specialty bulbs. In my house, it's the incandescent bulbs that burn out fast- but it's probably my wiring. (It's old- half of the house still has the two-prong plugs.)

I've never understood retail dressing rooms with bad lighting.

I've never understood retail dressing rooms with bad lighting.

Hear, hear.

ahw, you might want to have an electrician come take a look at your breaker/fuse panel. Light bulbs burning out quickly, especially if it keeps happening in certain parts of the house, can be a symptom of what's called a "floating neutral". If you notice that some lights get brighter when, say, the oven is on, that's another symptom. Floating neutral is hazardous, especially in a house with older wiring.

LOL, if you want to see a "green" persons head spin, actually suggest they use a clothes line to save the earth.

I use CFLs in lots of places in the house. The newer ones are better because the old CFLs would take a few minutes to get going which bugged me. However, I don't use them in the bathroom because the light of incadescent really is better and I want good light to put my makeup on. I also can't find any CFLs that work with dimmer switches and I have two light fixtures with dimmers. I really like the dimmers because I can start to ease the lights down as it gets closer to bed time.

I guess I am a "green" person and I often use a clothes rack (can't figure out a good place for a line in my yard so I have a rack that folds and comes inside when I'm not using it) to dry my clothes when weather permits. I just like having flexibility to do stuff that works for my particular situation.

I know, cousin Dave. Nothing gets brighter (oven is gas), but it's certain fixtures that have the problem- no matter the wattage of the bulb. We had hired someone to overhaul the whole electical system, which required a city permit, but had to fire him and now we've got to get the permit he pulled closed out before we can hire someone else (City of Austin procedural bullshit.)

Plus, the house is full of weird wiring because it was supposed to be "cutting edge" in the 50's- so there are a lot of weird systems (like a switch that shuts power on and off for all the outlets in the living area) that never really took off.

In the meantime, the smoke detectors work.

My neighbor and I both have clotheslines. I don't dry everything on it, but the heavy stuff, yeah.

The new bulbs are especially annoying because only certain ones can be used with dimmer switches which I have in every room. If you buy the non-dimmer ones, they burn out fast. They are supposed be energy efficient, but they cost me a lot more money!

I wish I had somewhere for a clothes line. Linens hung out to dry always have the freshest smell!!! My grandma always had one and those were the best sheets ever!

"As Virginia Postrel notes in her latest Bloomberg column, however, banning incandescent bulbs is a poor way to reduce America's carbon footprint."

well, assuming that was the reason it was done in the first place... and not:
"the American people don't know what's good for them, and the only way we can make them do the right thing is to make a law about it..."

Believe me, this is about control, and about "Big Ideas" regardless of if they work...

The same thing is happening in Canada. In my province (BC), retailers are not allowed to restock 75-100w bulbs. I use only one such bulb, but knowing a ban on lower wattage bulbs is likely to follow, I'm stocked with a wide variety of incandescents for the next two decades.

I agree, the light from CFLs is hideous. HIDEOUS! I use one for my porch light because it's on all night, I save money, and who cares about looking like a zombie for the few seconds it takes to enter and leave my front door.

I'm no different than a lot of your readers, perfectly capable of making decisions--whether economic or moral--about which energy savings are a good fit. Most people don't like waste. Excess is ugly. It's aesthetics that makes me cycle seven miles to work and back every weekday: I'm 49 with a body stronger and leaner than when I was a teenager. It's aesthetics that makes me compost my kitchen waste: my garden is second to none in my neighborhood. It's aesthetics that made me switch to cloth grocery bags twenty years ago: I didn't want piles of plastic bags choking up my tidy, little townhouse. Okay, maybe I'm vain and house-proud. Are these reasons for embracing select eco-friendly habits less preferable to obsequiously bowing before the gods of group-think, fad, dogma and panic? Government mandated change is turning us into snoops and stooges; weak-minded and weak-willed.

Waste is ugly. Uglier by far is fascism.

Thank you, Amy, for providing a forum for this and much else.

The big problem with the "we'll get significant cost savings by switching to CFLs" argument is that the analysis flawed in so many ways, whether intentionally or by careless analysts, I don't know.

The incandescent bulb lifespan against which the CFLs were measured was assumed to be 750-1,000 hours. However, a 2,000-hour bulb was introduced in 2010 and GE had promised to double that figure by 2012.

In California, PG&E assumed CFLs would have a life expectancy of 9.4 years. Based on experience, the utility recently adjusted its estimate to 6.3 years, dropping the estimated lifespan by 33% (meaning it overestimated the actual lifespan of a CFL by 50%). As a result of this and lower-than-expected purchase rates, system-wide energy savings were 73% less than promised.

The assumed price of the CFL was the subsidized price - it did not include the taxpayer and utility ratepayer financed subsidies for the purchase of CFLs.

The fact that CFLs do not fit many existing light fixtures (such as small lamps, candelabras and chandeliers) was not taken into account. The cost of replacing these fixtures is also part of the cost of switching to CFLs.

CFLs take a short period of time (often a few minutes) to reach maximum operating efficiency. That means they are not as efficient as claimed for areas in which they are used frequently for on-off or short operations - like bathrooms, closets, and hallways. Quick on-off operations significantly shorten a CFL's assumed lifespan, necessitating more frequent replacement than assumed.

CFL life is shortened by heat. As a result, the bulbs do not last as long as promised in recessed lighting, creating higher replacement rates.

CFLs become noticably dimmer as they age. The US DOE discovered that after 40% of the assumed lifespan of a CFL, 25% of them no longer produced their claimed luminosity. As a result, the replacement rate will be greater than assumed.

CFLs did not provide the same amount of light as incandescents (despite their claims to the contrary). So, a customer replacing a 60-watt incandescent with an 11-watt CFL will not get the same amount of light...and will add another lamp to the room to make up the defecit, increasing the energy usage and driving up the overall costs for switching to CFLs.

There are security costs that were not factored in. CFLs do no perform as assumed in cold temperatures, making then unsuitable for many (if not all) outdoor applications, such as motion-activated security lights or porch lights.

In addition, most CFLs do not work well with dimmers and timers - used by many people to provide the illusion of someone being home and discourage break-ins. So, people will have to buy specialized CFLs (at a higher price) or replace them more often; or accept a higher risk of break-in.

CFLs have higher UV emissions than incandescent bulbs. UV rays can damage paintings, photographs, furniture, fabrics, and floor finishes. Protecting against this damage (or replacing damaged items) is also a cost of switching to CFLs, one that is not included in the claims of savings from the switch.

Broken CFLs present hazards (and costs) not found in incandescents. Broken CFLs cannot be swept up or vacuumed (unless one wants to replace the vacuum cleaner due to mercury contamination). In December 2010, Germany's equivalent to the EPA found the mercury levels from broken CFLs to be 20 times higher than normally permitted - and these super-high levels persisted up to 5 hours after the breakage.

Finally, disposal costs for CFLs are significantly higher. A certain percentage of discarded bulbs will be broken (whether before or after disposal). Since the bulbs contain mercury, special containers are needed for the broken bulbs (at a cost). CFLs being disposed of must be transported to specialized recycling centers (at a cost). Many will be disposed of improperly and end up in landfills, creating future environmental problems (and costs).

Several of our fixtures, including the bathroom and kitchen ones, use "specialty" bulbs that are exempt from the new rules (which, here in California, are nutso anyway). I suggest y'all go that route if you're thinking of replacing fixtures.

Also, you can order incandescents out of country.

Just ignore the stupid rules and do what you please. It's your money, your house, your fixtures, and they're your eyes. Look after yourself. These bored lunatics who have nothing better to do with their time don't care about anything more than feeling good about themselves in the moment. Well, then, neither should you.

If we keep burning lots of energy now, it'll just inspire innovation that much faster. Consider it your good deed for the day.

Hey, I found John Galt!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/nyregion/prosecutor-says-concern-for-money-was-behind-deutsche-fire.html?ref=nyregion

Or his corporation, anyway.

CFLs are a hazard in your home.

http://homerepair.about.com/od/electricalrepair/ss/cfl_epa_cleanup.htm

The problem? Well, CFL's contain a neurotoxin called mercury that gets released when the bulb breaks. Mercury exposure has adverse health effects. Since mercury vapor is essential to CFL operation, CFL's are considered a hazardous material when they break and cannot be thrown away.

Mercury is horrible stuff. It gets into the environment and food chain and never goes away. It gets into your body and some just sticks there. It's highly toxic in even small amounts. We've already poisoned the food chain with so much of it, that it's often not even safe for pregnant women to eat fish. And yet the interventionists now want to force you to have lots of this stuff in every home! Ostensibly "for the environment". So great to know that the government has my back, helping make sure my newborn baby isn't going to be exposed to mercury poisoning growing up. Oh but we can just pretend that CFLs will all be disposed of responsibly and that accidents won't happen. Yeah right.

Folks - the issue here is the nanny-state mandate.

I disagree with the Goddess about the CFL bulbs - I think they're fine - but that's not the point.

The point is that the government should not decide what light bulb I can buy.

Kristen wrote:

'They are supposed be energy efficient, but they cost me a lot more money!'

Sometimes, I think that's the goal of the 'environmental' movement.

llater,

llamas

Why Did my CFL Burn Out So Fast?

"Get used to frequent recycling. One of the biggest myths in all the CFL hype is the rated life of the bulb. You'll see blog post and article after article repeating the same misleading "fact" that you will get 6,000 or more hours of life from the CFL. Well, both consumer complaints and lab research are showing how untrue this is."

The rated life for a CFL is measured in either 4 hour on/off cycles or continuously on. Unfortunately, they are sensitive to the number of cycles (and many other factors), so most uses will not see nearly their claimed 6,000 to 10,000 hours of use.

That severely reduces the savings, if any, from using CFL's in most applications and locations. Further, if you hate the light quality or the buzz, then saving some money is a trade-off, not a no brainer.

Did you know that CFL's become 20%+ dimmer as they age toward failure?

The requirement to use CFL's is a case of regulatory capture. Big business is writing law to capture profits, in the name of green energy. The entire green energy movement is a profit-seeking venture. Al Gore, high priest of green, became a billionaire by investing in companies that were made rich by favorable regulations after the fact.

See also
easyopinions.blogspot.com/2008/04/cfl-advertising-account.html

The good and bad about compact fluorescent lights. Why the ads are both true and false. How to save and waste money on CFL's.

I've used CFLs since the beginning. They've saved me not only a fortune over the cost of regular bulbs, but a whole lot of hassle - so far only two have ever needed replacing, and then only after years of steady use. The light from current CFLs is not ugly... you can choose bluer or yellower types, and the light is actually nicer than what you get from those antique wire filaments.

More importantly, it's an obvious fallacy to conclude that ALL government regulation is wrong, because SOME of it is clearly excessive. A democracy operates by consensus... Inevitably, some issues are deemed to supersede individual liberty. Driving your SUV through a public playground, for example, will remain an offense no matter how good you are at it, or how fiercely independent you may like to feel.

Soon CFLs will yield to LEDs, and that will be even better. The Constitution can't absolve anyone of the need to move with the times, nor the obligation to make occasional reasonable concessions for the common good.