Light-bulb ban craze exceeds disposal plans

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Hum...

You never mentioned the size of your apartment before, Headless.

Somehow I think that that might have a HUGE bearing on the savings you'll see.

Unlike you, I have a moderately sized home that had quite a few incandescent bulbs on three levels.

Living room, dining room, two rooms in the basement, kitchen, front and back entrances, master bedroom, two and 1/2 baths, den, spare bedroom...

All had incandescent bulbs. Almost all have been slowly replaced with CFLs.

My electric bill has gone down by about 15% a month over the past several years.

That's nothing to sneeze at.

Actually, the size of the dwelling shouldn't have much bearing on your lighting bill.  The factors at play are the number of people that live in the home and their conscientiousness about turning off the lights when they leave a room.  A person generally only needs light in the room he occupies, thus the size of the rest of the dwelling becomes unimportant.  Extra rooms don't contribute to the lighting bill if you if you remember to keep their lights off.

I live alone and I remember to turn off the bulbs I'm not using.  That contributes far more to my electric bill savings than CFLs ever could.

Also consider that if I lived in a ginormous mansion it would cost a whole lot more to replace all of my incandescent bulbs with CFLs, thus making them even less economically sensible.

[K Frame]

In smaller dwellings one light is often sufficient to provide light both as a direct task lighting and ambient lighting.

The larger the room, the less viable that is.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

"Ambient lighting" appears to be the crux of the matter.  If you wish to have lots of lights on in order to provide ambient lighting over the whole house, then your lighting costs will be needlessly high.  Using CFLs to save money on that unneeded lighting probably makes sense for you.  Turning off that extra light probably makes more sense, IMHO, but it's your house and your wallet, so do as you like.

The rooms in my apartment are large, but I only have three of them.  They aren't dimly lit by any means (I usually use half a dozen 60W incandescents in a 16'x16' room).  But since I only have one room lit at a time, my power consumption for lighting remains quite low. 

By contrast, if you have a home with 10 rooms, each of which requires "ambient lighting" (say 1 or 2 60W bulbs) at all times, then you're gonna burn more power than me before you even begin to light the occupied rooms at full strength.

If you wanna save money forget the CFLs and learn to live without the ambient lighting.

[Bogie]

If you are in a ginormous house, the time spent walking to your light bulb storage closet, retrieving the bulb, and replacing it could be considerable. How much is your time worth? Let's figure that you've got 120 bulbs in your ginormous house. Every month 10% of them go belly up. Figure 5 minutes/bulb, that's an hour spent playing maintenance man, or 12 hours/year. Time that _could_ have been spent at the range.
 
I've got 60ish bulbs in this house. In my old 800 square foot apartment, I had maybe 10-15. Electric bill there was around $75ish, since St. Louis weather sucks, except for the week we have spring, and the week we have fall...
 
 

[K Frame]

Hell, just in my crapshack townhouse when I moved in I had the following incandescents...

Outside post lamp - 1

Outside wall lamp - 1

Entry hall - 3

Far end of entry hall - 1

Dining room - 4

Kitchen - 4

Living room - 8

Half bath - 4

Back patio - 1

Upstairs

Hall - 2

Hall Bath - 4

Master Bath - 4

Master Bedroom - 4

Guest room 1 - 3

Guest room 2/office - 3

Basement - 1 (many of the lights n the basement were already fluorescents when I moved in).


That's 47 incandescent lights in an average sized town home, about 1,500 to 2K square feet.

I didn't bother to count the incandescents in the pantry, several closets, or the attic. Those are used so infrequently that it makes absolutely no sense to put a CFL in those fixtures.

Over the past few years I've replaced nearly 3/4ths of those incandescents with fluorescents. In many cases I replaced a single, multi-bulb incandescent fixture with a single bulb fluorescent fixture that not only provides more usable light, it does it with far less energy consumption.

I'm not kidding when I said in an earlier post that I've reduced my energy consumption by about 15% over the past few years. Lighting is the only thing I've changed. I did put in a new fridge a few months ago, and that's also showing a marked improvement on the amount of electric I use.

[Gewehr98]

Wow.

I'm thinking HTG could economize even more if he just walked around with a solitary candle or oil lamp at night.  That's all he really needs... 

[K Frame]

Wait one damned second...

If he's HEADLESS, why does he need light anyway? 

[Gewehr98]

True.

A grizzled old hairwine addict once told me, "Put yo' brain in a turtle's haid, he peck his ass out!"

That's about where we're going as we all try to explain our electrical savings with compact fluorescents to HTG. 

[K Frame]

You know...

I think CFLs actually wasted 10 times more energy than they're claimed to save. It's a plot by those pesky Al Queda to get us to use up all our oil and fall into an economic malaise.

And, you know, I'm pretty sure I saw a CFL beating a hooker some years ago.

Those things really ARE bad!

[Bogie]

Oh, and a moderately expensive, but worth every penny when you need it tip...
 
Gitcherself a cheapo computer UPS on sale sometime. Plug it in next to your circuit breaker box, and plug a small lamp with a small CFL in it, and just leave it on.

I still can't find a flashlight when I need one, but now I don't need to find one...
 

[Paddy]

I'm thinking HTG could economize even more if he just walked around with a solitary candle or oil lamp at night.  That's all he really needs..

How about one of these?  He wouldn't have to worry about buying lightbulbs.  And it's water resistant down to 100ft!

[Gewehr98]

Thanks, Bogie!

Oh, and a moderately expensive, but worth every penny when you need it tip...
 
Gitcherself a cheapo computer UPS on sale sometime. Plug it in next to your circuit breaker box, and plug a small lamp with a small CFL in it, and just leave it on.

That's a darned good idea! I'm always grabbing a flashlight when the power goes out at night, and there are UPS units all over this house.  Matter of fact, I just re-batteried a big APC 800RT UPS to keep my CPAP going when the power fails, and plugged the cordless phone base, clock radio, and NOAA weather radio into it as well.

There's a small UPS powering the commo rack in my laundry room, and it's right next to the circuit breaker box.  I've got a spare candelabra-type CFL bulb and light fixture sitting around somewhere...

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Egads, folks.  I'm even more flabbergasted by you guys now than I was before.  You guys must have some sort of fetish for electric lights.

I've been playing with numbers on a calculator (long car ride, nothing better to do).  It turns out that it is possible for CFLs to reduce your electric bill by 15% as Mike claims...

...but only if your home was using 6.3 times more electric lighting than the typical American home. 

Rereading the thread, it seems that Bogie claims 60+ bulbs in his home.  Mike claims 47 in a "craptastic" tiny condo (perhaps he should come check out my apartment, it would give him a new appreciation for craptastic and tiny.  Only 13 lightbulbs in Casa de Roland and still perfectly comfortable and well-lit.  But I digress.)

I'm out of town right now, staying with my mother in her new condo.  2400 SF, 3 stories, nice and big and luxurious.  The light bulb count here 36.  And the only reason it's that high is because my mother has lots and lots of lamps and desklights and such.  Ya see, she needs gobs of extra] light because she has really bad eyesight.  This place is lit up so brightly that you could see it from low orbit.  And still only 33 bulbs.  Honestly, I don't think I could stuff Bogie's 60+ lightbulbs into this house if I tried.  There simply isn't anywhere useful to put them. 

Anyway, coming back to my original point.  You do save some wattage by using CFLs.  But that savings is utterly trumped by the fact that you guys seem to be using so gawdawful much light.  Instead of switching to CFLs, simply cutting back to the American average usage would have saved you 50% more than your switch to CFLs saved you.

But hey, what do I know?  CFLs rule! 

[Bogie]

my upstairs office: 2
Housepest room: 6 (which are never used... 5 of them belong to ugly lamps I have not thrown out, and one in the ceiling)
Bedroom: 5 (three in the ceiling fixture, two lamps)
Master Bath: 3
Housepest Bath: 4
Kitchen: 6 (and a 4' tuber I put over the sink)
Living room: 6 (4 in the ceiling fan, two lamps)
Stairs downstairs 1 (incandescent on a dim circuit)
Downstairs bath: 4 (1 incandescent on a dim circuit)
Laundry: 2
Hallway, storage, panel room: 3
Bad Teenager Room: 3 (all in the ceiling)
Bunker: 4 CF in ceiling, 4 tuber above my desk, 2 lamps on desk and bookshelves, 2 flanking movie screen, 2 on bar
Garage: 2 CFLs, 5 track lights with CFLs, and two 2 tuber shoplights
Outside: 1 in porch light, 2 HD inc bulbs in garage lights, 2 inc floods in the back yard

Are you sure you counted everything?
 
Or just lamps?
 
Casa Bogus is 1500 feet on the first floor, with equivalent area in the basement. The Bunker is approx. 17x34 in size.
 

 
My upstairs office has a ceiling light, and a desk light.
 
We're gonna leave the housepest room out of it - one bulb in a ceiling light, but it's got a few lamps in it, since it's sorta storage.

The ceiling fixture in the master bedroom holds three bulbs, and there's a lamp on each side of the bed.
 
The master bathroom has three bulbs above the sink.
 
The housepest bathroom has four.

The kitchen has a pair of three bulb fixtures.
 
The living room has four in the ceiling fan (floods), and two lamps.
 
There's a light for the stairs down to The Bunker.

The downstairs bath has three above the sink, and one in the ceiling at the end of a short hallway.
 
The laundry room has two ceiling fixtures. There's also a big fluorescent trouble light hanging in there that I use sometimes.

There's a hallway next to the Bad Teenager room - light in it, and it goes to the Storage Under The Stairs, lit by one bulb, and the electric panel, lit by another.
 
The bad teenager room has a 3 bulb fixture in the ceiling.
 
The Bunker has four CFLs in ceiling fixtures, along with a four-tuber. There are two lamps on the desk and credenza, and two lamps flanking the screen. Two others are on the bar.
 
The garage has a 5-can track light, two CFLs, and a pair of two tuber shop lights.
 
Outside, I've got two lights flanking the garage, one over the porch, and two floods in the rear over the deck.
 
Now, go back and count again.

[K Frame]

Uh, Headless?

I never claimed that my townhouse (not a condo) is tiny.

I distinctly said it is AVERAGE sized.

Also, in my home, 15% energy consuption is roughly 150 to 190 kwhr a month. I have no conceptual clue how you arrived at your estimation that I'd have to use over 6.3 times the average electrical consumption of the average home.

Based on my previous list, I added up the wattages of the incandescents I replaced, 1,440 watts, as compared to the CFLs that took their place, 344 total watts.

I've also watched, very closely, my average electrical bills over the several years in which I've replaced these bulbs.

Heating system is the same. Until recently, the TV and refrigerator were the same. My usage patterns are roughly the same. And yet, I've pared approximately 15% off my average monthly electrical usage, and the ONLY thing that has changed to any great deal are my light bulbs.

So, I'm still not certain what your big stick in the ass is about CFLs and your apparent belief that they are evil incarnate. 


Oh, by the way, regarding payback periods...

I just bought a new refrigerator that uses about 560 Kwhr a year.

The old one used just shy of 150 kwhr a MONTH.

Based on price I pay for power, it's going to take about 4 years for the new fridge to repay the investment.

I guess that was a really stupid thing to do, right?

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I think incandescents are a better mousetrap for a number of reasons, but I don't think CFLs are evil. 

I think saving power is a good idea, all else being equal, and best I can tell I'm an order of magnitude better at that than you are.  Not sure where you got the idea that I think saving electricityit would be stupid.  Targeting an inefficient refrigerator for energy savings would actually be a pretty sensible, far more so than switching to CFLs.

I find it peculiar that you seem to be so conscientious about your utility bill, while at the same time you appear to use an awful lot of power for lighting your home.  I really don't care how much electricity you use or how you use it.  It's simply an inconsistency that piqued my interest at a time when didn't have much else to occupy myself with.

I dispute the fact that the average American home will save a meaningful amount of electricity by switching to CFLs.  The numbers just don't justify those claims.  CFLs do provide some savings, perhaps a few bucks a month.  But a few bucks a month is nothing to write home about, especially when it costs a couple hundred dollars to switch a house over to CFLs. 

It takes perhaps 3 to 5 years to break even on CFLs, depending on your electric rates and your bulb selection.  It's entirely possible that, if you were to switch to CFLS today, those CFLs would be obsoleted by better technology (LEDs, perhaps) before you've managed to recoup their initial expense. 

Y'all have been going on about the wonders of CFLs as if they're some sort of miracle invention.  Sorry, fellas, they ain't.

[Bogie]

Bogie not understand...

My newer CFLs are coming up on 3 years, with the rest being older.
 
(BTW, very few are on all the time...).
 
I think most of them cost around $15/6 or $15/8... Let's just call it $2.50 a pop...
 
Let's give 60 watt 840 lumen incandescent bulbs a theoretical life of one thousand hours. And a cost of $0.90 (per Office Depot for GE Soft White 60 watters - first web site I clicked). Works out to 9 cents per hundred hours, just for the bulb.
 
A GE Energy Smart bulb goes 900 lumens, and lasts 10,000 hours. Runs on 15 watts.

So we say that it costs $2.50 for the bulb, or $0.025 per hundred hours.
 
Lets say you've got a ceiling fixture in your living room. It's on 4 hours/day. In 25 days, that's 100 hours. In 250 days, you've got a burnout incandescent. After 750 days (3 incandescents at $0.90 each = $2.70), or about two years, you're ahead on the CF bulb cost. Not counting the electricity, which is about 1/4 of the incandescent.

[Gewehr98]

HTG, it's not a "one-size-fits-all" argument.

You intrigued me with that "average American home" statement, so I went to the DOE website to research it further.

I was surprised to find the Home Energy Saver calculator page, so I plugged in my home's square footage, number of windows, number of refrigerators, and number of adults living there. 

http://hes.lbl.gov/

DOE says I should expect to pay $1,700/year, or $141/month, for what I consume. That's the so-called American Average, for where I live and what lives here. That doesn't even take into account the fact I have two shift workers in the house, 6 computers, a 42" plasma, 3 32" CRT televisions, and a reloading bench, hobby machine shop, and graphics/vinyl business running in the garage. 

By switching over to CFL in all those places, I've reduced my electric bill a couple hundred kilowatt/hours per month.  Throttling back the plasma TV and setting the computers to Standby or Hibernate netted additional gains, to the point that I've reduced my monthly kilowatt/hours from 1450 to 1100.  That shaved about $35.00/month off my utility bill, and I'm not done yet with my tweaking of lighting and the solar/electric off-grid supplementing.

So no, it's not a "light fetish".  It's a reality of living and existing, because I can't stuff 4 adults, 2 big dogs, and a home business into an efficiency apartment and give each person a flashlight, nor would I want to.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I ran that energy calculator app.  Pretty neat concept, but it seems to be off in a few areas.  It tells me that air conditioning my mother's new condo should cost $60 a year.  That's obviously wrong.  Anyways...

It estimates that Mom spends $94 a year on lighting.  This is reasonable.  At $.07 per kWh that's about 3.7 kWh per day.  Mom could burn a dozen 60W bulbs for 5 hours a day.  Lighting her home costs $8 per month.

Let's say she replaced her incandescents with CFLs.  That'd cut the energy usage down to about $24 a year, or $2 per month.  Monthly savings would be $6. 

I am understandably unimpressed.

[Firethorn]

I am understandably unimpressed.

Like what others have been stating, there are reasons to use CFLs besides energy savings.  I personally love that I've never had to replace the suckers.

Sure, I've moved some around for balancing (too much light here, not enough there), but when I was using incandescent I was constantly having to replace bulbs.

Besides, $6/month savings from using CFL pays for a bulb each month.  Then you figure that each CFL will, on average, last through 10 long life* incandescent lights.

It's certainly nothing to run to the store and replace all your running incandescents, but merely picking up a pack of flourescents rather than a new pack of filiment bulbs will result in energy savings and eventually fewer bulb changes.  At least for the vast majority of people.

If you're bugged by the light, try some different 'colors'.  They have soft, warm, daylight**, premium color ones, etc...

*Trivia point:  Long life bulbs are less energy efficient than standard bulbs, unless you want to increase the cost of making them.
**I work shift a lot, I like my daylight bulbs.

[Bogie]

Yeah, I like 6500K myself. Drives me batty in The Bunker tho...

After two years, if you're buying the things in the minibulk packs, they're free.