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Fluorescent light bulbs – disposal and power saving rant. — Parallax Forums

Fluorescent light bulbs – disposal and power saving rant.

vaclav_salvaclav_sal Posts: 451
edited 2011-05-03 20:38 in General Discussion
The headlines shoould read – the economy is booming - some folks are stocking up on light bulbs.

Besides blatant government meddling in consumer affairs I would like to point out that I have not heard anything about disposing these ceramic and mercury containing devices.
Like anything else they will eventually fail.
I recall that disposing of ceramic IC was never satisfactory resolved too.

We do not really care about our future, just present. Let our grandkids figure it out or just ship it somewhere.

The idea of saving electricity does not hold either. We live in greedy world of “reversed supply and demand” - the less you consume the higher the price so the maker keeps making money.

I sincerely hope the whole idea will blow over just like the New Improved Coke did.

What this got to do with BASIC Stamp? A lot, I cannot see what I am soldering under this blue light.

Comments

  • ctwardellctwardell Posts: 1,716
    edited 2011-05-02 08:14
    I've had no problems with the newer (past few years) CFL's. The main thing seems to be to go with the better brands like Sylvania and GE, I've had some issues with turn on time and life span with the cheap ones. The coach lights on my garage would only last about 3 to 6 months with incandescent bulbs, but go around two years with CFL.

    I don't like gov't meddling and do agree that incandescent should not be banned.

    I seem to recall a story indicating that the mercury in modern CFL's is less than the mercury that would be released due to burning coal to produce the difference in electric use between equivalent CFL and incandescent bulbs.

    C.W.
  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2011-05-02 08:48
    The Beef I have with CFLs is the power factor . its HORRID . and you thought a Arc weldor was inductive .

    for the record I use LEDs in my room .. :)
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-05-02 08:52
    I have no issues with the recent CFLs I've bought, except one: unless they're installed vertically in a well-ventilated fixture, the drive electronics fail prematurely due to heat. And this negates any economic benefit they're supposed to offer. As for disposal, I just collect them and take them to the local hazardous waste facility when I have a handful to get rid of. 'Pretty simple.

    -Phil
  • Mike2545Mike2545 Posts: 433
    edited 2011-05-02 09:54
    vaclav_sal wrote: »
    Besides blatant government meddling in consumer affairs I would like to point out that I have not heard anything about disposing these ceramic and mercury containing devices.


    Our local Home Improvement stores take them for recycling (Home Depot) for free.
  • W9GFOW9GFO Posts: 4,010
    edited 2011-05-02 10:11
    I installed 10 MaxLite CFLs in my garage/shop ceiling. One week later, three were dead. I'm looking forward to when the LED bulbs are more affordable.

    Rich H
  • Al BoothAl Booth Posts: 137
    edited 2011-05-02 11:12
    AND make sure you never break one in your house...

    http://epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup-detailed.html

    Al
  • localrogerlocalroger Posts: 3,452
    edited 2011-05-02 11:18
    Al Booth wrote: »
    AND make sure you never break one in your house...

    http://epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup-detailed.html

    Al

    Considering that the amount of mercury in a CFL is about 4 milligrams, I'd say that your link is hysterically overreactive. Link: http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf
  • localrogerlocalroger Posts: 3,452
    edited 2011-05-02 11:21
    I have about 50 light bulbs throughout the house. Before I started switching them to CFL I was having to replace about one a week. Now that all but a handful (those on dimmers) are incandescent, I replace one every three or four months. CFL are especially good for ceiling fans because the vibration doesn't shorten their lives as it does incandescents by vibrating the heat-softened filament.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2011-05-02 11:46
    My old incandecent bulbs have lasted a long time, I've been replacing them with CFLs when they die. None of the CFLs has failed, a couple of them are over two years old. They are on from when it gets dark until I got to bed.
  • SeariderSearider Posts: 290
    edited 2011-05-02 11:50
    Here in Texas, I use a lot of energy on removing heat from my living spaces. As a result I have and continue to make design decisions with this in mind and many features of my house (that my wife and I designed and built ourselves) reflect this. somewhere around 10 years ago the first CFLs started be available and I immediately started replacing the incandescents when they failed. I had three primary goals. Reduced heat load, Less replacement labor and if possible less $. I can't measure the heat load but I can touch all parts of a CFL while in operation without burning my hand. Replacing failed CFLs is a rare thing. I did try some cheep ones but they did not last so I usually get named brand ones. There are a a few places were I still use incandescent because I want to be able to adjust the light output (Dimmers).
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2011-05-02 11:55
    LEDs will probably be taking over from CFLs before long. They can be dimmed, of course, for those who like that sort of thing.
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-05-02 12:04
    Dimming an LED doesn't change its color temperature, though, which is part of the appeal for dimming incandescents. I suppose the LED lamp manufacturers will figure this out soon enough and include red and yellow LEDs that stay brighter compared to the white ones as the lamp is dimmed.

    -Phil
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2011-05-02 12:14
    Microchip has this kit which offers dimming and hue control:

    http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1406&dDocName=en549342
  • ctwardellctwardell Posts: 1,716
    edited 2011-05-02 12:17
    The LED bulbs will need to come way down in price before they see much use.

    I paid $7.99 for a 25W candelabra replacement LED bulb and it was very dim compared to a true 25W bulb plus it failed after just a few months.

    I'm sure they will eventually work out the kinks and get the price down, but I don't see them replacing CFL for quite a while.

    I haven't really looked, so maybe they exist, but one thing that seems to be needed are well ventilated ceiling fixtures as LED bulbs tend to have external heatsinks that won't do much good in a small enclosures.

    C.W.
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-05-02 12:20
    It would be interesting to see how hue control with RGB LEDs compares perceptually to my dimming scheme using white, yellow, and red LEDs. The nice thing about white LEDs for lighting, compared to RGB LEDs is that they're broad-spectrum, due to the phosphors excited by the blue output. RGB LEDs, by contrast, exhibit three sharp spectral peaks, and that's it.

    -Phil
  • John AbshierJohn Abshier Posts: 1,116
    edited 2011-05-02 13:37
    I keep the heat down in the winter. That causes a problem with CFLs. They produce very little light until they warm up.

    John Abshier
  • Marka32Marka32 Posts: 41
    edited 2011-05-02 22:36
    Banning incandescent bulbs just seems like a bad idea and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

    I prefer regular fluorescent over CFL where possible, as they are cheaper, more efficient, and light up a larger area. Where I would really like to use a CFL is for my front porch light. Incandescents seem to last only a few months. I'm using an X-10 timer to turn it on and off, but it doesn't seem to work right with CFLs. It worked for a while, then the CFL started blinking. So now I'm back to those expensive, energy hungry, always failing incandescents.

    - Mark
  • Ding-BattyDing-Batty Posts: 302
    edited 2011-05-03 06:15
    Marka32 wrote: »
    Banning incandescent bulbs just seems like a bad idea and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

    I prefer regular fluorescent over CFL where possible, as they are cheaper, more efficient, and light up a larger area. Where I would really like to use a CFL is for my front porch light. Incandescents seem to last only a few months. I'm using an X-10 timer to turn it on and off, but it doesn't seem to work right with CFLs. It worked for a while, then the CFL started blinking. So now I'm back to those expensive, energy hungry, always failing incandescents.

    - Mark

    For X-10 control, you need to use an appliance control unit (on/off control only), and not a light control unit, that can dim the lights. Most CFL bulbs cannot be dimmed and don't work correctly with the light control unit. So this rules out the wall switch type X-10 control units, as they are only for resistive-load lights that can be dimmed.

    I managed to burn out a wall-wart power supply (an inductive load) by plugging it into a X-10 light controller. The appliance controllers work much better for that as well :)
  • icepuckicepuck Posts: 466
    edited 2011-05-03 06:37
    The cfls from Philips and Sylvania last longer than the no name Smile from wal-mart. I've notice that cfls seem to mess up OTA hd tv, I turn off the lights and problem goes away. I'm now replacing the cfls with leds, they use half the power the cfls do. Use something like a Kill-a-watt power meter to see the difference.I no longer use any CRT's in my house, which is a big heat load reduction for the A/C.Which saves even more money by not having to run so much.
    -dan
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2011-05-03 07:55
    Marka32 wrote:
    Where I would really like to use a CFL is for my front porch light. Incandescents seem to last only a few months.
    Porch fixtures are typically fully-enclosed, non-ventilated units, with the bulb pointing down. The same thing that burns out the incandescents will also shorten the CFL's life in your porch fixture: heat. The CFL's orientation in these fixtures with the sensitive electronics above the heat-generating bulb almost guarantees premature failure. If you use a CFL, use a very low wattage unit. Otherwise, a 130V incandescent will last longer than a 120V bulb. There are also rectifier disks that you can adhere to the base of the bulb before you screw it into the socket that half-wave rectify the AC, allowing the filament to run cooler. (Radio Shack used to carry them, but they don't any more.) With one of these in my porch fixture, the bulb lasted for years. You could also hard-wire a diode into the fixture to accomplish the same end.

    -Phil
  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    edited 2011-05-03 08:09
    It's surprising to me how some people believe that CFLs have a major impact on reducing energy use. It's obvious that CFLs require more energy to manufacture than incandescent bulbs. I've seen estimates of 15 times the amount of energy. More energy must be expended to dispose of them as well. This negates some of the benefit of using CFLs to reduce energy consumption. The power used by incandescent bulbs is on the order of 5% of total houshold usage, or less than 1% of overall energy use. The attention given to CFLs is really disproportionate to the actual energy that they save.

    Cheap CFLs take a long time to come up to full brightness, and they often have a shorter lifetime than the incandescent bulb they replaced. People that throw away a perfectly good incandescent light bulb and replace them with a cheap CFL are wasting money. The better CFLs do last longer, and they have a much shorter turn-on time. I only buy GE CFLs because I know these work well, but I'm sure other known brand name CFLs work fine also.

    I think LED lights are the way of the future, and I plan on switching to LEDs when they become cost-effective.
  • ctwardellctwardell Posts: 1,716
    edited 2011-05-03 08:29
    I mentioned earlier about wondering if they make better ventilated fixtures for CFL and LED lights...

    I went to Menard's, a big box home improvement store, last night and found one ceiling light that had a gap all the way around where the glass globe meets the base, it was labelled as being for 2 A19 60W or Equivalent CFL. All the others were just labeled as being for 2 A19 60W. So it looks like the fixture manufactures have some catching up to do.

    C.W.
  • vaclav_salvaclav_sal Posts: 451
    edited 2011-05-03 10:37
    I would like to thank all for participating in this non Parallax related subject.
    It looks to me , as many things in live, this is not such clear cut and dry issue.

    The technology will eventually became reliable and usable.

    However, I am convinced that legislating the mandatory usage of this technology now proves again that our legislators need to retire soon and go fish'n.

    Got any New Coke?
    Vaclav
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    edited 2011-05-03 11:07
    I started switching to CFL's in 2004., At first for the lights that got a lot of use, and eventually for all of them. When I installed them I used a marker to put the date on the base to see how long they would last. The two lamps that failed to date were both in a fixture that has very poor air circulation. The shortest lifespan was 2 years 3 months, and the other was 3 years 1 month. My power bill dropped noticeably.
  • Marka32Marka32 Posts: 41
    edited 2011-05-03 16:54
    Ding-Batty wrote: »
    For X-10 control, you need to use an appliance control unit (on/off control only), and not a light control unit, that can dim the lights. Most CFL bulbs cannot be dimmed and don't work correctly with the light control unit. So this rules out the wall switch type X-10 control units, as they are only for resistive-load lights that can be dimmed.

    I managed to burn out a wall-wart power supply (an inductive load) by plugging it into a X-10 light controller. The appliance controllers work much better for that as well :)

    Unfortunately, I've never seen an X-10 wall switch controller for appliances. I may have to try one of my dimmable CFLs on it. Fortunately, this fixture places the bulb upright, so heat is less of an issue.

    I have also considered using a sensor to turn it on and off. There are some new ones for CFLs. But I don't want it burning from dusk to dawn.

    - Mark
  • Ding-BattyDing-Batty Posts: 302
    edited 2011-05-03 20:38
    Check out the x10.com website:

    Appliance Module 2-Pin Grounded

    Appliance Module 3-Pin Grounded
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