Remote Living > Lighting
What are your thoughts on CLF bulbs?
DamonHD:
I dispute that counsel of dispair: "it's all hopeless so don't even try any of it".
Our only incandescent bulbs are now in the oven and (yes, wait for it) the fridge...
But everything else is LED or CFL. And we don't have air con or a clothes dryer (or pool pump, or desktop computer; laptops instead). But we do have (efficient, nice-to-use) electric cooking (induction hob, fan oven) as it happens.
We also have 1/2--1/3 the the consumption of natural gas and electricity of the homes around us, and thus very low bills, and the house largely as we want it.
And no, heating the air near the ceiling really isn't helpful, especially outside the heating season.
Note that none of the value or otherwise of what I've mentioned above depends on one's views on carbon, etc, though they are extra motivations for me.
Rgds
Damon
OperaHouse:
When you worry about the mA, the amps take care of themselves.
Ungrounded Lightning Rod:
Both my house sites are still on-grid, but the travel trailer, of course, is both on- and off-grid, depending on whether it's parked where a hookup is available. (We like to do self-contained camping at remote sites, and can easily go two days on batteries, but hook up when it's available to save the batteries. The AC is only available with a hookup or a big honking generator, and the microwave pretty much ditto: It would burn through about 1/4 C to do one meal for us if we did get a big enough inverter to try it - though I might consider it if I get some solar panels or a portable mill lashed up to bring 'em back up before sundown at a day camp, or to do lunch on the road, where the tow vehicle will recharge them before the night's stop.)
My wife has vertigo and we had initial difficulty finding CFLs that didn't set off an attack. When the US started banning incandescents we dropped about $1000 on enough to keep our retirement house in light bulbs for our expected remaining lifetimes. (The retirement home started with ballasted fluorescent tubes in the garage, utility room, under-counter lighting,most bathroom fixtures, and backyard floods, and early, tiny, CFLs for the beside the door lighting, lots of incandescents elsewhere - including six candelabra bulbs for the bathroom mirror vanity light, which (totalling to 240 watts) doubles as the room heat lamp.)
Eventually we found CFLs that didn't set her off and started switching to them. The townhouse was quickly converted to CFLs everywhere that didn't already have some fluorescent fixture. So far the retirement house just got six in one living area fixture.
CFLs are about a factor of four more efficient than incandescents. LEDs are potentially good for a tad over another factor of four before bumping up against perfect energy efficiency, and may approach that limit in another few years. Right now they've passed CFLs by not quite a factor of 2 (about 1.5). After a rotten start (with overrated "incandescent equivalency" markings that prompted the requirement for marking all lamps with lumen ratings B-) ) and then some early, crude, expensive, weird colored stuff, they've started hitting their stride with reliable, long-lived, efficient, bright devices, in a range of eye-easy colors, a "dimmable" option, with economy of scale producing acceptable pricing.
The main downsides are:
- The ones we're using follow the mains voltage cycling very closely - lighting for about half of each half-cycle - so well we can see a noticable flicker when a big motor starting in our neighborhood causes a couple cycles of voltage droop (taking that quarter-cycle voltage peak away). It's about like a bird flying over on a sunny day.
- There's still some flakey stuff out there, and a bit of infant mortality even in the good brands. (But our Ace Hardware dealer has decent prices and will replace the dead babies for free.)
- Any leakage power - even the tiny trickle from the neon lamps in a "find me in the dark" illuminated switch or a (non LED rated) dimmer set at minimum - will make them light up somewhat. One of the four parallel bulbs in a stairway top/bottom light set glows when "switched off", as does one of the two in an electronically driven ceiling fan. The bedroom dimmer needs replacing to go as dim as I want. (I think a small resistive load can fix the stairway issue, with negligible power cost, but haven't tried yet.)
- "Bug light" equivalent versions (from Fiet) JUST hit the local market in the last couple weeks. (FINALLY! We were using CFL bug lights from Lowes, which stopped carrying replacements before we stopped needing them.) They're a tad overrated but ought to be OK. (The "60W equivalent" puts out 400 lumen, versus 800 for the CFL and 550 for a real incandescent.)
- The devices and market are still evolving. You're virtually guaranteed you won't be able to buy identical replacements withing a few months, so you need to buy enough, plus a few spares, at a time to convert all the fixtures you want to match. (Fortunately they are very long-lived.)
We don't like the mercury risk. So now that LEDs have "come of age" we're switching out perfectly usable, and even disposing of some unused, CFLs and going to LEDs pretty much everywhere. (I'm hoping we'll be to near-theoretical-efficiency devices a little before this year's round needs replacing.)
The townhouse is mostly converted now. After finding some bulbs acceptable to my wife, I bought enough Fiet bulbs (during sale pricing) to relamp all the bulb-type lamps and fixtures (just before Ace got a better price deal with Satco and switched over) and have been installing them over the last few weeks. Drop-in ballasted fluorescent replacements from Fiet also give great light and are available at several sources, but are still a bit pricey, so I'm replacing the tubes as they start to go. The yard lighting had been flaking out, so I (took a chance and) got a bunch of Heath-Zenith two-lamp motion-detector fixtures and Satco 3000K wet-area dimmable floods, and replaced 'em all around. So far they're great - especially with the gradual turn-on/of from the incandescent-life-stretching feature. It's fun walking around the house and have each zone ramp-up the light as I approach it. Like a light crew making my life easy. (I've had issues with Heath/Zenith sensor longevity in the past. Keeping my fingers crossed.) I plan to try the bug lights in the front tonight.
For the retirement house I've only gotten the CFLs in the living room fixture and the great-room ceiling fan incandescents replaced so far. (The ceiling fan has a "somebody's home" fakeout mode that lasts until the next power outage, which burns out incandescents in a few months, and works with LEDs, but dimmable CLFs that small were unavailable.) Converting the rest should ramp up in the next year or so. Then (if I sill have the health and resources) we'll be all set to do an RE system.
For the travel trailer: I found some good 12V LED replacements for the interior lighting and plan to replace the incandescents in a batch as soon as I get around to placing the order. They'll let me run the trailer lights for five hours on less battery power than the incandescents chewed up in one, which may give us an extra night dry-camping between recharges. (Unfortunately the refrigerator is electronically controlled and pulls substantial current to open the gas valve.) The exterior light is already replaced (with an LED automotive "backup light" until I can find an amber one to do the "bug light" bit in the current fixture)
DamonHD:
@OH: I spend my life worrying about microamps (and microwatts), so I definitely agree with that sentiment!
Rgds
Damon
MattM:
I went all LED a few years back. There might be some rogue CFL bulbs somewhere in the house, but I consciously went fixture to fixture replacing them. The AC ran considerably less and the temperatures outside haven't been any less extreme. I feel better knowing I wasn't paying nearly as much to reheat conditioned air. This house is mostly well insulated, but for some ignorant reason here in FL the builders seal off the ceilings then vent the entire attic space to the outside. It makes considerably more sense to seal both and put the insulation at the roof line. All my AC ductwork runs through my hot attic space. The first fix was to cover the ductwork. Next will be to seal off the attic under the rafters that can breathe and completely seal off ones that run into ridgelines. Of course that means making the attic conditioned to a point to control humidity. Typical FL builders don't seem to put much thought into modern designs down here yet. The science is and has been out there for decades. Shame, too. This house isn't even ten years old.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version