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I'm actually taking my furnace out and replacing it with one of these for the ultimate in efficient heat.

The main problem is cheap chinese parts. Many times it is the driver board that fails, not the LED's themselves. The warranty should run years, so they can be swapped for free, but find a better brand.

Oh don't get me wrong in terms of light output vs the energy it consumes incandescent bulbs are horrible, but that "waste" energy in heat adds to warming the home that can't be disputed. So for those winter months yeah you're paying a higher electricity bill but in return getting light AND heat. That was the thought.

Oh and off topic let's talk about the EPA's intrusion into our WASHING MACHINES. Hey EPA if you would mandate that women not toss perfectly clean clothes into the hamper just because they touched their skin for 20 minutes...we might "save" more water than you could ever wish for...

Full disclosure I bought an HE washer this year. It sucked so bad that I punted it down the street six months later and went and bought a rebuilt "standard" washing machine (Maytag). Couldn't be happier with clothes dancing in water and actually getting clean again..

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704662604576202212717670514

Ha that's actually one of the vacuum tubes that ran this bad boy...

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Of course this viewpoint doesn't do much good for the folks living in the deep south now, does it?

Now you're reaching.

This is my main problem with the CFL's. Nevermind the intensity of light, the color of the light, or that it takes about a half hour before they reach full luminescence, or any of that other crap. My main issue is the Mercury content and how that information goes under the radar. That info should be included in commercials and ads for CFL's the same way as Viagra and Cialis. Five seconds of info and 25 seconds of warnings. The government has already "determined"(I use that term loosely) that Mercury content in our water supply is a leading cause of Autism, and yet they know full well that these mercury vapor bulbs are going to get tossed in the trash with yesterday's Chef Boyardee in probably 90% of households across America.

I guarantee that those people that buy everything, and I mean everything, from Wal-Mart, who have purchased these CFL's toss them in the regular, landfill-bound garbage can all the time.

How are the environmentalists ok with this? Where is the outcry?

This chart speaks volumes.
lighting-chart.png

Of course I'm reaching as this mandate and subsequent discussion about it is stupid.

Signed,

I have 600 hundred watt light bulbs stored in my shed...in the north where it's cold

Does it say anything about the yearly CO2 emissions from the standard FOX NEWS anchor?

CO2 emissions? Does this chart assume that all power in America is derived from coal?

What about those states that are almost purely hydroelectric, solar, wind, and nuclear?

Or is that not a convenient enough truth to prove an info skewed point?

I posted earlier here: there is/has been no outcry about fluorescent tube lights. I see businesses and residences simply toss these in the trash. So now because it it in a different shape it is a huge problem? Maybe you should call the hazmat team in when someone opens a can of tuna fish.
http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/10/the-mercury-myth-how-much-mercury-do-cfls-actually-contain/

SIAP but there is no law (directly) banning incandescents. The law simply set efficiency standards for general lighting requirements and incandescents currently can not meet the standards.

Good for you - you can also enjoy replacing them approx. 20 times more often than the person that uses LED equivalents.

Yikes don't go all high and mighty on me.

Signed,

Will be selling those bulbs in 5 years at 2500% profit

The OPs question was answer way early on in the thread, but I'm stoked that I read through this whole thing (even with the at times comical rants). Ive got high vaulted ceilings with recessed lighting floods. Changing these bulbs are a big PITA. The ballasts on the CFL floods wouldn't fit in the existing cans (changing these out also would not be fun) but it looks like the newer LEDs will fit no problem and in theory (baring defect) will last much longer.

That's exactly my point. Where is the outcry? These bulbs are massively polluting our water table. If all it takes is one drop of evil motor oil to pollute 1,000,000 gallons of fresh drinking water, how much more contamination and inherent birth defects could result in one drop of pure mercury(figuratively speaking from a conglomeration of thousands of bulbs)?

Look, I'm just making the same reaction to the "possible" pollution of ANY fluorescent bulb being thrown in the trash as those in the environmentalist movement make about ANYTHING they don't believe in or agree with. Mercury poisoning is a very real thing and has been widely known for years. But, because the CFL thing is part of their cause, they simply overlook it as some sort of "acceptable loss" or info they can just sweep under the rug. I'm sorry, but I have to call BS. I've simply grown tired of a lot of environmentalist's double standards. I'm done with them. I know there's no arguing with them. They don't listen to reason. They have all their skewed "studies" to "prove" their points.

Likewise, I'll be checking out of this thread now. It is spiraling and I've better things to do with my day.

Out BTL.

ugh you are ruining the light bulb hobby! you should buy bulbs because you enjoy them, not to flip them for profit

I've got a sihtload of NIB incandescents and Twinkies, and both have a shelf life of forever!

Hahahahaha post of the thread.

Alright (yawn) this has been fun I'm out

if you were honestly worried about pollution, you wouldn't be so enthusiastically invested in incandescents. are CFLs a perfect solution? heck no. but your interest is pretty clearly not what's best for the environment -- it's in making environmentalists or liberals or whatever look bad.

Oh...I admit, I did not see that coming

1: There SHOULD be an outcry.
2: I can't control what "businesses" do.
3: HUGE difference between a few shop bulbs SOME houses may have and discard improperly and having a majority of households having a majority of their bulbs discarded improperly.

Look there is a simple solution: please give us your address and we'll all hurl our discards into your yard since they are so completely harmless

However, you have to multiply that by the BHOC* constant, so in the end, the cost is eleventy bajillions.

(*butt hurt of change)

Must be as really slow day for people, 124 posts in a day about light bulbs that don't go in pinball machines.

Robert

What brand are they? I have close to 50 Philips LED bulbs in my house, and not a single one of them has failed. In fact, some of them have been going strong for over a year. I hope I didn't just jinx myself.

Here is the spectrum. The CREE are in the 2700k. Where many other LED's run up in the 3k and up so they look more white.

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And please refrain from all the political talk. It is against Pinside rules. If you have something to add to the discussion about the technology, great. If not, kindly take the conversation elsewhere. Thank you!

I (my family) converted our home to CFL maybe 10 years ago. Then we began converting to LED a few years ago and are maybe 90% LED now. The largest fixture in our home is the kitchen lamp, 80 watts of regular flourescent.

An LED home is a dim home, however most activities aren't effected by living in that environment. Watching TV, on the computer etc.
However I require higher lighting when reading (or working on things like pins) and I prefer a good old incandescent 60 or 75w bulb for those occasions.

There's a lot of argument about national power consumption and the like. We should let the free market dictate things like this. It's almost like nobody have noticed the rows and racks of LED's and CFL's in the stores which were recently filled with incandescents.
People in general have been phasing out incandescents for more than a decade now. No need for another Federal law. Making incandescents illegal to sell is ridicuous.

Even if I won't be able to replace my reading and working lights at my local store, I'll have them shipped to me from relatives elsewhere. From another country.

For working on things like Steve said, ex. pin, I like the CFL white. It is bright, clean and white looking light. Incandescent is to "warm" to get good light for little/tight/dark work.

They also make a daylight balanced bulb rated at 5,000K.

http://www.cree.com/Lighting/Products/Indoor/Consumer/60W-Replacement-Daylight-Type-A-LED-Bulb

In your support, CO2 is a part of the life cycle. To call it a pollutant is to call Oxygen and water pollutants.

1) Why should there be an outcry? What for? To reform fluorescent technology?
2) You are correct. You can't control businesses from saving money and using superior technology.
3) I advocate using advance technologies of CFLs and LEDs over incandescents, and I've stated the reasons with some supporting links. The rebuttals have been pointed out by many that these are toxic. Yes, they are - but it is small. As I pointed out before I inhale cigarette smoke directly but others run from second hand smoke, so no, I am not bothered by your threat to throw broken CFLs into my yard.

I've cited some good example regarding the technological benefit, but folks are going to beat the same tired horse over and over....so I'm a bit tired of debating this topic. Long ago we satisfied the original OPs question (I think) and this is my last post on the subject.

I totally agree, but some times its unavoidable, because sadly politics is rooted in all areas in which a person might discuss.

Lack of education? How many people know that there is Mercury inside the bulbs (or really care for that matter?) - in fact I would bet that the majority only found out about it with the bad press that CFL's are getting. Bottom line is that people don't generally like things being forced down their throats and being told what they have to buy.

I personally have never had a CFL last longer than 2 years myself (tried different brands as well) - currently trying out some LED bulbs and will see how that goes.

Of course switching to CFL/LED is fine and dandy unless you have those 'Edison' style bulbs as part of your home decor.

Recently came across this tear down of Phillips newest LED bulb:

edit: BTW, apparently there are some mods that can be done to many home automation modules/etc that will allow them to work with CFL/LED bulbs.

I was at one time going to convert my house to a hybrid system of grid and solar. I was going to use the grid for heavy load items such as the heat pump etc, and light loads such as LED lit rooms, alarm clocks, small fans etc to solar.

The reality of solar, even with LED hit pretty hard.

My original plan was to convert just 1 room for a test. I was going to tap into the circuit at the existing breaker box. "They always say" it's cheaper to make your own solar panel so I made a pair using ebay solar cells. I put together 2 panels to total about 120 watts in bright sunlight. I constructed them quite well using 2 sheets of 1/4" safety glass each, hermetically sealed at the glass shop. I could have went the cheaper construction with plywood but those typicall only last a month or so before water penetration and corrosion.
I bought a 30a charge controller (room to expand) and two deep cycle (golf cart) batteries. The batteries connect to a 2kw inveter so I can run 120v AC devices.

The result was not as I had expected.

This was back in 2009. These are a few of the things I discovered along the way:

* Anything permanently attached to my house is against the government ordinance unless it is UL approved by government inspectors and installed by government licensed installers.
* Anything permanently attached to my home without government approval will void my home insurance. If my wife starts a grease fire in the kitchen and inspectors find modifications at the breaker box it can/will void my insurance even if it has nothing to do with the fire.

I am not willing to take the risk so those things killed the goal of my original project.

But all was not lost. My panels have been charging my batteries since then, and they run a string of LED exterior security lights in my back yard. I have a 3-bulb standing yard lamp with (3) 9w LED's and 2 18w sealed beam LED flood lamps in the very rear. The system has to be maintained once a month. Battery water levels must be checked/added and I overcharge as directed every couple of months to keep the electrolyte stirred.

These were my other discoveries:
*If I did this again I'd use high output commercial panels instead. They are expensive upfront but cheaper per watt and come with at least 20yr warranty.
*Solar panels in a storage setup cost almost 3x as much as grid electricity.
*A grid system uses electricity collected by panels to assist in your electric bill. For example if you use 3KW over a month and generate 1.5KW then your power company bill will be about half. However few people can fork out the +70K out of pocket expense (After rebates and gov incentives) so they take out a loan. Between the power savings and the cost of the loan, there isn't really any benefit. Pray there isn't any out of warranty equipment failure.
Such a setup is guaranteed for about 20 years so when you're done with your loan then it's about time to replace the system again. More, if the grid failes your expensive solar setup won't help you. The power from all your panels will be off even in bright daylight during a grid outage.

The only real or perceived benefit to my solar power generator is during power failure. I can run a lamp and a few small things (No heaters or fridges etc). I won't be dependent on a source of petro should the outage last a few days. Given the fact that grid failure is extremely rare this has been a prohibitively expensive experiment.

I brought up my solar project as it relates to power saving... as LED's do. A lot of people fall for the advertisment scams "Get off the grid with my solar power project book/CD". Disgustingly dishonest those venders are.

Something else to note. Most everyone compares the quality of light to that of incandescent. Not the other way around and there's a reason for it. No, I am not trashing LED's my house (and yard) is full of them but it's just an observation.

This is not necessarily true. My basement has 25 recessed cans. I used to have standard 65 watt BR30 incandescent flood lights in all of them, with each bulb emitting 620 lumens of light. I have since replaced all of the old bulbs with Philips soft white (2700K) BR30 dimmable LED floods. Each of these new bulbs puts out 730 lumens, and only uses 13 watts of electricity. My room is now brighter than before, and I only use a total of 325 watts vs. the 1625 watts that I used to use. Best of all, I didn't have to sacrifice color temperature to achieve this result. Sounds like a win/win to me.

We use a 100 watt incandescent bulb to help heat up our small chicken coop in the cold winter time.

It is inside a clay pot so it is not used for light, it is solely used for heat. What should we use moving forward?

There are a couple choices.
Our family have 2 indoor cats and 3 outdoor cats.
We bought a thermally insulated dog house with a heating pad which provide a nice sleeping quarters for the cats outside. We also bought a larger plastic dog house to keep their food and water. Like you, We use a light bulb to heat the larger house.

There are a couple options. One is to buy a heated pad, but the output may not be enough in a less sealed and larger space.
If you are good with tools and working things out then you can modify the heating pad of an old coffee maker. I did this once by removing the heating element (about the size of a TO-3 transistor) and screwed it to a large heat sink with heat conducting grease. My heat sink was too large and it continually drew too much current (about 90w). It drew about 7w as originally in the coffee maker. I think a smaller heat sink may have worked perfectly.

However I wouldn't advise anyone who isn't good at thinking things through to experiment with heating devices else burn yourself or worse.

Or the silver fillings in their teeth for that matter.

This should probably be done anyway. Just like Banning environmentally damaging things like plastic bags. You can't count on society to do the right thing on their own. Most people are to caught up on themselves to give a shit to anything beyond their own little existence. If it inconveniences them in the slightest, regardless how little, they will not do it.

Funny thing is when I was young they only used paper bags. But then they were banned because of environmental issues. Now they are banning plastic bags? Really? Maybe walking our food home on foot in sheep skin sacks would be best like they did in medieval times. But then PITA would get upset. Not a good choice either.

Being facetious, of course.

plastic bags are banned in most of the world. Except the US. beause the plastics company and the American chemical council, snuck through some laws that stops states from banning or charging for plastic bags. Paper bags were filling up land fills, but with recycling of paper now, it can be a renewable resource. Plastic bags arn't. And when you take them to the supermarkets that say recycle plastic bags, your being lied to. They end up in the trash just like they would at your house. It's a promotion by the ACC to blindfold the public thinking plastic bags arn't as bad as they truly are.

The real solution is for people to take reusable cloth bags everywhere when they shop. Same goes for not using the thin produce plastic as well and deli bags. Elimination of those would help damaging waste tremendously.

Next thing you know, they will stop using real sugar in our soft drinks.

I love these bulbs from home depot! They make a 60 watt that I am slowly putting in my house, same as you. I pick one up every trip to the depot, and swap out another bulb.

and substitute it with something that tricks your body into thinking it's still hungry. BRILLIANT!

or telling us how many oz's we can buy at a time. (fot those that arent familiar, mayor of ny, bloomberg, put a ban in effect for soda larger than a certain oz. (32?)

It's all part of the master plan!
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Does anyone know how the industry is measuring the light output from LED's? What I mean to say, is their meter pointed directly at the element or measuring reflected light at a fixed point of reference? Do they test these real-world or just rely on printed specifications?

For example if you fix your eyes on the LED element itself for a given moment then you will cause a severe burn to your eye. Doing the same with an incandescent rated at the same light output will also burn but to a lesser degree.

It's my guess they are rating the output based on brightness from the element itself or statistical data rather than how much useful light is actually produced by the package. I mean to say, the effective radiant surface of a frosted incandescent bulb is considerably larger than the few CM's of a bright LED array.

I have rows of stylish "frosted" LED's in our bathrooms. Our master bathroom has the longest stiring of 6 in a row. I believe they are 13 watt and their package boasted the same as a 60 watt incandescent. Based on the claim, the frosted LED's should produce the same size lighting surface as an equivelent frosted incandescent hence the same useful radiated light.
But they don't. The dim illumination of these "60w" LED's provide enough illumination to shower and other "business". We keep a pair of 40w incandescents of the same style frosted glass in the drawer for my wife's makeup etc because they produce more light.
You can even stare at the glowing frosted "60W" LED globes without hardly any retina effect, yet doing the same with a regular incandescent 40w of the same style will hurt your eyes.

If my hypothesis is correct, maybe that is why a box of LED's can claim the same as a 60 watt bulb (Element brightness not useful radiance) yet you get it home and it's quite obviously not the same.

Who gets to decide what is the "right thing" and what right do they have to force anyone to do it?