In addition to the excellent points raised by Princhester, this is mere semantic quibbling, as well. The cause of the CFL fires is also fundamentally a human failure–a human failed to use correctly-rated parts in the manufacture of the bulbs. Ones that are properly constructed to UL specifications do not catch fire.
Simple. Like deposit bottles from the days of yore, you return your old tubes to get a reduced price on your new ones. Sure, some of 'em will still get tossed, but there’ll be a motive for scavengers (such as the homeless) to gather and return discarded tubes. I remember how my brothers and I used to scavenge highway shoulders for pop bottles to get money for candy bars and comic books.
Canada is phasing out incandescents also so I’m not smuggling them, but as the USSR is missing nylon tights, the 'states seem to be missing decent CFLs so I’m going with that instead.
My favourite hardware store has two big names in CFLs (Globe and Luminous), and each has dimmable, 40,50,60,100,150 watt equivalents, regular base, chandelier base, two-strange-pin-type base, fan-style-spotlight, pot-style spotlight, outdoor spotlights, 50-100-150 tri-lights, coloured lights, blacklights, buglights… the main types being available in either pure-white-my-bathroom-looks-great-and-books-are-easy-to-read and standard incandescent-yellow.
Magiver and Q.E.D.: just last month my brother told me he’d been reading when he smelled something burning; the small lampshade designed to clip on to the incandescent bulb in his reading lamp had gotten knocked off, and the lampshade was turning brown where it touched the bulb. So there’s another reason to go CFL.
Right, that is not an inherent problem with CFLs. *Any *electrical product that is impropery manufactured can cause a fire.
Sorry, for not getting back to you sooner. So the CFC’s are 4X more expensive out where you are? So, assuming your figures, that means that the CFC’s are then 1/2 the price. They last around 8-10 times longer, you know. Anyway, if you do shop around, I have found them a deep discounts.
The casino where I work seems to replace bulbs on some kind of schedule, whether they need to or not: I helped myself to some of the bulbs they were throwing away and installed them in my home a year and a half ago, and none of them burned out yet.
Such a replace-on-schedule policy is common in large businesses or similar situations it is difficult to replace the bulbs (you have to bring in tall ladders and disrupt the gamblers on the floor).
Same thing often applies to freeway lights high overhead – that usually takes a bucket truck and blocks a lane of the freeway – so you will see them replace all the bulbs in a row at a scheduled time.
But businesses other than casinos often have to be more economical, and don’t throw those bulbs away. I worked in a company where they went thru the high-ceilinged warehouse every so often, and replaced all the bulbs. But the old ones were kept, and used in lights in the office area, where anyone could just stand on a chair to replace a burned-out one. (Often the markings on the used ones were faded out, and that sometimes surprised people. Like when the burned-out 75-watt bulb in the restroom was replaced with one that gave the equivalent light of a 300-watt bulb!)
I have one of these bulbs in my bedroom. It was in there before I moved in (the place is rented), so I don’t know the age of the bulb. However, as of the past few weeks, the bulb is noticeably dimmer - the light it emits is almost depressing.
Is this a problem with all these types of bulb, or just the old versions?
Try taking off your Raybans.
One problem is that light output decreases with age, so even if the bulb is still functioning, it may make economic sense to replace it well before it actually fails.
What I did wasn’t intended to be a comprehensive survey by any means. I was out making a supply run because I had a very unpleasant stomach bug (still do) and I had to drive right past Home Depot to get to the other places I was going. I’m sure I could turn up better prices if I did do a comprehensive survey, but, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not do in my current condition.
Actually, if you do the math, 4 CFCs for $6.88 comes out to $1.72 a bulb, while 6 incandescents for $1.04 come out to 17.3 cents a bulb, making the CFCs almost 10 times as expensive. The difference surprised me, too.
Most of us in this thread, however, are well enough off that even that we can manage to pay that large a difference up front in return for long term savings. I’m not thinking about us, though. I’m thinking about ordinary Americans and people who are already facing increasing prices for gas and just about everything else, it seems. If you’re scraping to pay your rent or mortgage already, the extra cost may be tough on the budget.
I brought up CFCs to the gentleman the other night. Price differences aren’t our reason for not switching to them yet; mercury is. I saw Lonesome Polecat’s post about collecting bottles beside the road, but CFCs don’t usually reach the end of their lives in people’s cars, and they do contain a toxic chemical. I don’t know how likely the mercury is to leak out if a bulb is tossed out of a car or thrown down a trash chute. Yes, we could pay people to return them but how much would that be and would it be worth people’s while to get it? After all, one reason manufacturers like rebates is the large number of people who don’t apply for them. How many ordinary Americans recycle? On any given day, the recycling box in the trash room on my floor of my apartment building contains bottles, tin cans, and the occaisional coat hangar. It’s never all that full. Can we realistically rely on people to recycle CFCs rather than throwing them down the trash chute?
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. I’m reluctant to buy CFCs until I know there are enough places I can take them to recycle them; on the other hand, companies and governments are unlikely to provide places to recycle CFCs until there are enough in use to generate a demand for them. Toner cartridges for copiers come with instructions and packaging for sending the old one back to the manufacturer. So did the last cell phone I bought (I really have to send the old one back one of these days). I looked for similar instructions on the packages of CFC bulbs, but all I saw was a referal to a website.
Please stop calling them “CFCs,” you two. They are CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). CFCs are ozone-depleting chemicals. That is all.
Carry on.
I hereby cease, desist, and apologize. I’m afraid my ignorance has showing, been showing, so please consider it fought.
I’m all in favour of saving the planet and all that but when I try to use my solar powered calculator in the one room I have a cfl bulb fitted -allegedly the equivalent of 60w- I have to shine a torch on the little sensor that collects all the light to get the damned thing to stir into life. 
I have used a couple of the led bulbs
they are fantastic for certain purposes such as
someplace you want a light that is always on, never burns out and is practically free to run but doesnt need perfect lighting for your eyes. then this is the bulb for you.
outdoor floods, they are often not as bright as a good bulb but when you factor in the low low cost to run and the insane lifetime of the bulbs you would have a hard time convincing me not to use them. (led’s have a life span ranging from 50,000-100,000 hours, at 75,000 hours thats 8.5 years of use without ever turning it off)
and yeah flashlights, super bright, low energy cost.
I would like to see them used in other places as well. with the white or yellow leds you could have a kind of track lighting that was super thin, works with a dimmer switch, and could easily be strung in any room to provide ambient light.
Is that the case in real life? I have been replacing my incandescent bulbs as they go. I have 9 spotlights in the kitchen. When one regular bulb went, I replaced it with a CFL. The next bulb to go was that CFL. I replaced it with the other CFL in the pack of two and only half of the bulb lit up and the other half flickered badly. I have gone back to regular spotlights.
I also relaced three 60W bulbs over the kitchen table with supposedly equivalent CFLs. The light was very dim. I replaced them with 100W-equivalents and the light was still dim. On inspecting them I noticed that two of the three did not light up fully - about one third to one half of the coil was just dimly lit.
Sounds like there is something wrong with those sockets. Or the CFL’s you bought. My CFL’s easily last 8x times a normal cheap bulb. Sure, when I bought those Natural Light Spectrum $10 each bulbs, they lasted pretty damn long too.
No doubt it is the CFLs. My point is that a rather high percentage of those I have bought seem to be defective, raising my doubts as to whether they live up to the claims overall.
I’ve complained as well in the past here about the incredibly poor life of CFL’s at my house, and was essentially told that I was wrong. On top of the light problems, I need some serious convincing that if I spend 5-10 times for a poorer quality light that it’s not going to burn out in 100 hours like the last one.
I’d be interested in LED lights if they could withstand a high cycle time. What is the best light, I wonder, for a use where a light has a very high number of short duration uses?
This still aggravates me. I don’t mind people telling that CFLs are great, or whatever, but I have a real problem with the government of New York State telling me that I can’t buy incandescents, considering that the electricity in this area comes from nuclear and hydro, and excess demands on the system are met by purchasing from HydroQuebec. The bulbs are still more expensive, and they don’t hav elonger lives if they’re used in, say, an apartment ceiling fixture that gets jostled by the upstairs tenants.