Actually I have experienced both sides: normal bulbs with low wattage and a strong yellow tint (because they were old/bad) make reading a book very hard because the contrast between the yellowish paper and the black letters is not strong enough.
OTOH, an extremly bright neutral-white CFL lamp (e.g. 100 W equiv.) can also make reading a book difficult because the paper reflects too much whiteness back.
The solution is to have not only 2-3 lamps for a living room, but 5-10 lamps for different purposes: a bright neutral-white reading lamp (about 60 W equiv.) for reading; a soft yellow- or red-tint table lamp (about 40 W equiv.) for mood; a ceiling beam upward with indirect light reflected (100 W equiv., strong white) for TV; a normal ceiling lamp for general use (2 or 3 60 W equiv. spots downward); a table lamp with white light for handiwork/hobbycraft (40-60 W euiqv.).
Sort of makes sense, as I noticed it when I switched back only 1 out of 4 lights to IC and noticed a difference right away and I wasn’t looking for or expecting a difference. But it doesn’t really matter as I tried CF and don’t like them, to me it’s a failed technology and I’ve heard many people say it’s just a temporary step till other lighting tech comes along.
Luckily you’re not the majority or a voice the lawmakers have to listen to, so the rest of the people can rationally pick the best model of CFL to help them save energy costs and money.
No. I’ve used CFL for a good 20 years (since I moved into my own apartment, although I think we might have used it at home before, but I don’t remember sure enough), and all that time, it was the alternative to conventional bulbs that wasted money and energy.
Only recently have LED lamps overcome enough hurdles to produce a mostly white light (and not coloured like in traffic lights), and they’re still quite more expensive as starting technology compared to either normal bulbs or CFL.
They also don’t come for free - while they use about 2-3W instead of the 11-20 W of CFLs, they still need rare earth and metals for their production, so given the future development of raw material prices they might stay expensive unless a good recycling programe is implemented. Only that your people don’t believe in recycling working because … ah yes, because the US has enough room to put landfills everywhere, I think was the reason.
It seems we have about three or four of these threads so I’ll just pick one to ask the question:
Is their a decent, dimmable CFL made? And has anyone had expierience dimming an LED bulb.
Generally I won’t use CFLs because of their “off” light. Even the ones that attempt to mimmic incandescent look kind of “off” and I can pick them out immediately, like reconstitued orange juice or artificial flavoring they’re OK for most people but can’t be compared to the original. However I thought of using them in my hallways which I obviously don’t spend much time in and the lights burn most of the day.
I tried a dimmable one in an enclosed fixture in my hallway. It wouldn’t dim below 20%; the dimming “range” of the bulb was only in the top part of the “range” of the dimmer, you had to brighten it to about 50% before it would turn on. And worst of all it would flicker horribly when dim and burnt out after less than a hundred hours. The brand name was “Neptun” and it said “use with most dimmers”.
Lowes sells an LED that looks interesting I’m tempted to buy next time I’m there to play around with.
Why do you need the hallway lights on “most of the day”?
Anyway, fluorescent bulbs can’t be dimmed very far. Dimmable LED bulbs can be dimmed much more. I have a pair of them in my room (Philips, I think) and they work very well. As an added bonus, they don’t change color at all when dimmed.
Or to put it another way they don’t make them screw shaped for nothing :eek:
And I do feel that technology will soon produce a quality alternative to IC lighting, but till then, yes there are some things to try out. But for CF been there, done that, came back, not doing that again
