Overcoming drawbacks to CFL (lightbulbs)

Factual Questions
1

The new compact florescent lightbulbs use less energy, don’t get as hot, and last longer. I’d like to use them everywhere, and in fact in California we may soon have no choice. However I’ve noticed a couple of drawbacks:

  1. The shape. I have one lamp where the shade clasps directly to the bulb … a bulb-shaped bulb that is, not a swirl that looks like soft serve ice cream.

  2. No dimmer. Every switch in my house has a dimmer. Mostly I could do without them, but there are a few cases where I do like being able to dim the lights. With a CFL, the light goes from on to off even with the dimmer switch.

Are there any workarounds for these?

2

You can buy CFL bulbs that work with dimmers.
http://www.1000bulbs.com/category.php?category=544

You can buy CFL bulbs that have an outer glass bulb in a shape similar to a common incandescent bulb.
http://www.1000bulbs.com/category.php?category=2086

3

It looks like all the bulb-shaped ones there are low-wattage, though. Even given a fluorescent’s higher efficiency, 16 watts doesn’t seem like it’d be much use in a table lamp.

4

[QUOTE=Chronos]
It looks like all the bulb-shaped ones there are low-wattage, though. Even given a fluorescent’s higher efficiency, 16 watts doesn’t seem like it’d be much use in a table lamp.
[/QUOTE]

A 16 W CF bulb is roughly equivalent in light output to a 75 W incandescent bulb. Unless you live on Mercury, this should be more than enough light for a table lamp.

5

[QUOTE=gazpacho]
You can buy CFL bulbs that work with dimmers.
http://www.1000bulbs.com/category.php?category=544

God, I would have killed for some of those 2 years ago. (I read that they existed, but no one actually seemed to make or carry them.) Every stinking fixture in this stupid house is on a dimmer, so I had to stick with incandescents. Of course, now I’m moving in a month, so it no longer matters.

6

I have a bunch of CF lights in my house some work well. They turn on very quickly. While other types take a few minutes to get to full brightness. I have also found that determining brightness from wattage seems to be iffy. Once brand’s 13 watt is noticeably brighter than another brands.

I started putting them in during the California electric crisis and found they really cut down on the electric bills. So much so that we kept getting refund checks because we cut down more than 10 or 20 percent from the year before.

7

A year or so ago switched as many of my lamps to CFL as possible. In a few places, the hallway, closets, etc., I simple live with the bulbs not coming up to full brightness right away. It’s not a big deal.

In the bathrooms the delay was annoying, but I have multi-bulb fixtures there, so I just left two of the regular incandescent bulbs in place, and used CFLs in the rest of the sockets. So I get an acceptable amount of light immediately, and save more energy than if I used all incandescents.

As a result, my energy use for the past year is down significantly, and I saved money overall, even though electric rates have gone up.

Now if only I could find some good CFL lamps for track lights to replace the halogens I have in the kitchen.

8

[QUOTE=toadspittle]
Every stinking fixture in this stupid house is on a dimmer, so I had to stick with incandescents. Of course, now I’m moving in a month, so it no longer matters.
[/QUOTE]

Light switches are very easy to replace, if this happens to you again and you’d just as well not have the dimmer.

9

I love you guys.

10

[QUOTE=toadspittle]

[QUOTE=gazpacho]
Every stinking fixture in this stupid house is on a dimmer, so I had to stick with incandescents.
[/QUOTE]

Little late now, but you could have used CFLs anyway, as long as you kept the dimmers turned up to maximum brightness when they’re not turned off. At full on, dimmers are just like a closed switch.

11

CFL’s are improving rapidly. For the last couple of years I’ve been using them as replacements every time an incandescent blows. The first CFL’s I installed have a noticeable (but not appalling) delay in starting, and noticeably start dim but then get brighter over about maybe 5 seconds. The CFL’s I’ve installed in recent times have no appreciable startup delay or gradual ramp up to full brightness at all.

12

I’d like to use CFL’s in select locations – does anyone know if the dimmable ones work with X10 systems? X10 requires continuity across the load in order to power the electronics. Plus X10 dimming isn’t a rheostat; it uses variable firing angle across an SCR or thyristor to do its dimming (maybe the pricey inductive load versions work? I think they’re amplitude modulated instead of phase angle controlled).

What about bathroom vanity lights? Anything that’s not crystal clear would look out of place, right?

13

[QUOTE=gazpacho]
I have a bunch of CF lights in my house some work well. They turn on very quickly. While other types take a few minutes to get to full brightness. I have also found that determining brightness from wattage seems to be iffy. Once brand’s 13 watt is noticeably brighter than another brands.
[/quote]
They also age gradually but noticeably, so a 2 year old bulb won’t be as bright as a new one. Incandescents don’t do that; they go full tilt until burnout.

14

[QUOTE=Balthisar]
What about bathroom vanity lights? Anything that’s not crystal clear would look out of place, right?
[/QUOTE]
You mean that the bulb is clear glass and not frosted? I personally have frosted incandescent bulbs, the big globe kind, in my vanity. They make a CFL versions of these. They also make versions with the outer globe clear glass and you see inside the soft serve swirl. If you poke around in my links from post 2 you can see some. Personally I would not get the clear ones because they look dumb but if the CFL with frosted globes would be at full brightness in less than 10 seconds I might put them in.

15

[QUOTE=gazpacho]
You mean that the bulb is clear glass and not frosted? I personally have frosted incandescent bulbs, the big globe kind, in my vanity. They make a CFL versions of these. They also make versions with the outer globe clear glass and you see inside the soft serve swirl. If you poke around in my links from post 2 you can see some. Personally I would not get the clear ones because they look dumb but if the CFL with frosted globes would be at full brightness in less than 10 seconds I might put them in.
[/QUOTE]
This is exactly what I was talking about in post #7. The globe-style CFLs I found, unlike some of the spiral lamps, didn’t start up at full brightness, so I mixed in two 25W incandescents with four CFLs.

16

Thanks for that link, gazpacho. I’ve been slowly replacing my incandescents with CFLs, but I don’t really know what I’m doing, so I find the cheapest ones with a decent lifespan that mimic my 60 watts and thats it.

Could someone tell me what Color Rendering Index and Color Temp mean (I suspect they have something to do with the “blueness” of the light so associated with fluorescents), and what I should be looking for in different lighting situations (kitchen, reading, bathroom, accent, work lights)?

17

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Could someone tell me what Color Rendering Index and Color Temp mean (I suspect they have something to do with the “blueness” of the light so associated with fluorescents), and what I should be looking for in different lighting situations (kitchen, reading, bathroom, accent, work lights)?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know from Color Rendering Index, so someone else can deal with that. Color temperature refers to the blackbody spectrum, and is given in Kelvins. The blackbody spectrum is the color of the emitted light of an ideal blackbody at a given temperature, a blackbody being what the name implies: a body which reflects no light of its own, i.e., is perfectly black. To give you an idea of what this mean in terms of lighting, some common color temps are as follows:

Average candle: ~1850 K
Typical incandescent bulb: ~2800 K
Full daylight: ~5000 K
Clear blue sky (w/o Sun): ~15000 K

In general, the higher the color the temp, the “bluer” the emitted light. Oddly enough, bluer light is referred to as “cooler” in lighting parlance. Choice of color temperature is largely one of comfort and personal preference; you’ll want to experiment with different ones in various rooms. For areas where the quantity of light is more critical, such as kitchens, workshops and reading areas you’ll want to brighter lights so you can see what you’re doing without straining and let the color temp fall where it may. For rooms where appearance is more important to you, such as bedrooms, living rooms and display rooms (such as where you might show off, say, an art collection) you need to balance both brightness and color temp to achieve the most aesthetically-pleasing results.

For fluorescents, which don’t have a continuous spectrum like a true blackbody source but rather are composed of discrete color bands corresponding to the different phosphors being used, color temperature is merely an approximation, and the actual color can vary rather considerably between one manufacturer’s bulb and another’s with the same rated color temp. So, you’ll not only want to experiment with different temps, you’ll also want to play around with bulbs of various brands, as well. By and large, lighting is more art than science but I hope the information I’ve presented here is useful to you in getting started.

18

[QUOTE=aktep]
Light switches are very easy to replace, if this happens to you again and you’d just as well not have the dimmer.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I know … but it’s a semi-rental, and I didn’t want to mess with things here too much.

19

[QUOTE=Q.E.D.]

[QUOTE=toadspittle]

Little late now, but you could have used CFLs anyway, as long as you kept the dimmers turned up to maximum brightness when they’re not turned off. At full on, dimmers are just like a closed switch.
[/QUOTE]

I did try this, but the particular dimmers here at max are just not max enough, I think. The CFLs would burn out within a day, tops.

20

[QUOTE=Q.E.D.]
For fluorescents, which don’t have a continuous spectrum like a true blackbody source but rather are composed of discrete color bands corresponding to the different phosphors being used, color temperature is merely an approximation, and the actual color can vary rather considerably between one manufacturer’s bulb and another’s with the same rated color temp. So, you’ll not only want to experiment with different temps, you’ll also want to play around with bulbs of various brands, as well. By and large, lighting is more art than science but I hope the information I’ve presented here is useful to you in getting started.
[/QUOTE]

Thank you! If nothing else, I’ve now learned that I need to be writing down the manufacturer and model information for each bulb, so I can buy the same exact one if I like it.