Not around here.
LED prices are sky-high, locally.
Moved Cafe Society --> MPSIMS.
They do make dimmable CFLs. You may have to go mail order to find them, or find out which brands do have dimmable models. This site does a good job of listing the specs on various brands of products.
I used to do energy audits on a regular basis. One of the few places where I recommended against using CFLs was in locations with explosion proof fixtures. You would find these in areas that had highly flammable materials in them, like paint booths or furniture manufacturing areas with lots of sawdust in the air. Fluorescents were a no-no there because they have an arc which could spark an explosion. I haven’t heard what replacements they have planned for those fixtures. Perhaps LED?
Can anyone point me to a brand of CFLs that has the warmth and color-distinguishing power of incandescent. I’m willing to go expensive, but it has to be really as good. I find that halogens are hard on my eyes and most of the CFLs age everyone. If I can find something for critical applications it will make me happy–otherwise I imagine I’ll have to have a hoard of 100 watt bulbs or use lots of appliance bulbs.
Also–there’s a measurement of the color distinguishing quality of light that has a two- or three-letter abbreviation. Anyone know what it is?
I was quoting prices from Amazon and eBay.
Which color of incandescent are you wanting to copy? Regular yellowish? Full spectrum (aka GE “Reveal”?) Bright white?
If you search for full spectrum CFLs I think that’s what you want. But CFLs come in whatever color range you want, just like incandescent bulbs do. I find the “Reveal” incandescent bulbs hwaaaay better for reading than the yellowish normal bulbs.
You want a lamp with a CRI (color rendition index) as close to 100 as possible. A CRI of 100 means that the color rendition matches that of daylight.
Another number that may interest you is the color temperature, expressed in Kelvins. Daylight is normally considered to have a color temp of 5000 or above. Oddly enough, “cool white” has a temp of around 4000, while “warm white” is lower, normally down below 3000. Warmer light temps tend to bring out more reds in the items they illuminate, while cooler temps tend to be more heavy in the blues.
Except that it seems that Visual Purple wants to replicate the yellowish light of conventional incandesant bulbs.
“Every single objection to CFLs only applied five+ years ago. CFLs come on fast, can be used in just about any socket, come in a variety of spectrums, etc”
So they will work well in my unheated garage in Wisconsin during winter?
Which, in turn, have been engineered to try to replicate daylight.
Incandescent lamps have a CRI of pretty darned close to 100. They vary from daylight mostly in color temperature, with variations toward the cool (which pick up more blues than full spectrum daylight) to warm (which picks up more of the reds in the spectrum, and less of the blue.)
My suggestion is to shop for the highest CRI, and then look at a color temp to match the type of incandescent you prefer. I prefer warm lamps, because people look better in warm light. If you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror with cool white lamps, you may think you look a little peaked. Warm white lamps will make you look rosier and healthier, which provides s a good mental boost.
I would look for a model that is rated for lower temperatures. It still won’t be great — CFLs tend to have reduced light output at lower temperatures. I would recommend using an enclosed fixture rather than a bare bulb, so that the lamp operation will heat up the enclosure, and thus increase the light output as it warms up. Alternately, you may want to use a higher output lamp in the fixture than you would otherwise to account for the light reduction during cold temps. That is, if you had been operating a 75 W incandescent lamp in there, you may want to get a CFL that has the lumen output closer to that of a 100 W incandescent.
OK thanks.
I tried some before and I might as well used a match to see to hook up the snow plow to my truck.
I can buy an 8 pack of 60 watt equivalent for $1.83 locally as well as a 6 pack of the 100 watt equivalent. I think it’s part of a state mandate for the electrical companies to reduce consumption (
). Don’t quote me but I think my local provider is underwriting it. On the other side of the state the utility company delivered 2 bulbs to ever residence.
If we switch over to compact fluorescents, won’t it be better to use regular fluorescent fixtures with replaceable tubes? The whole idea of a CFL is that it’s a fluorescent designed to fit into a socket for an incandescent. A CFL comes with its own ballast, which adds to the cost and gets thrown away along with the tube. Wouldn’t it be better to have the ballast be part of the fixture, so we only have to buy one, and just have some small, disposable spiral tubes?
Is my mother the only person who is stockpiling incandescent bulbs in a spare closet like they may save her life?
Every time she goes to Wal Mart she buys a dozen of them. She goes to Wal Mart all the time. This closet is pretty much full. Still she keeps buying them. She says you will pry them from her cold dead hands.
I use them for my porch and garage lights in Illinois. Never noticed any temperature related problems in the winter.
CFLs are more efficient than some tubes. I had a ring florescent (AKA the Landlord’s Halo) in my bathroom and replaced it with a standard fixture with a 60 watt equivalent CFL and dramatically improved the light level in that room. Newer T8 bulbs are more efficient than the older F40s.
I don’t have many CFLs, but one place I use them is in the coach lights on either side of our garage. The coach lights are “dusk to dawn” fixtures, so they’re on all night. The CFLs in them are a particular kind that GE calls a “Post Light”, apparently so named because they’re made for outdoor light posts and more tolerant of temperature extremes. Haven’t had to replace them for at least two winters now. They were $8-9 each, so there’s a hefty up-front cost, but the savings versus leaving a filament bulb on all night is substantial.
I replaced all of my bulbs with Compact flourescents in 2002, and when I was a renter for the first few years I did bring them along with me every time I moved - on move in day I unscrewed all the incandescents, put them in a box, and replaced with my CF bulbs, and on move out day reversed that. In my current owned home every bulb is CF except the appliance bulbs. Regarding outside lights when I lived in northern illinois in the winter the porch lights worked fine with CF bulbs after the first 30-45 seconds - the light output started out at maybe 25% of what it eventually reached but once warmed up was fine and plenty bright.
If I had room to store them like that, I’d totally do that. I hate these stupid CFL’s.