After the European Union banned conventional incandescent bulbs, Rotthaeuser’s entrepreneurial spirit was sparked. He started selling another product: heatballs.
What’s a heatball? According to this Teutonic Knight of Freedom and Light, it is a “small heating device” that compensates for the loss of heat a home experiences when conventional light bulbs are swapped for more energy efficient ones.
He then touts the new product as “The most original invention since the electric light bulb!” and explains, “Although a heatball is technically very similar to a light bulb, it is a heater rather than a source of light.”
A businessman with a conscience, however, Rotthaeuser also believes in truth in advertising. He thus is forthcoming about a certain unintended byproduct of his heating element, writing, “During its use as a heater, HEATBALLS have an unavoidable emission of light in the visible spectrum.” Pity that. But if heatballs are anything at all like incandescent light bulbs, they should be very efficient little space heaters, indeed.
That is one smart guy. I replaced all the lights in my place with high efficiency ones recently. It took me a few days to realize the bathroom was a little chilly all the time and it was getting annoying. I wondered what I could do to fix that. Tiny space heater? A new vent? Nope, five 100 watt old school heatballs above the medicine cabinet fixed that problem even better than the ones I had in there before. The idea has some real merit for some uses.
I have no idea what this has to do with price in tea in China today but yes, Big Brother really does exist now Guin. See the Patriot Act or the proposed SOPA bill. The latter is quite scary to internet users in the U.S. There are countless other examples that you might not find as compelling but liberties start as a fresh block of stone and are much more easily chipped away at rather than restored.
Neither have we.
I have a big box of bulbs in the closet that I can’t bring myself to throw away. Some day they will be collector’s items.
The incandescent lamp is pretty much dead, except of specialized applications. All these people who think they are going to "beat the system” are just folioing themselves, since all the major manufacturers are stopping production.
I don’t have a problem with the new ones as light sources. My problems come in from three directions:
They are friggen expensive little buggers. I know that’s getting better, but I’m not really well off, and I don’t want to have to think about my bank account balance when I have to replace a lightbulb. Perhaps that’s entitled and consumerist of me, but it’s what I’m used to. Sticker shock hurts.
They aren’t exactly the same size as lightbulbs - they aren’t the same shape, and they are often fatter or slightly longer. When you have a lot of specialty lights, it makes it hard to make the new type fit. If you can’t, then not only are you buying a new lightbulb, you’re buying a new light FIXTURE as well, or retrofitting/ghetto-rigging the original to make it work. See point one for problems with the first, and as for the second, I’m not really handy with electrical work, and I’ve seen ThereIFixedIt, and am not interested in contributing to that phenomenon.
Lastly, I really worry about them breaking in the house, and in the trash, and in the landfills, and really, just about everywhere. I don’t like the idea of little globes of mercury hanging about my house everywhere waiting for my cats, my husband, my potential kids, and my clutzy self to break them open and poison ourselves. Then I have to suit up to get them cleaned up, and then they need to be replaced (see point one again) and FINALLY I have to figure out where the fuck I’m allowed to safely throw them away without feeling like a bad person because I just put mercury into the local landfill. Fuck that shit.
All of that combined makes me a little techy, but as far as lightbulbs, bring em on. I’ve got heaters to actually, you know, heat.
I’m curious to see if the bill Congress passed (killing any funding for the light bulb ban) prevents the ban.
News media claims it will still happen voluntarily. That the stores will pull the stock.
We’ll know in the next few days. I’m curious to see if Kroger and Lowes pulls their stock of 100Watt bulbs off the shelves. Congress made it pretty clear they don’t have to.
hope this article is wrong. <sigh> Its up to the stores now. Will they pull the stock off shelves or not?
Incandescent bulbs are loved for two reasons, firstly people find the light warmer and more comfortable than the bright white light from a CFL, and two, they have very small upfront costs.
Ho ho you say, but a CFL costs far less over its lifetime than an incandescent. This is correct, however, many people do not have the luxury of making large scale capital investments in light bulbs that will pay off in the long run. These people have the cash flow to make a $0.97 investment in a four pack of incandescent bulbs versus much more for CFLs.
Don’t believe me? Well, ponder this, some very low income people actually will move into a hotel paying $200/week rent versus $400/month rent in a low rent apartment. A lot of people because of the vagaries of life on the lower side of the economic spectrum, live so much week-to-week that even though it is cheaper overall, they lack the ability to actually come up with a $400 lump sum once a month, because that would require them to carry money over from multiple weekly paychecks. With a weekly rent at a hotel they can pay it off entirely out of each week’s pay check.
Anyway, if you dislike CFL lighting in parts of your house my suggestion is to use them in places like hallways, kitchens, bathrooms and etc. In any part of the house you might sit for extended periods of time, read, watch TV or etc, use a halogen bulb.
Halogen bulbs look just like an incandescent, they are an incandescent, but they are made a bit different than the classic incandescent. They cost a little more, but their price point is below that of CFLs by a good bit. Like traditional incandescent bulbs they also burn out relatively quickly. But if you really want the traditional incandescent bulb lighting, from what I’ve seen the “warm” halogens look identical to regular incandescent, are only marginally more expensive (and their life is a bit longer so that mostly causes the price difference to be a wash) and most importantly they have enough energy efficiency that they aren’t being banned or even potentially being banned.
There is more differences to a fluorescent light than the watts. The light has a different, less-pleasing quality. It’s more blueish or yellowish than natural light or incandescents.
Some people have vision or headache issues with fluorescent lights. My daughter gets blind spots and headaches. We had to switch all our lights back to incandescents.
For me CFLs (or even traditional fluorescents, which I have in my garage) are great for any part of the house where I don’t need to sit and read or watch TV or etc. I don’t like them in the dining room, any room where I’d be reading, or any room where I’d watch TV. But for kitchens, hallways, closets, utility rooms, I think they’re great. Plus, hallways and closets at least in my house have some of the more inconvenient fixtures to replace, combined with the fact I don’t have those lights on very often CFLs can literally last 10+ years in those. I don’t believe I’ve replaced a closet light in over 5 years.
CFLs and fluorescent lights are good for task lights where you want the light source to be more multipoint and/or cooler thermally (so you can be closer to it). those bulbs give a longer lifetime when allowed to burn for maybe 30 minutes minimum.
for short term use lights (to navigate a room or find something in a closet) then LEDs work well. another useful type are clear christmas lights (either LED or incandescent, individual lamp string or rope lights); you get enough light for that purpose and they will last a huge amount of years. in a closest a incandescent single bulb, CFL or fluorescent bulb risk being broken if they aren’t housed behind a diffuser, an open incandescent single bulb is a fire hazard in a closet.