low energy bulbs??

[Stephen]

has anyone installed these and noticed a difference in your electric bill?? just curious............

[centexchick]

I have them in a few places. Not really a difference in the electric bill, but I will tell you that I have not had to replace any of them. I have had the ones in the living room for around 1.5 years. If they would have been standard, I would have replaced them twice.

They make the lighting weird until you get used to it. At least we thought it did....

[Yellowstang]

My bill dropped %45 after I replaced the bulbs in my entire house.






















Not really, but I have replaced the ones I use most often, kitchen, livingroom and bathroom. They do use a lot less juice, Mythbustrers did a test before on turning lights on and off and how much it uses, the flourescent bulbs used a lot less.

[Mychael101]

We have had them since our house was built and I've yet to have a $275+ electric bill. And we always have lights on, dishwasher, and laundry (much more since our daughter was born). I don't even think I've had a bill over $250 and we are all electric. I'm sure that the heat pump and being in an energy star certified home don't hurt either.

[Osiris]

My bill dropped %45 after I replaced the bulbs in my entire house.






















Not really, but I have replaced the ones I use most often, kitchen, livingroom and bathroom. They do use a lot less juice, Mythbustrers did a test before on turning lights on and off and how much it uses, the flourescent bulbs used a lot less.

Yep, and LED's kicked the shit out of the flourescent bulbs, BUT, at a much higher cost.

[fordracing19]

We have some in recessed can lights. They are brighter when warm but are dim when first turned on.

[Sgt Beavis]

Yep, and LED's kicked the shit out of the flourescent bulbs, BUT, at a much higher cost.


Yup, you're exactly right. LED bulbs are kick ass thrifty when it comes to power consumption. They just cost a shit load of money..

However the prices are starting to make their way down as manufacturing processes get better. I think LED bulbs will start to become more popular in the next 5 to 10 years. IMO Fluorescent bulbs a stop gap measure to greatly reduce power consumption until LEDs are really viable.

The good news is that many of those fluorescent bulbs will actually last until they are obsolete.

[Red 342 H.O.]

Got them in my house for every bulb. Took me a few months to buy them all a little at a time but now they are in every light socket. The way I look at it.......I am burning like 13 watts vs. 60 watts if I leave a light on or something. Plus they put off lots less heat than regular bulbs and that is good in the summer.

[Chuck]

I've replaced a few in the areas mostly used.

[STRONGNUFF]

Yup we have those flouresent bulbs all over the house and while it does take a few minutes for them to get to their brightest light, when you compare a light bulb with 60 watts of energy output but only use's 15 watts of actual energy, thats a huge savings !

Just my .02

[bullet]

I switched the majority of my house to them a few months ago, I did the math and if you go to walmart you can get 6 of them for 9.88. Each bulb that you replace will save you approximately .43 per mont per bulb, so it takes roughly 4 months to recoup the initial investment back. I have been comparing my bills an for the last 2 months they have been the lowest for each month in the 4 years I have lived in my house. It looks like it is saving roughly 8 to $10 a month in electricity. Like someone said, a nice benefit is less heat. I first installed them in my office that was always hot because of all the equipment running and I could tell a big difference in the reduction of heat. On a 13 watt cfl you can hold your finger on it and will not get burned. try that with a 60 watt regular bulb. Another benfit is they also put out more lumens or actual light compared to a regular. A 13 watt cfl will put out ~ 100 more lumens than a regular bulb and ~ 200 more than a long life regular bulb. So basically you get less heat, more light, and save ~ 43 cents a month per bulb. The downside is they take a few seconds to warm up to max light output and they cost ~ 1.78 per bulb. They do also contain trace amount of mercury in them but since they last 7 to 9 years it is really not a big issue. Another benefit is you can use a larger bulb and get more lumens without changing the fixture. Say a light socket is rated for 60 watts max. Since a cfl uses ` 60 - 78 % less watts than a regular bulb, you can actually run a much larget cfl and still be using much less energy.

[pgans]

In our living room with vaulted ceiling the previous owner had 6 150W bulbs :eek:

We replaced those with equivalent CFL's (23W) and now we use less power in the living room for the entire lighting than 1 bulb used before. Heck, it's probably worth it just for the heating savings in the summer. Those fixtures were hot with the old bulbs on!

[propellerhead]

You may not notice a drop in your electric bill. Lighting accounts for a small portion of your total bill. Heating/cooling, water heater and the oven are the big hitters. As pointed out earlier, the low energy bulbs produce very little heat compared to the incandescent bulbs. That translates to less heat for your a/c to cool.

[Rafa]

I just replaced almost all my bulbs with the fluoresent ones. Ones outside I replaced with the "daylight" fluoresent ones. They're pretty bright. Kind of have that blue/white look.

[GT98SVO]

Flourescent ones I bought don't work with dimmer.

It just flickers on and off.

Do any of these low E bulbs work with dimmer?

[white87306]

Flourescent ones I bought don't work with dimmer.

It just flickers on and off.

Do any of these low E bulbs work with dimmer?


You can get dimmable CFL's but none of the manufacturers have perfected the technology yet. If you have a group of them together they will dimm at different rates.