Incandescent light bulbs, a relic of the past
 

I was recently looking at a web site that sells LED's and instead of giving specs for them, color temp and lumin output they compared them to Incandescent light bulbs of varying wattages, granted I grew up with solar panels, wind power, I now own two electric cars, and am the type of person reads owners manuals and who wants to know how many lumins my light bulb is.
Looking back20 years ago when my parent bought first screw in florescent bulb remember it gave off a greenish light, was not exactly compact and I'm pretty sure that they spent as much on that CFL as I did on my first screw in LED (1 watt, 35 lumins) when screw in LED's first came to market.
Now I've bought many CFL's and a handful of LED's over the years but I'm almost 30 years old I realize I've never bought a "standard" light bulb and most likely never will.

It is a good problem to have: to decide what kind of light bulbs to use.

Good problem to have "to be almost 30". Probably never had a rotary dial phone either.

We had a Rotary dial phone for many years, I also have one friend who was still on a party line up until shortly before they got internet.
Of course we also lived for years with a hand pump on the well and I've spent almost a third of my life without in door plumbing and a few years later before we had hot running water.
I enjoy living in the future tho with the modern things like cell phones that replace alot more then a phone, a lap top that fits in my cargo pants pocket, solid state lighting, video projectors that can sit in the palm of your hand, I don't even use the CD player in my car, all my music is on a micro thumb drive that plugs in to the USB port on the radio, but don't worry, I still know how to handle LP's and how to clean a tape player, but I choose these devices because they also use a fraction of the energy that their older counterparts used.

It just reminds me of the people who get their first electric car and talk about how their kids might never learn to drive a gas car.

I like incandescents for certain applications and opposing their phase-out is the one, singular thing that loony toons Bachmann did correctly.

I have a box of old ones that are still good, I agree, they do have their place, I used a handful of them in my attic as they will only be used a few minutes every few years while checking for roof leaks and I have one on a motion sensor switch in my garage that comes on for 5 minutes every time you go in to put a bike away.
I'm sure the handful of used incandescent bulbs I already have will last me decades.

incancesdents remain a good solution for light that don't get a lot of action. They are instant on and at full output right away. You have to decide if you are more interested in energy efficiency or money efficiency. If money is the motivator than lightly used lamps will most properly be incandescent.

If all the incandescents are gone, how will we keep our pump housess from freezing up in the winter ? :)

(For you city folks, a 40W bulb gets left on all winter in a thing that looks like a dog house with no door that covers the pump for our well water. It doan't come from a pipe in the street like yours. )

Heat tape, which doesn't waste 5% of the electricity as light :-) With a thermostat so that it only comes on when needed.

Oh, and as a matter of fact, I still have a rotary dial phone, mounted on the kitchen wall. Inherited from the previous owner of the house. And when the power was out for about 4 hours a couple of months ago, it still worked.

It is about 2.3% for light with a 40W incandescent...

Heat tape in a pump house would be the best tool for the job, a light bulb in there is going to do just as much to heat the walls of the pump house as it will do to heat the pipes and the built in thermostat that heat tape has will allow you to only have it come on when needed, paying for it's self in just a few months.
Better yet would be to insulate all around the pump house to keep the ground from freezing, then insulate the walls so the ground keeps it warm and you can skip the electric heat all together.

I don't think that incandescent bulbs will ever completely go away, you will always have a few locations where you want the heat as well as light, like for raising freshly hatched chicks, or where the light is used so seldom that you might as well stick an old bulb in there.
But if I am alone in never having bought a "standard" bulb, I don't think I will be for long, at least I hope not.

I see this concept pointed out from time to time tongue-in-cheek, but few actually realize that light just hits the walls turning into heat - just as almost all light energy turns to heat. I've even heard it said an electric space heater is not "100% efficient" because it has a pilot light! But that is ridiculous unless one supposes the light heads directly and only toward the nearest glass window. In any household sense a CFL is also a 100% efficient heater, just not all of the heat originates at the bulb, but some from the walls and furniture that absorb the light.

In propane-heated house in the winter with the curtains closed at night, unless your propane is cheaper than dirt, it is tough for propane to beat the efficiency of leaving every interior incandenscent bulb switched on. It is a bargain by almost any mathematical calculations. The incandescent bulbs on the inside of the average living room are just as good as electric heat, and I was surprised to learn this once I actually did the math.

It is my thinking that switching to CFL in those instances only makes the house less net efficient by virtue of more highly-priced smog producing propane needing to be burned to replace the BTUs the bulb throws out.

CFL is also a real bummer in some applications if you have to throw it out and replace it twice a year.

I use halogen work lamps with the safety glass removed for "extreme zone heating". Not only do I get more than enough heat, I don't need to turn on any room lighting. :thumbup:

Another extreme zone heating strategy I just recently implemented is placing a three-headed floor lamp right next to the toilet, with the bottom two fixtures containing 75w "heat lamp bulbs" which are marketed as party lamps but appear to be identical in every way to heat lamp bulbs except for the low wattage. The idea was that since heat wants to rise, why in the world would I want my heat lamp in or near the ceiling??? Anyway, the little bulbs put out a pleasant heat for that zone and of course, I can also leave the room lights off.

CFLs in very cold rooms (45 deg. F) take many minutes to "crank up". Oftentimes I'm in-n-outta the room before the stupid CFL knows I'm there. Thus, in several fixtures I've reverted back to superior (for the application) incandescent. I do like CFLs in rooms where the lighting tends to be on for longer periods, like the kitchen.

I don't see how, unless your electricity is even cheaper than dirt. It just equates to electric resistance heating, which is about the most expensive heat there is.

In fact, I'd think it's less than half as efficient as burning the propane directly. If you're getting electricity from a fossil-fueled power plant, it's converting maybe 50% - often less - of the fuel's heat energy to electricity, then there are transmission & distribution losses on top of that.

No calculations? I used to firmly believe what you said and paid many thousands too much for heating. Resistance heating is about 3412 BTU/kWh which for me is $0.06. That is per kWh as measured at the house (not kWh produced at the power plant) so losses are already factored in. So by dividing, I get 56000 BTU per dollar of resistance heat. Propane on the other hand, I have paid as much as $2.60 a gallon, each gallon is 92000 BTU (at 100% efficiency which a gas furnace is not). So at best propane is 36000 BTU per dollar at that price.

I know some people can get propane cheaper than $2 and electric is more than 8 cents off peak, but when you factor in gas furnace efficiency, even then it is very tough to calculate a scenario where propane wins. Plus electric heaters are easier to customize on timers for each room individually.

I have not seen a careful calculation of pollutants but I suspect they are close. The coal plants have scrubbers and other point-source mitigation, but the propane furnace is just vented from so many millions of houses. Sure if you neglect coal mining energy, petroleum subsidies/wars, energy for refinement, and the gasoline or diesel needed to transport to distribution facilities and deliver all the propane, there is surely additional "total energy" in the electric heating scenario due to thermal and transmissions losses, the physics says there must be. But even in that specialized measure of efficiency, that does not mean net effect of electric heating is worse either in dollars or pollutant level. I still burn propane during on-peak electric, of course, but switching to electric off-peak I think comes out far ahead.

There's a difference between price and energy efficiency, you know. So assuming 50% efficiency at the generating plant (which is better than average) means you've already lost half of the heat energy in the fuel before it even gets on the grid.

On price, I think you're paying about half as much per KW as the national average - hereabouts it's 11-12 cents/KW.

And why would you use resistance heating, when with a heat pump you'd get 4X as much heat per KW?

Cuz resistance heating is dirt cheap and heat pumps are not?

From the wall outlet in, resistance heating has gotta be real efficient.

DANG !
We're paying over $3 for propane here !

FYI, we hicks know what heat tape is and use it. Try and get it to effectively go around a pump and bladder tank. By the way, it's also resistance heating, and it draws higher watts.

Frank, love the heat lamp idea. Works great in the garage, now I'll get one for the "outhouse"

Problem with heat pumps is you heat the whole house, not just 1 room. Ever see one work when the temps in single digits ? I've listened to mine spend nearly as much time de-icing as running and just shut it off for the night.
Still like an airtight stove the best.

What was the origional topic ?

Oh, yeah.

I hope the LEDs take off, I'm a bit worried about the mercury in CFLs. It's mandatory that flourescent lamps get properly disposed of by companies. I wonder what impact hundreds of CFLs in landfills will do to our water supply?

From what I've read, the amount of mercury in a CFL is still less over all then the amount that would end up in our air, then in our ground water if a incandescent bulb was used powered by a coal power plant, I can't remember the number it but it was a big reduction even if every CFL went in to the land fill and leaked in to our ground water and for that to happen the land fill water collection system would have to fail as well.

Yeah, I know 50% or more energy is lost. The propane delivery trucks are pretty inefficient too. I just have not seen complete energy analysis that shows propane is better. For cost efficiency sure I know average electric is 11-12 cents. But for many people it's about half that "off-peak" and about double (over 25 cents) "on-peak". That's why I was careful to point out you can't beat propane automatically unless you use timers to take advantage of peak pricing and run it strictly at night and on the weekend. The power plants have surplus nighttime capacity which seems to go to waste.

I found "small" heat pumps for a single room that vent out a window but they are about 600 bucks. The are not rated for use below 40F. I would gladly pay if they could run down to -10F and had a 10 year warranty. It would probably beat resistance heat, but I think most heat pumps are freon-based and have moving parts and will fail too quickly for the average homeowner. Does that sound right?

I'm an ecovillan I use incandensant lights often because I use them rarely and usually only for a few minutes, most of the time I leave all the lights off.

Also when I go into the -20 deg garage and I want to grab a tool in a few seconds I don't want to have to wait an hour for the light to brighten so I can just shut it off after completing my errand.

It also seems that my 8+ year old incandensants seem to be outlasting all my compact fluoresants. Seems like the most I've ever gotten out of one is 2 years before it dies, very irritating.

My folks also do small time ye olde fashion computer portraits in the summer (the old cloth wanted posters) and are stocking up on spot lights for the camera. Non-incandensant bulbs make everybody look blue or purple :(
Its amazing a 23year old computer can still do really nice photos but then again it was $25k new.

I plan on stocking up a bit on 40-100watt light bulbs, I figure a couple dozen should last me the next 15 years or so (as long as I don't drop them when the light fixture fails and I move the bulb to another). Most regular light bulbs I've had fail is because of something I did, not that it burnt out.

Cheers
Ryan

I hear a lot of complaints about the short life of compact fluorescents. I have CFLs I bought over 25 years ago when they first came out that are still working. Of the at least 20 CFLs I've used over the past 25+ years, only four have failed. Two of those are ones I acquired in the past two years. The problem isn't that CFLs are inherently unreliable. The problem is some lousy manufacturers have entered the market. Like everything else, there are quality products and there are garbage on the market.

I think it has a lot to do with how you use the bulb, if the light is turned on and off a lot but only for a few minutes (or even seconds at a time) it tends to crap out very rapidly. At least CFLs do, I don't think they are designed to handle that very well.

Now I do have NON-CFL florensents that are OVER 25years old but I tend to think them a better bargain overall despite the size.

I've slowly been replacing my incandescents with CFLs and LEDs over the last few years. My "investment" in LEDs seems to be paying off. The C. Crane GeoBulb, for example, used to cost $119, IIRC. Now, the bulb is on sale for $25 (since the release of a newer bulb).

I purchased an example of several of the popular LED bulbs from C. Crane, EarthLED, and LEDlight.com and have been experimenting with them. Most have:
30,000+ hrs lifespan
1-13 watts tend to "equal" 10-100 watts from incandescent bulbs.
No mercury or lead
Instant-on
Improving color and
1-5 year warranty

CFLs have their purpose in my apartment as the 'heat lamps.'
Incandescents could be useful during the winter as heat lights too, but I prefer to just wear layers and drink lots of hot tea and hot cocoa...

The biggest problem is brightness and directionality. Finding the right application for the bulbs, most of which are not omnidirectional, is a bit tough.

My first LED that I bought ($45) about 7 or 8 years ago is a one watt LED and is not very bright, you can read by it if it's pointing at your book, get it far enough from a news paper to light both pages and it starts to fade out a little, my newest LED ($11) is 1.1 watts and is much brighter, it lights up my entire room and I use it as a task light over my desk and is a multi directional LED, really it's 18 LED's, 6 on each side of a pyramid where that old LED I have is a single LED that is set up as a spot light and the spot is not as bright from the same distance as the new multi LED cluster.
At some point this winter there is talk of an LED party among some of my friends, the idea is to get people who are interested in LED's together to see what they look like in real life, I see this kind of gathering as important because there is no other real good way to compare what people have bought online to what you can buy in a store to what you bought at an event from a vendor who had a display, I hope someone brings a light meter so we can get some real life numbers on how bright they are.

A LED party sounds awesome! It'd be neat to test my collection of bulbs empirically.
I once bought several LED bulbs that utilized panels of perhaps 100 diodes, but several of them failed prematurely--soldering, circuitry?
I prefer the light engine technology of high-power LEDs; they are brighter, much more durable, and the warranties are generally longer-term. 5-7.5 watt LED bulbs can now compete with 40-60 watt incandescents.

Been there
I think LEDs hold more promise for general in home lighting than fluorencent I am still waiting before I dive in as my first little tikes were nothing more than toys that broke rapidly.

I am also curious if LEDs are at all affected by extreme cold, this would be the make or break for some areas I need light.

Cheers
Ryan

I replaced all my Incandecant bulbs with CFL's and to be honest the purchase costs of the CFL's was nearly $200. I wonder how long it will take to actually re-coup the initial expence :(

I guess with rising electricity costs, less than I currently imagine.

nice to have options...
 

I use incandescents to drive my food dehydrator. Cheap, available, very efficient at making heat (approaching 100%), the right sizes, adjustable (4 lamp bases, use what you need, change wattage, etc.)

I use CF in most of the house.

Haven't found the exact right combination of lumens/$ for "corncob" LED lights for the house, but I keep looking.

One of my church buddies is expanding into sales of LED's for industrial lighting of refrigerated warehouses. Follow along...

Right now, the warehouse is using high pressure sodium, and it takes several minutes to attain proper brightness. As a consequence, they have to leave them on all the time so the fork lifts can do their job. But they have to pay the refrigeration bill to remove all that excess waste heat.

Roger's LEDs are instant on, so they wire up each aisle with a motion detector. When the fork lift heads down aisle, it lights up as needed, and shuts off shortly after he leaves. They save electricity on the light itself because it's more efficient, and a lot more because it's only on a fraction of the time, not 100%, and save much more electricity on the heat-not-produced-and-not removed.

He has some samples that physically fit in conventional 4' fluorescent fixtures, but you have to remove the ballast. They run on straight 120V.

He is working on some of the local grocery/big-box stores, but they are intimidated by the high initial cost, despite the long term math looking very attractive.


Interesting times we live in.

troy