I try to think of the environment as much as I can when I buy stuff. We kept it in mind when we bought our fridge, oven and dishwasher. Unfortunately, it’s only one factor of may when we buy things. For example, front loadings washers are more efficient than the traditional top-loading washers. But we just didn’t have the extra $500 when we bought our wash / dryer set. But after hearing on CNN and independently confirming that “If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road“.
Last night though we were out shopping and we bought some
compact fluorescent light bulbs to start replacing our incandescent bulbs. They’re a little expensive, but are supposed to more than pay for themselves over the life of the bulb. According to my rough math using the values provided on the package, it should save about 75 cents per month per bulb. Reading about these things has taught me a few things about compact fluorescent bulbs.
First of all, you can’t use them in any fixture controlled by a dimmer switch. We’ve got a couple of those so that affects where we can use them. Unfortunately, our two dimmer switches control two of the four most used lights in the house. That’s a bit disappointing but there are still many fixtures I can change.
The second thing I learned is that they generate a fair amount of heat. I thought that they’d be much cooler than they actually are. I’m not entirely sure why I thought they’d be cool, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
A third thing I learned is that you can’t put them in an enclosed recessed fixture. We don’t have any of those though. We have enclosed fixtures and recessed fixtures, but none that are both enclosed and recessed. I’m hoping that they’ve used proper English on the warning labels…
The fourth thing I learned is that compact fluorescents give off some radio frequency interference. That’s mildly concerning given that I use wireless Internet and have a couple of wireless telephone in the house as well. So far there haven’t been any problems though so I don’t think I’ll have any problems.
The fifth and last thing I’ve learned is that they contain mercury. That’s definitely worth noting since any broken bulb might release some mercury and we’ve got a cat that likes to poke around at things, especially things that could make her sick.
All in all, I’ve learned a lot and I’m pretty happy with the light bulbs so far. I’m expecting to change all of the ones that make sense to change. We won’t change the ones in the bathrooms since we want some high quality light in there for grooming purposes. But by the end of it all, we should have changed about 10 light bulbs which should help the environment out a little bit.
I’m not sure what our next green step will be, but I’ll be keeping my eyes open for something that will fit our lifestyle and make the world a fractionally better place.
compact fluorescent, energy efficient, House and Home
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