Comparing CFLs: Any Other Bright Ideas?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 01.10.08
Full photo from Tony Cenicola of New York Times here
You gotta love the New York Times for looking at both sides of a story, at how people justify their actions, or lack thereof. Julie Scelfo writes about one: “I want to use fluorescents, I try to live as green as possible. I telecommute, I recycle, I try to group all my errands together so I don’t have to needlessly burn extra gas.” But in her experience, compact fluorescents make her house look “dark, cloudy and cavelike.” The bulbs do not emit a “warm, comforting, inviting feeling,” she said. “Your home is your sanctuary,” she said. “It’s where you live and recharge, and it nurtures you.”
They then do a careful comparison of many of the CFL and other new bulbs and find many are awful, and that some are almost acceptable in colour and tone. None are perfect.
The Heuser family switched. “No, the light quality isn’t ideal, and in some you can hear a slight buzzing,’’ he said. “But I will have a hard time telling my children that I didn’t do much to alleviate climate change because of aesthetics.” photo Jenny Warberg
Tom Dixon, the British furniture and lighting designer, believes the main problem with compact fluorescents is simply a distaste for change. “I’m sure there were the same arguments when gas lighting replaced candles,” he said. “The light’s quality is very different, and it’s going to take people some time to adjust to that.”
All the bulbs in the home of Richard Sapper, the designer of the Tizio lamp, are compact fluorescent, and he is realistic about facing the change. “My wife is very aware of environmental problems,” he explained, and “she doesn’t give me a choice.”
He wasn’t enthusiastic at first. Even now, he said, “I prefer traditional incandescent light. But you get used to it.” ::New York Times
::New York Times see also ::Must Flatter, Work Nights and Last Forever
Table entitled "Maybe they're better for the planet, but how will the den look?
And please, no comments about the little blob of mercury. We have done that to death.
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Am I correct in that it was not a blind test? They knew which bulbs were in the fixtures before turning them on?
LA I think you are right, and I think throwing a halogen in(basically an incandescent) was not fair.
Am I correct in that it was not a blind test? They knew which bulbs were in the fixtures before turning them on?
Am I correct in that it was not a blind test? They knew which bulbs were in the fixtures before turning them on?
There is no mention of health effects caused by CFL ballasts emmiting electromagnetic fields (EMF) or "dirty electricity".
Sure, I agree they are better for the environment but can be harmful to your health. Ask any building biology consultant. There is always more to the story.
The issue with CFLs is often easily mitegated by 2 things. Buying lamps with proper color temperature (2700K) will do wonders (why do manufacturers even make screw base CFLs over 3500K is beyond me). However, much more important is the application. Fluorescent light is much more tollerable, nay lovely, when used in indirect applications, or in fixtures with nice shade materials. They will always look worse in direct lighting applications such as cheap downlighting where the lamp is visible.
I have had good luck with the GE CFL's that come in the yellow and green package (NOT the "daylight" ones, which have a green looking light, to me). When I moved into my apartment, I found out there was one int he bathroom fixture mixed with a normal bulb, and I could not even tell. I bought some more, and their light is definitely warm and bright. It's easy to find that kind, too.
I've had some Silvanias that were just junk.
I don't know what CFL's they are using, but my house is filled with them and I can't see a difference at all!
Besides, we shouldn't be looking for design flaws in the bulbs, the real flaw is in home design- conventional homes don't take advantage of natural sunlight.
So how can you have a 'blind' lighting test? ... sorry, I had to.
In any event, I have CFLs all over the place. The light is fine. Sometimes they are dark when you first turn them on but that is good for my sensitive eyeballs. My girlfriend is happy with the ones I put up around her place and also happy they will last a long time.
Getting used to a change, yes, I think that's it.
The CFL I have in the kitchen takes a few seconds to actually turn on after I hit the switch and then it takes a minute to increase to full brightness. It's annoying enough that that's the only place I have a CFL in the house. I also don't like that CFL's have mercury in them - they'll last longer than a regular bulb but what happens when they do die? My guess is people will start putting these in the landfill, mercury and all.
I'm taking a serious look at LED lightbulbs here but haven't committed to purchasing any yet because I can't find them locally and they are pretty costly. What I'm reading is that they need some improvement before they would be ready to replace the traditional bulbs too (too dim, too blue, too harsh a color, too expensive, poor manufacturing etc.) Maybe I'll just get some warm white LED holiday lights and string them up all over the place... sigh.
I totally get that making the environmental choice can sometimes mean compromising your standards. But I don't think you have to compromise when switching to compact flourescent lighting! You just might have to go somewhere a little larger than your local drugstore to get the selection you need.
I used Environmental Defense's CFL guide to find which bulbs are the brightest. Here is the list: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=633&fixture=1&shape=0&brightness=3&color=0&matchingBulbCount=13
Lauren Guite
Environmental Defense
Here's a link to the much better article from poular mechanics, which found that all 7 cfl's tested outperformed the one incandescent they tested. http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/home_improvement/4215199.html?series=15
I've used cfl's for years and they've improved immensely. None of my newer ones flicker, buzz, or cast annoying colored light. Those problems have been solved as far as I'm concerned.
I sell CFLs at an Orange box retailer warehouse (i could get fired if mention the company name as i am not an authorized representative to blah blah blah) ANYWAYS. I decided that since we were selling these bulbs and marketing them as Ec*Opti*ns that we should put our money where our mouth is and give our own products a go. In total I probably marked down at least 100 CFLs (total, maybe 200, I lost count..) for store use and put them most of our light fixtures. I first put them in the concealed fixtures (so no one would really notice and because i still think the curl is too harsh to be exposed directly out of a lamp without a diffuser. Its just not aesthetically pleasing and distracts from the fixture (unless its a day light bulb)). And then I moved to anything else that had a shade that pointed up. Anyways, Wednesday used to be "change all the 'bulbs" day when I worked but since I started putting those cfls in I don't think I've spent a lot of time changing bulbs since Spring '06.
But lets cut to the numbers. About 18 hours a day, the lights are on constantly. I used to change at least 30 light bulbs every Wednesday (which meant 30 more light bulbs had to be purchased by the store for our displays). Weekly. I put in the majority of these CFLs in late January to mid Febuary '07. 365 days X 18 hours = 6570 hours. The bulbs are rated at about 10000 hours (about 9+ years, based on the package defining one year of use as 3 hours per day). Its simple math. I've gotten 6 years of runtime out of the bulbs and I've only had a few (6 as of this being written) go bad.
Also, the lighting section used to be like an oven when you walked through, and now it is quite pleasant. And being that there's a huge industrial-size AC unit over my lighting area, I'm sure our store has saved a few bucks not only from the 1/3 power usage but also from the 1/3 heat output.
Now, I do still think CFLs are interim for advanced LEDs, but aren't LEDs interim for something else as well? Honestly, If you have a normal incan'tescent bulb thats on for more than an hour a day, get a CFL, and then in 6 years when LEDs or planar-fission-plasma etc. are rock bottom cheap (and they are RoHS and made in the USA by unions (yeah right!)) buy those.
Just don't buy the 3-way or 150W CFLs. The really big ones. They are HORRIBLE!