Re: Price of Light Bulbs

Don Klipstein wrote:
In article <TItZf.9112$4L1.1251@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Robert Gammon wrote in part:

In some households, replacing all the incandescent bulbs with CFs will even cut the cooling costs in summer time (going from 3000 to 5000 or more watts of heat from lamps to 300 to 500 watts of heat from CFs)

Heat output is only reduced by a factor of 4 and that I find to be a bit on the optimistic side - not a factor of 10!
Oh yes, the light produced in a home mostly does become heat in the home! Figure mostly 97 to 99.99 percent of electrical energy going into a lightbulb becoming heat materializing in the home! Compact fluorescents are only 20 to optimistically 25% efficient at producing light, although with a spectrum favorable to human photopic vision and can be 4 times more efficacious that way than incandescents (5-7% efficient and with a somewhat less luminously-efficacious spectrum) - but that means 75-80% efficient as heaters in addition to the light that does not make it out the windows!

I surely see the good points of compact fluorescents, but I also see a lot of resistance to them with a significant portion of that resistance due to failure to meet some exaggerated claims!
I surely see that the truth and nothing more optimistic than the truth is good enough to sell compact fluorescents! Customers that are not disappointed will be repeat customers and pass on good word of mouth!

I surely think that sales of 23 watt compact fluorescents will increase if they are advertised as meeting/exceeding 75 watt incandescent and 100 watt extended-life incandescent as opposed to being often found half a step short of the 1710-or-so lumens of a "usual" 100 watt incandescent!

- Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)
Feit's 25W standard CF is rated for 1600 initial lumens, very close to the nominal 1710 of 100W incandescent and their 25W Mini CF is rated for 1800 initial lumens.

I am picking the 15W for SIZE. i have fixtures that I want to put a brighter lamp into, but lamp length cannot exceed 5 inches.

But even in incandescents, there is lots of variance in light output between brands, and models of the same manufacturer. Buyer beware, read the labels CAREFULLY!! Most of us only pay attention to the wattage rating when we need to be looking at Light Output!!!

.

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