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Incandesent Light Bulb Ban

21K views 90 replies 27 participants last post by  SuthnCustoms 
#1 ·
Our government has once again deemed what is best for the general public.
They have decided (some time ago) that incandesent light bulbs are not energy wise and that they should ban them from being sold.This is being done to force the manufacturers to create better more efficient bulbs for americans to use (yeah right , and 134 a was supposed to fix the ozone too remember)
However california has banned the sale of 100 watt bulbs allready leading the way for the rest of the nation as of 2012. After that anything above a 40 watt will be outlawed in 2014. Some decorative bulbs (22 alltogether) will be an exception as far as I know, but untill when I dont know.
This is not to say you cant buy a 100 watt bulb, but it wont be a energy hog like an old thomas edison designed incandesent. It may be a halogen or a LED ( not cheap).
NOW, all that being said a lot of people are stocking up around here as some of them think you wont be able to buy any incandesent bulb of any wattage , wich is probably due to bad information, you know second hand, heard it from so and so.... My point is only to get everyone to do a little homework on the subject so you are not all caught off gaurd when the legislation is in effect.
In shop lights the rough service incandesents are kinda pricey anyhow and they melt plastic covers and the metal ones burn the skin , so we are using the spiral flouresecent bulbs at 13 bucks a piece. They are a little more exspensive but they dont get hot and the light they give is actually quite good.I drop mine a lot and they handle the abuse well.
Not that I am in favor of 50 dollar light bulbs but this is one place I have to say I prefer the flourescent bulbs.
I will be stocking up on bulbs for the house but we dont use anything larger than a 60 watt bulb so I have time to get to the store.
It might pay to look at the alternatives and costs long term and short term to see wich direction you want to go.Maybe it is time to stock up on light bulbs like guys did with R 12. ;)
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Dollar tree sells 60W ( equivlant ) spiral flourescent lights made by Sunbeam. For $1. That's generally what I use in my shop light.. also keep some Harbor Freight shop light bulbs around also


Wonder if the old sign At GE Power systems will 'go dark'. I don't know if it's still lit with incandescent lights, but I'm pretty sure it was in the past

 
#4 ·
I've changed over to as many of the CFL bulbs as possible. There is one major drawback with using them - up to 6 grams of mercury in each. Officially, our town dump wont take them, but since there is only one electronics pickup per year, they get dumped anyhow.

Matt - there would be mayhem if GE turned off that sign and those 1300+ incandescent bulbs. They have started shutting it down from 11:00PM(or earlier) and since they have decommissioned their old mercury boiler power plant it's all National Grid.



I worked for years in the building (Bldg 2) just across the street from that sign

Dave W
 
#6 ·
I don't have a single incandescent bulb in my house. I started replacing them one at a time when they burned out, and last year UPS showed up with a box of those spiral ones courtesy of the local electric company. I have a great big "100" watt one in my living room in the ceiling fan. It's a monster, but lights better than the old incandescent 100 watt bulbs. That and they last practically forever.

At the shop I work at, I changed to the spiral ones about four years ago and they still work. The almost zero heat output is a huge plus.
 
#7 ·
Incandescent lights

There is only small issue with the CFL-type bulb- same one as with Florescent lights in general - cold weather!

I have a few florescent spotlights on the outside of my house and when you turn them on in cold weather, they take "forever" to warm up and actually start shedding a decent amount of light.

I'm not talking 40 below here either - if it is a few degrees above freezing, they just don't "light up" quickly. If they are connected to motion sensors to deter trespassers, you may as well not bother!

Here in Canada, they have been moving towards a ban on "energy hog" incandescents for a year now, but in a lot of both Canada and the USA, cold weather is a fact of life, that the geniuses who came up with this idea didn't seem to consider!
 
#8 ·
Fellows this is one I will have to side with the tree huggers on and incandescent bulbs should have been banned as soon as CFLs became widely available. Incandescent bulbs are extremely wasteful and switching over to more efficient lighting is one of the most important moves this country can make in order to save energy. CFLs are the answer until even more efficient lighting becomes available but if the entire country switched over now it would save a staggering amount of energy so it should be done as soon as practical. The argument that CFLs are polluting is very misleading, believe it or not standard incandescent bulbs contribute more Mercury into the environment than CFLs! They do this by requiring thousands of tons of coal which emit Mercury containing smoke stack emissions, tons of coal that otherwise would not need to be burned. Incandescent bulbs are an outdated and extremely wasteful technology that we need to abandon as soon as we can.
 
#9 ·
Irelands child said:
There is one major drawback with using them - up to 6 grams of mercury in each.
i figure it's a mater of time before they ban all florescent lights because of mercury

led lights use way less than florescent, this is the way to go...
but right now a 60 watt equivalent bulb is $35 (but uses 7 watts)

i do have a couple of 7 watt equivalent led bulbs that use .5 watt and
a couple of 15 watt equivalent led bulbs that use 1.5 watts
now that is energy savings

and latech: this is really old news, climb out from under your rock more often :D
 
#11 ·
tech69 said:
I had one of those stupid spiral lights. They don't light crap and didn't last 5 times as long as advertised. It didn't even last as long as a normal bulb but cost nearly 5 times as much.


Just like most anything else out there some are decent and some are total junk, buy the well known brands and they work just fine. Also the early ones need a couple of minutes to warm up before they would reach maximum brightness but this problem has, at least with the "brand name units, been pretty much solved except in cold conditions and that is still a problem. As far as bulb life I agree that none I have seen lasted anywhere near the claimed life expectancy but they all lasted far longer than most incandescent bulbs.


Of course there is the famous bulb that had been burning at a California firehouse for over 90 years (or something like that), anyone know if it is still burning?


EDIT: Yep it's still burning and it is 110 years not 90! It was turned on in 1901 and has apparently been burning ever since! :)

www.centennialbulb.org/facts.htm
 
#12 · (Edited)
Dimmer bulbs

Lights that operate with a dimmer switch such as the bulbs in ceiling fans must be incandescant bulbs. Stock up on those. It seems that enviromental and conservation laws passed in California determines what the rest of the country will have. California was successful in getting rid of Magic Mirror lacquer paint and replaced it with stupid water base paint that wears off in ten years. You cannot get parts chromed in California. I have guys in California calling me wanting to know where they can get good triple chrome plating done in Texas. I refer them to chrome shops on the east coast (Paul's Plating) where they don't care about the enviroment.

Some day California is going to slide off into the Pacific Ocean and then our life will return to normal.
 
#13 ·
oldred said:
EDIT: Yep it's still burning and it is 110 years not 90! It was turned on in 1901 and has apparently been burning ever since! :)

www.centennialbulb.org/facts.htm
I was going to mention that light bulb, but I couldn't remember the name. All I remembered was it was in a fire house.

As far as the lights dim. The spirals generally don't, but the 1's that have the spiral encased in a globe ( to look like a normal light ) usually do take 5-10 mins to turn to full brightness for whatever reason.

CFL isn't the fix all to the antique incandescent design tho. Dimmers and light sensors that screw into the fixture will not work with CFL's.. I don't have any of those so it does not effect me, but will for others
 
#14 ·
Here locally the river has water that stinks in the hot part of summer and there are consumption limits recommended for fish from the TVA lakes because of pollution and even here in TN the visibility can become quite poor from smog, the problem is much more apparent when flying over it and I have often thought about just how scary it is having to go back down into that hazy mess hanging over the land and have to breath it. Fellows the attitude about our environment has got to change and some of these things that are being scoffed at are in fact serious problems that are already causing us a world of hurt and are only getting worse because of our attitude.

I think one big problem is the environmental "extremists", as I call them, that scream the sky is falling over just about anything so nobody pays much attention to them when they are trying to point out something that is in fact a real problem. Industrial pollutants, such as those Chroming shops which can be really bad if not properly run, are still fouling our environment at an alarming rate and the dumping of change oil, antifreeze, paint by products and waste, etc by DIY'ers is just about as bad. Scoffing at polluting the environment is, well let's just say less than smart, and if we don't make some changes our children are going to suffer from it even if we don't. Things have gotten a lot better in the last 50 years but we still have a long way to go and as the population and crowding continue to get worse we had better start to rethink our attitudes on the environment while there is still some livable environment left!
 
#16 ·
aminga said:
The CFL's last about 30 minutes in my blast cabinet. Don't know what about the environment kills them but it does.

There is a tremendous amount of discharge from static build-up inside a blasting Cabinet (just try blasting in the dark and you will see) so that is probably the problem there. CFLs are not the answer to everything obviously and I hope the newer technology will solve the shortcomings of them. LED lights costing $50 is the news right now but just like everything else they are going to squeeze (as in price gouge) every penny they can out of them to recoup R&D costs but the price will come in line before long, much too big of a market there so competition will be fierce quickly leading to lower prices. We need to embrace this new technology and incandescent bulbs should be trashed as soon as possible instead of hoarding them up for future use.

Each year thousands of tons of coal and the resulting pollution from the emissions could be saved if the entire country switched over to even the CFLs so why is there so much resistance to change?

The local utility had a sign at the building entrance that said a 75 watt bulb cost $140 a year to burn if it was left on 24 hours a day so if an energy efficient bulb used 1/10 of that, well the incandescent bulb hoarders need to do some math!

It actually gets worse in the summer when running an air conditioner because all those bulbs burning are in effect little heaters causing your AC to work even harder, don't think it amounts to much? Those little toy ovens that have been sold for many years use a light bulb to bake cakes and several burning at one time most certainly can cause an AC to use more power in addition to the power already being wasted by the bulb, scoff at this if you like but it will cost you when that power bill arrives.
 
#17 ·
#19 ·
OneMoreTime said:
Main thing I do not like about those new bulbs is the quality of the light. seems like they put out a harsh lite which is hard on my eyes..hope they come up with some better ones in that area.Sam


Are you talking about the LED lights? I have not seen one yet but I sure don't like the light from an LEd flashlight, it even makes some people nauseous.
 
#22 ·
oldred said:
Are you talking about the LED lights? I have not seen one yet but I sure don't like the light from an LEd flashlight, it even makes some people nauseous.
My woman gets migrane headaches pretty easy , and flourescent bulbs are not good for that. Something about that wavelength of light really messes with her. No flouresecent bulbs at my house.
I am trying to be open minded, dont get me wrong , we need make changes for the better use of energy, its just that some people cant afford this stuff and it is hurting the finacially.
I would put neon in if it were cost effective. LOL :thumbup:
 
#24 ·
latech said:
My woman gets migrane headaches pretty easy , and flourescent bulbs are not good for that. Something about that wavelength of light really messes with her. No flouresecent bulbs at my house.
:


That's not the first time I have heard that one and I am sure there must be something to it, flickering lights have been known to trigger migraines. I have heard that fluorescent lighting is dangerous around rotating machinery and some shops will not use it because of this and I certainly can't say that it's not true. However I have fluorescent lighting over my lathe and I have tried to vary the speed to get this "timing light" effect that is supposed to make spinning tools and/or stock appear to be stopped, it vary well may happen under the right circumstances but I have not been able to create this effect.
 
#26 ·
That's the effect I was trying to achieve but I was never able to do it under standard fluorescent tubes, not saying it don't happen just that I could not do it. The hazard is supposed to be that under the right conditions around spinning machinery a moving part could appear to be stationary and someone might touch or try to grab this moving part. I have heard of this happening and to play it safe I will assume it can happen and work on that assumption while around moving equipment.
 
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