We all know what lack of marital bliss translates to or not... ----- Original Message ----- From: Edward Przybylek To: BlindHandyMan Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 2:26 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Information On CFL Bulbs
Hi all, I just spent a lot of time trying to become knowledgeable about CFL bulbs. After a great deal of searching and reading, I found the two articles below to be very useful when deciding which CFL bulbs to purchase. The thing I found most interesting is that CFL bulbs have a temperature rating that helps describe the color of the light they produce. I installed a handful of CFL bulbs a year ago but my wife has complained ever since that she doesn't like the color of the light. She says it looks a little pink to her. After reading the attached articles, I think I now know why. I just ordered 10 CFL bulbs with candelabra bases that have a temperature rating of 4100. If what the articles say is true, then the new bulbs should eliminate the problem and once again restore marital bliss in the household. And, as we all know, marital bliss translates into ... Well, I'm sure you all know. Hope you find the information useful. Take care, Ed *** Article 1 *** http://www.machomeautomation.com/article.php?story=CFL1&mode=print Compact Florescent Bulbs and X10 (part 1) Tuesday, March 27 2007 @ 04:44 AM PST Contributed by: James With continuing news items about the banning of filament light bulbs and the continuing improvement in quality of compact florescent light bulbs there is quite a bit of interest in using these with Xtension. I use a LOT of CF bulbs in my system and thought I would outline some of what I've learned in a few articles here. First I'll just tell you what I know about CF bulbs in general and then get down to the specifics of using them with X10. You Get What You Pay For: There is nothing more useless and annoying than a cheap CF bulb. Don't buy cheap CF bulbs from cheap brands. The color of the light will bother you, the audible noise from the ballast will bother you, the flickering will bother you, the interference the cheap ballast creates eating your X10 signals will bother you and the fact that it will burn out before you've recouped your investment in it will also bother you. Cheap bulbs save you nothing. My personal favorite brands of bulbs are from Sylvania/Osram, Phillips and GE. I have also had excellent luck with the reflector floods of the Commercial Electric brand that Home Depot sold. They have been replaced by new branding but as far as I can tell the lights are the same. Please note that I have not had the same good luck with the other Home Depot bulbs, just the reflector ones. In my hometown Lowes carries a good selection of the Sylvania lights, the Wallmart has started carrying Phillips bulbs replacing the old brand they used to carry which if my experience is any indication probably every other one got returned a week later.. And just about everybody carries GE bulbs. Color Temperature Confusion: "Warm White", "Bright White", "Full Spectrum", "Daylight" etc. the terms are a bit confusing and dont mean the same thing from brand to brand. Most good brands will print the actual color temperature somewhere on the bulb ballast itself if not on the packaging and that will help you figure out what you want. Everyones experience of color temperature will be a little different and it's very much up to personal preference. Before spending big bucks on buying a case of something to replace every bulb in your house, buy a couple of the different temperatures and try them out to see what you like best. I'll tell you what I've learned below. Warm White is generally in the 2700k or 2800k temperature range. It's also sometimes called Soft White. This is the color that CF bulbs have that is closest to a regular light bulb. In other words fairly yellow. The cheaper brands though can even look green at this color temperature. The Warm GE bulbs and most of the phillips bulbs run in this color are pretty good. This color is better for dimmer lights or lights that need to blend in with regular bulbs. For example, individual lamps or fixtures that dont need to be terribly bright. The lamps in my living room are all this color temperature because they need to blend in with the regular incandescent bulbs in the ceiling fan which are on a dimmer and can't be easily replaced. I would stay away from any bulbs that have a lower temperature than 2700k. I've seen some labeled as low as 2400k but that would be just yellow green and probably horrible. Bright White is in the 3000k or 3100k range. This is my favorite color for large amounts of light. While warm light works well with a single bulb or a smaller wattage, higher color temps need more light to look good. A single 3000k bulb in a room will look grey or dim, like an overcast day rather than a useful light. At least that is my experience. But if you have a lot of them it's far superior to a large array of 2700k bulbs. My kitchen has 8 recessed cans and I've replaced them with 3000k Sylvania 30 watt CF bulbs (100+ watt equivalent bought at lowes and some of my current favorite bulbs going in everywhere the older cheaper bulbs fail) these are fairly expensive bulbs but the kitchen is wonderful with them in there. Full Spectrum, Daylight etc... I use 4100k tubes in my workshop and garage, but in the house proper I have no use for anything higher than 3100k. The 6000k lights look bright blue to me and I just can't find a use for them anywhere. This is personal preference of course, high temperature bulbs seem much more popular with my friends from Japan and parts of Europe than with Americans. I dont know if this is a real cultural difference or if it's just a flawed sample... But before you purchase a lot of these bulbs get one or 2 to test out and see if you like it. I can't see any use for the more expensive "full spectrum" bulbs at all. There is a significant price premium for them and they simply dont make that much of a difference as far as I can tell. You can also safely ignore the "CRI" index which is an indication of how accurately they reproduce colors, but I can't see that it really applies so well to CF bulbs as it does to incandescent bulbs and in my limited experience the color temperature is a more important indicator of what the bulb will look like. Less Heat!: For me the single greatest benefit of CF bulbs beyond the brighter better light is the lack of heat. In this Southern clime where I find myself these days the AC has to work very hard in the summer. In my kitchen with that array of 8 cans all with the 75 watt halogen bulbs that were there when we moved in, the AC could not cool the downstairs with them on. Since 90% of the energy used by a traditional bulb comes out as heat that was 540 watts of heat being pumped into the room all the time the lights were on. The CF bulbs generate comparably little heat and more light. Now I can actually turn the lights on in the kitchen without baking. The heat issue also translates into a significant better safety margin as well. My daughter has a torchiere style lamp in her bedroom with a flexible extra lamp attached for reading in bed. She also has curtains right there as well as a gauzy thing with disney princesses on it hanging over her bed. With traditional bulbs in this kind of lamp there is a significant fire risk from curtains or other things getting too close to the lamps! With a CF bulb there is no fire danger and I can safely let her pull the reading lamp down against the gauzy stuff as thats only a 15 watt CF bulb in the reading lamp, and I need have nothing to fear from the brighter bulb up top and it's being pushed against her curtains. They simply dont generate enough heat to worry about. Brighter Light in Older Lamps Another great thing about CF bulbs is that you can put a much brighter one into a lamp that can only hold a smaller incandescent bulb. In the big floor lamp in my family room which has a 100 watt maximum rating I've got a Y adaptor and 2 150 watt equivalent CF bulbs. There is no way to safely put 300 watts of incandescent lights into that lamp, but it now lights the whole play area using only 70 watts of real power. It also has a really big shade which lets me fit the 2 bulbs under there at an angle, you couldn't fit them with a smaller lamp. If the CF bulb wont fit under the lamp harp you can actually buy bigger harps at the hardware store, but you may find that it doesn't look right with the shade you've got in there if you have to do that. GE has started making smaller footprint 60 watt bulbs now that should fit into almost everything and Phillips has 60 and 40 watt bulbs that are quite tiny. Modes of Failure Even the most expensive bulbs I've bought and my favorite Sylvania 30+ watt 3000k bulbs suffer from some infant mortality. Save your receipts as a faulty bulb will almost certainly show up in the first week or so and you can return them. of the 13 Sylvania 30+ watt bulbs I have in service, 2 of them failed in the first week and were returned. Once you get past that point though, I've not lost any more in the last 3 years. So like any electric appliance, if it's going to fail early it will probably fail in the first few days or weeks. In the better bulbs I've never had a problem with base up/down or what kind of fixture I've put it in. Most bulbs warn about putting in completely closed fixtures, but I've not had a problem with this either as I like to torture test them. In the cheaper bulbs I started out with, the base up/down makes a huge difference in their lifespan. Every single one of the 60 watt or 75 watt equivalent cheap bulb I owned that was used in a base up or sideways way has failed. The power supply parts in them just aren't designed to operate under the higher temperatures. The way those lights failed however is distressing. While they continued to light up and work apparently fine from the outside, they began to produce huge amounts of powerline noise, silencing just about every x10 signal in the whole house. Sometimes only while they were warming up, sometimes only when they were warmed up, but they appeared to be running normally so it was hard to track down. Yet another reason to avoid the cheap bulbs. I have never had this experience with any of the brands I've mentioned above. Dimmable and Exotic Bulbs Dimmable CF bulbs have come a long way in usability and a long way down in price from where they started. The Home Depot here actually carries some dimmable 65 and 75 watt equivalent Phillips branded flood lights that I've experimented with, and they work pretty good. You can't put them on a regular X10 wall switch though as they will refuse to be controlled by it reliably. There is a new type of bulb also coming available now called a "cold cathode florescent." They generally only come in very dim wattages so far, are more expensive and have a very small and tightly wound lamp tube. But they also have a dimmable ballast and have a much wider range of dimming than a regular CF dimmable bulb which generally go out below about 50% or so. I have 2 like the pictured one in my front porch and several of the candelabra style ones that Home Depot carries in other outdoor lights. They use even less power for a similar amount of light as a CF bulb so are excellent for dimmer outdoor lights that get left on a lot. The dimmable candelabra bulbs from Home Depot though are only 15 watt equivalent. What is the point of dimming a 15 watt bulb? The other bulbs max out right now at a 60 watt equivalent, but it's actually more like a 40 watt equivalent. I've got them next to a real 40 watt bulb here and they are even a little dimmer than that. So while they advertise being dimmable, the actual usability of it is rather limited since they are already so dim to start with. They are also not available in the better color temperatures yet, only 2700k. Next Time I'll write about the specifics of controlling all these lamps with X10, how to make them reliable with appliance modules, what kinds dont mind being on a lamp module or wall switch (as long as you dont dim them) and so forth. *** Article 2 *** http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/home_improvement/4215199.html?p age=1 The compact fluorescent light bulb revolution nearly occurred back in the early 1990s. When CFLs first hit the market in force, consumers bought them in large numbers - but they hated them. The bulbs were too big for many fixtures, expensive (up to $25 each) and they threw a dim, antiseptic light that paled next to the warmth of good old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. Now, a new CFL revolution is at hand. Retail giants are pushing hard for the bulbs - Wal-Mart hopes to sell 100 million CFLs by the end of the year. In California, a legislator recently proposed banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs in the state by 2012. All the old benefits of CFLs are still significant - more so, in fact. They can use less than one-third the electricity of incandescent bulbs of equivalent brightness and last up to nine years. The new bulbs are smaller and far cheaper (about $5 each) than their predecessors, and more powerful than ever. Top-end 24-watt bulbs promise brightness equivalent to that of a 150-watt incandescent. Still, when it comes to illuminating your home, brightness isn't everything. Can CFLs match the light quality of the energy-wasting incandescents we know and love? Popular Mechanics designed a test pitting seven common CFLs against a 75-watt incandescent bulb. To gather objective data, we used a Konica Minolta CL-200 chroma meter to measure color temperature and brightness, and a Watts up? Pro ammeter to track power consumption. Our subjective data came from a double-blind test with three PM staffers and Jesse Smith, a lighting expert from Parsons The New School for Design, in Manhattan. We put our participants in a color-neutral room and asked them to examine colorful objects, faces and reading material, then rate the bulbs' performance. The results surprised us. Even though the incandescent bulb measured slightly brighter than the equivalent CFLs, our subjects didn't see any dramatic difference in brightness. And here was the real shocker: When it came to the overall quality of the light, all the CFLs scored higher than our incandescent control bulb. In other words, the new fluorescent bulbs aren't just better for both your wallet and the environment, they produce better light. CFL BACKGROUND Color temperature: The lower the color temperature, the warmer the light. Warmness (red) or coolness (blue) can be measured in degrees Kelvin by a chroma meter. We observed a temperature of about 2700 K for soft white bulbs, whereas "daylight" bulbs measured around 3400 K - real noontime sunlight ranges from 5000 K to 6500 K. Lumens vs. lux: Manufacturers use a complex process to measure lumens, the total quantity of light emitted by a bulb. We used a light and chroma meter to measure lux, the light intensity a bulb shines on a surface. Our observed results in lux generally tracked with manufacturers' lumen ratings. Watts and efficiency: Our ammeter's CFL wattage results were all within 3 watts of manufacturer ratings - but all CFLs use about 70 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs. The average U.S. household has 45 light bulbs - replacing that number of 75-watt incandescent bulbs with CFLs would save $180 per year. Phosphor: This chemical compound lines the inside of CFL tubing. When excited, it converts ultraviolet radiation into visible light. The chemical composition of the phosphor determines the color temperature of the light emitted by the bulb. Mercury: According to the EPA, CFLs contain an average of 5 milligrams of mercury, which increases the bulb's efficiency. But that also means you can't just trash them-CFLs must be properly recycled. Visit Energy Star or Earth 911 for disposal instructions. Beyond Fluorescent with LEDs: Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are tiny yet powerful sources of light that are even more energy efficient than CFLs. Manufacturing LEDs that produce light equivalent to a 60-watt bulb is expensive, however. One bulb can cost as much as $75. Test results Sylvania Double Life Soft White Price $1.10 Brightness Stated: 1055 lumens; Observed: 975 lux Watts Stated: 75; Observed: 78.2 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 2850; Observed: 2736 Color B+ Perceived Brightness B+ Faces B Reading C+ OVERALL GRADE B Comments Remarkably, this Sylvania incandescent was the lowest-rated bulb. "Much warmer" than the others, but yellow colors "appeared greenish." N:Vision Soft White Price $5.97 Brightness Stated: 1200 lumens; Observed: 925 lux Watts Stated: 19; Observed: 19.4 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 2700; Observed: 2845 Color A- Perceived Brightness B+ Faces A Reading B+ OVERALL GRADE A Comments One of the top bulbs for reading and illuminating faces, the best-in-test bulb was "slow to warm." Still, it was "pleasing and good overall." Westinghouse Natural Light Price $6 Brightness Stated: 1200 lumens; Observed: 840 lux Watts Stated: 20; Observed: 17.5 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 3500; Observed: 3433 Color A Perceived Brightness A Faces A- Reading B- OVERALL GRADE A- Comments Despite its middling luminosity, the bulb was ranked by our reviewers as one of the brightest, giving our model a "healthy" glow. Philips Marathon Price $3 Brightness Stated: 1250 lumens; Observed: 865 lux Watts Stated: 20; Observed: 20.8 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 2700; Observed: 2680 Color A- Perceived Brightness B- Faces A Reading B+ OVERALL GRADE A- Comments The Philips tied the N:Vision as the best bulb for illuminating faces. Participants found it "warm and cozy," but "slightly diffuse" and "not very bright." MaxLite MicroMax Price $4.50 Brightness Stated: 1200 lumens; Observed: 900 lux Watts Stated: 20; Observed: 20.3 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 2700; Observed: 2738 Color A Perceived Brightness B- Faces A- Reading B- OVERALL GRADE A- Comments The MaxLite excelled at rendering colors. It appeared to emit light reminiscent of the "sun at the beach," with "very good color vibrancy." Sylvania Daylight Extra Price $5.75 Brightness Stated: 1200 lumens; Observed: 822 lux Watts Stated: 19; Observed: 18.9 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 3500; Observed: 3370 Color A Perceived Brightness A Faces B Reading B- OVERALL GRADE A- Comments This Sylvania tied the MaxLite in best color rendering. It was a "nice, ice white" though also potentially "too bright for a heavy reader." Westinghouse Soft White Price $6 Brightness Stated: 1200 lumens; Observed: 830 lux Watts Stated: 20; Observed: 17.8 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 2700; Observed: 2709 Color A Perceived Brightness B+ Faces B+ Reading C+ OVERALL GRADE B+ Comments Westinghouse's soft white bulb was an average scorer overall. Its "warm" light appeared very low, and hurt one person's eyes while reading. GE Soft White Price $5 Brightness Stated: 1200 lumens; Observed: 843 lux Watts Stated: 20; Observed: 19.8 Color Temperature (°Kelvin) Stated: 2700; Observed: 2693 Color A- Perceived Brightness A Faces B+ Reading C- OVERALL GRADE B+ Comments Also an average scorer, this rated low as a reading light. Its "yellow" light produced "accurate" color, but details were tough to distinguish. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
