RustyBattleship

I had to say NO although I do use SOME CFL bulbs here and there. All the lights in my garage, kitchen and bathrooms are standard flourescent lights. BUT, the chandelier lights, ceiling fan lights (3 fans), bedside lights and hallway light are standard.

Why?

Because I have them wired to dimmer switches. Flourescent lights do not work on dimmers. When we need just a little bit of light to find the TV remote or not trip over one of the dogs, a dimmer is just the thing and uses very little current. In most cases they are on for only a minute or two so CFLs would be a waste of money and produce way too much light for those applications.

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omon

i use my plazma tv as a monitor, pip is sure great invention, i can watch tv and be on comp, at the same time.

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omon

lol, that can wake the whole house up, i did once step on my old dogs tail once(or was it a paw?), i still have a bite mark on my leg, and he woke everyone in the house up.

Ironduke

The GE Longlife Plus Soft White Energy Saving Bulb is dimmable. You can find it on the shelf at Wal-Mart.

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JAD_333

Lifespan of OLED is moving up rapidly. eMagin which makes OLED microdisplays for near-to-eye devices claims IIRC 5,000 hrs. But those are active matrix. I believe the lighting devices will be passive matrix like the OLED screens now used on many cell phones.

Yes, I've seen a rolled up "newspaper" where you touch the masthead to "turn" the pages. The picture quality is noticeably better than LED...simply amazing. Check out this outfit on NTE stuff... eMagin: Making Virtual Imaging a Reality . Basically the screens are "printed" in on a round piece of silicone at a Taiwanese foundry and then the chips are cut out at the assembly plant in NY. All the circuitry and programming is right on the chip. Kodak owns the core patent.

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omon

that is true, however, fluresents use different dimmers, you can dim cfl with regular incd. dimmer. other way around, it might work but i,ve never tryed.

JAD_333

Westinghouse makes a dimmer that will work on any CFL, dimming or not dimming.

One word of warning on CFLs: frequent switching off and on reduces their life considerably. They say don't use them in closets; rather use incandescents. I question that. We have a 24" flourescent fixtures in our closets that have been in service since 1996 and are still going strong. Also, it's against code to use incandescents in closets unless they are encased.

BTW, all Energy Star CFLs are dimmer compatible.

omon

correction, i should have said, you can,t dim cfl with regular incd. dimmer. you need one that is designed for cfl.

Debbie

Don't know if it is the same one, around $11.00. Saw it the other day and as my bony fingers were reaching for it noticed the price tag. They hastily withdrew as I need 6 of them.

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dalem

Dunno. I assume GE. I've got it stashed away as my stove overhead light so it doesn't bother me.

-dale

Parihaka

The Ron Paul issue has already been explained in the appropriate forum and yes, in this thread you are spamming. Take a holiday and then decide if this really is the forum for you.

RustyBattleship

Ah yes. They got you coming and going to buy products I don't really want.

To begin with, there are already two different dimmers that incandescent lights work on quite well. One is a rotary knob where you can slowly dim (or brighten) to the intensity you want. The other is step up (or down) switches like a common 3-way switch. Yes, you have to buy a 3-way bulb to work, but usually all but the high beam burn out anyway.

Oh, I forgot another. It's a 3-way switch that my wife and I use for our bedside lamps. The nice thing about them (and that's different) is you don't have to grope for the switch. Just touch the lamp and the light comes on. A second touch its a little brighter and just right for reading. A third touch is bright enough to help me find a hearing aid battery I dropped on the floor. The fourth touch is OFF.

Well, then, there's The Clapper, but who's interested in that thing.

In either case, the CFLs won't work on the present day dimmer, 3-way, touch or clapper switches. You have to buy SPECIAL switches, at more cost than perhaps the bulbs, and install them IF they will fit in your standard switch boxes.

Ctom3

I get my information from 25 years of experience in the lighting industry in applications, product design, specification sales and teaching lighting seminars in my local Illumination Engineering Society section.

By the way, I am right. You are confusing light color with color rendering and your use of degrees Kelvin as a definition of light quality is completely incorrect. Degrees Kelvin is merely a measure of the color of light. Heat a black body radiator and as it gets really hot, it begins to visibly glow. The result is that the color you see at any one temperature is expressed in degrees Kelvin. Color Rendering Index is used as a measure of a source's ability to accurately produce these colors. The reason I said that incandescent is a "gold standard" is that it is physically the closest thing there is to a black body radiator since it produces its light in the same manner. It's output is a direct measure on the scale and there is no other source available anywhere that produces its color more accurately on the CRI scale. Fluorescent sources are indirect radiators since they produce ultra violet that in turn stimulates phosphors to produce visible light. The result is that their temperatures are actually expressed in terms of Correlated Color Temperature which is essentially an estimation of the color the human eye sees in terms of a black body radiator. While I would never say that it is impossible, it is highly unlikely that any fluorescent source will ever hit 100. However, there are some very high quality lamps that are hitting around 90, which is very, very good. The reduction of mercury and the refinement of tri-phosphor compounds are primarily responsible for the improvements. If you don't believe me, find a good lighting showroom and ask to see a color box where they can show not only different color temperature lamps, but also compare "better vs. best" lamps having the same color temperature and different CRI's. Look up "color temperature" and "color rendering index" in Wikipedia for some pretty good, short discussions on the topic.

To say that a 5,000 deg. K lamp produces light more accurately than a 2,800K source is a mis-statement since that is like saying that one color is better than another. That depends entirely upon you are using it for. In the cases you state, I completely agree that it is more appropriate to use a 5,000K lamp. However, we were talking about CFL's and incandescents used in residential lighting. People look better and are more comfortable under the much warmer light produced by incandescent. It would be horrible to use a 5,000K lamp in a residential or commercial setting since it would be both visually disturbing and makes people look like cast members in "Night Of The Living Dead".

Most CFL's sold for residential applications are not cool white (which is an obsolete term), but fall in a temperature range of 2,700-3,000K to more closely mimic incandescent lamps.

GE Reveal lamps may possibly be as accurate in producing their color than standard incandescent, but they are not more accurate. What GE has most likely done is shift colors around to produce a source that is more complimentary to skin tones. That's a great and very effective thing to do, but don't mistake it for color accuracy. I cannot speak with any authority on this since I don't keep track of the newest incandescent A lamps or use them in designs, except for very specialized sources use in very specific applications.

Lastly, don't think for a moment that the "full spectrum" fluorescent lamps are accurate color producers. Again, look past their color temperature ratings and ask what their CRI is. While their phosphors have been mixed to punch up portions of the spectrum that fluorescents are normally poor at producing, they usually also produce a green spike, due to the mercury, that throws their CRI off.

Bigfella

Started replacing my old incandescents with CFLs a while ago. I have experimented with different types/designs and found the following:

The earliest types - the ones with 3 long 'u' shaped cfl tubes in them - are the least satisfactory. They take a while to light up and the light is quite harsh. They are, however, cheap.

Subsequent to this I bought some Phillips CFLs that look like bigger versions of incandescent globes - an opaque outside which means you can't see the actual CFL tubes. They take the longest time of all to fully light up, but they produce a much 'softer' light. The most expensive type of all.

More recently I have been using CFLs with the tubes twisted in a spiral. They are a similar size to incandescents. They light up virtually instantly and throw out a strong light similar in quality to incandescents. The ones I am using now are GEs, but other companies make them too.

One last point. I have a couple of light sockets where incandescent globes have traditionally struggled. Whether it is the wiring or some other problem, I was replacing globes 3 or more times a year. With CFLs I have yet to lose one, so they have almost paid for themselves on that count alone.

Captain C

I use regular incandescents in my Kitchen and garage. I use CFL's in my 3-way table lamps and outside lamps. I have had very "iffy" success with them in ceiling fans. I turn them on and off too much.

I get about five years out of an outdoor light that is on for hours at a time. I get 3 days to 3 months normally out of one used in a ceiling fan (non dimable fixture, GE bulbs) In fact all GE bulbs I have purchased lately have been about 80% duds... I will stick to Sylvania as they seem to be the ones that last longest. The three way lights work fine, albeit I use one of the blue Incandescents that "imitate" daylight better. They seem to make reading easier.

The reason why you don't want to use a CFL in the closet is that it changes the color of your fabrics as you view them.... I have to take items into a room with an Incandescent bulb some times to tell if they are green or brown... What I do now is use two incandescents and two two CFL's in the ceiling fans in the bed rooms. I use only incandescent in the family room and den because they aren't on all that much and they look better.

As far as noise goes, the only buzz I get is on my radio if the porch light is on (plugged into the same circuit) at the same time. I turn off the light, and the noise goes away.....

I do notice the warm up time on the bulbs, albeit it isn't all that long. If it's a room where I want full light instantly, I use incandescent.

I'm surprised no one has perfected an LED for home lighting yet. The one in my Surefire TLR-2 sure lights things up in a hurry!!! Almost too bright to use the built in laser at the same time...almost! One would think you could build a light with several bulbs that size (or perhaps larger) aimed upwards at a reflective, dish shaped, background and it would do well. A varying of the design of the reflective surface would make for a wider range of useage.

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