3 ms·

I've grown accustomed to compact fluorescent bulbs these days - mainly to having been given a lot of them for free about 10 years ago. I suspect that I shall be

I've grown accustomed to compact fluorescent bulbs these days - mainly to having been given a lot of them for free about 10 years ago. I suspect that I shall be using them for a while yet as my stock pile of them is still filling a shelf in one of my cupboards :) Strangely the thing that I really noticed when we stopped using incandescent bulbs was that it felt a lot colder during winter nights, as the majority of the energy the old bulbs drew was converted to heat rather than light.

sumtechguy 3y ago
I just switched out some CFL for LED. A couple of them I go to switch them out and realized I had already switched them out and they color temp was exactly the same. I am now switching many of mine out for a more yellow dimmer color. The ones I got for free were good for work spaces but not living room/bed room lightning. But those CFL's are troopers only had one stop working in 15 years out of 20 and I still have a box of 20 of them that have never been opened plus the 20 or so LED ones that I got for free too. If anyone is wondering how I ended up with a bunch of free ones check out your power bill. Many times power companies will run a promotion and just ship you a box of them.
tivert 3y ago
> Strangely the thing that I really noticed when we stopped using incandescent bulbs was that it felt a lot colder during winter nights, as the majority of the energy the old bulbs drew was converted to heat rather than light. I swap in incandescent builds into a certain cold room in the winter, to deliberately exploit that effect, then I swap them out for LEDs during the summer. IIRC, it wasn't uncommon to use incandescent builds as cheap heating elements. IIRC, early in the push to ban incandescent bulbs, some German tried to sell them as "heat bulbs," but got squashed by the regulators. A side effect is really just an effect, and they can be useful. In the race to totally ban things, that often gets lost.
- maicro 3y ago
  The Easy Bake Oven was built completely around that idea - small incandescent bulb used as the heating element in a kid-friendly small electric oven.
Syonyk 3y ago
It's not just the waste heat. If you're well positioned, the radiant heat off an incandescent can heat a human body very effectively. Remember the "heat lamps" some bathrooms used to have? The same effect is found in regular lighting incandescents, especially if you're directly below an overhead fixture. "Radiant heating of humans" is rather substantially more efficient, in terms of "human happiness per watt used," than heating the entire house. I've got some radiant heat panels that get used heavily in the winter, and there's nothing like a good radiant kerosene heater (mine is 10k BTU, about 3kW, almost entirely as heat) on a cold winter night.

sumtechguy 3y ago

I just switched out some CFL for LED. A couple of them I go to switch them out and realized I had already switched them out and they color temp was exactly the same. I am now switching many of mine out for a more yellow dimmer color. The ones I got for free were good for work spaces but not living room/bed room lightning. But those CFL's are troopers only had one stop working in 15 years out of 20 and I still have a box of 20 of them that have never been opened plus the 20 or so LED ones that I got for free too. If anyone is wondering how I ended up with a bunch of free ones check out your power bill. Many times power companies will run a promotion and just ship you a box of them.

tivert 3y ago

> Strangely the thing that I really noticed when we stopped using incandescent bulbs was that it felt a lot colder during winter nights, as the majority of the energy the old bulbs drew was converted to heat rather than light. I swap in incandescent builds into a certain cold room in the winter, to deliberately exploit that effect, then I swap them out for LEDs during the summer. IIRC, it wasn't uncommon to use incandescent builds as cheap heating elements. IIRC, early in the push to ban incandescent bulbs, some German tried to sell them as "heat bulbs," but got squashed by the regulators. A side effect is really just an effect, and they can be useful. In the race to totally ban things, that often gets lost.

maicro 3y ago
The Easy Bake Oven was built completely around that idea - small incandescent bulb used as the heating element in a kid-friendly small electric oven.

Syonyk 3y ago

It's not just the waste heat. If you're well positioned, the radiant heat off an incandescent can heat a human body very effectively. Remember the "heat lamps" some bathrooms used to have? The same effect is found in regular lighting incandescents, especially if you're directly below an overhead fixture. "Radiant heating of humans" is rather substantially more efficient, in terms of "human happiness per watt used," than heating the entire house. I've got some radiant heat panels that get used heavily in the winter, and there's nothing like a good radiant kerosene heater (mine is 10k BTU, about 3kW, almost entirely as heat) on a cold winter night.