Compact Flourescent Bulbs

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lets see we poison ourself with mercury or we create a poison far worse than mercury and have to store it for millions of years and it will never lessen in harmful effects..nueclar waste...You choose..
 
cschmid said:
lets see we poison ourself with mercury or we create a poison far worse than mercury and have to store it for millions of years and it will never lessen in harmful effects..nueclar waste...You choose..
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I am with you here. I have no cfl's in my house.
 
Huh??

Using CFLs _where appropriate_ will reduce the amount of mercury and reduce the amount of nuclear waste.

Of course, leaving the lights off does an even better job of reducing both :)

-Jon
 
Jon- I totally agree in principle with you, however I am very angry at the lack of education the public has received from the CFL manufacturers. There desire is to sell at all cost.

I can tell you that I run into, almost everyday, indiviiduals who have no idea that the CFL's have mercury and need to be disposed of properly. On top of that I see bulbs in every fixture possible with no thought as to weather it is a proper install. For the first few years these bulbs were not meant to be installed in enclosed fixtures and actually had a proper orientation. Countless bulbs were burning out in a month or more. When these bulbs are burning out at that rate there can be no savings and who knows how many were just thrown in the trash.

I suspect at some time it may get better but I feel we are a long way from being there.
 
Dennis Alwon said:
I am with you here. I have no cfl's in my house.
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Ditto no CFL's. My Dad grew up during the Great Depression, I grew up with him telling me to turn off that light, stop wasting water, ETC. It stuck.

People that claim big savings after changing to CFL's are one of two kinds of people. One leaves lights on unnecessarily. The other started paying attention to other things that cut their power consumption after they got CFL's.
 
I totally agree with you on the lack of education.

CFLs are often both misused and mis-sold. I also see intentional mis-education on the 'anti-CFL' front, with panic pieces about spending $2K to clean up a broken bulb.

Mercury is a real danger of CFLs. Poor power factor is another problem. Harmonic distortion yet another. If you are unwilling to own up to the costs of the bulbs, you shouldn't be promoting the benefits.

In my house, we have a number of fixtures that get left on, intentionally for comfort. I've made sure that all of these fixtures have CFLs.

We have other fixtures that are only on for a few minutes at a time. These are carefully not CFLs.

Where we use lots of light, we use T8.

For focused work lights, we use Halogen.

Night-lights are LED; nothing beats LED lighting at the sub 1W level.

-Jon
 
DanZ said:
The mercury content of a CFL is no where near hazardous levels.

If they are disposed of properly, then we won't have a mercury in the landfill/new golf course/new ski slope problem.

If you do break one, you know what...read some of these!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=how+to+clean+up+a+broken+CFL&btnG=Google+Search

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/index.htm

http://www.notmartha.org/archives/2008/03/11/what-to-do-about-a-broken-cfl-learned-the-hard-way/

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/05/ask_treehugger_14.php

Oh, yeah, the dispose of them in the trash can in the lobby of the EPA is classic! As long as you don't mind a short stint in Gitmo, or where ever they're keeping suspected terrorists these days...:grin:

edit to correct spelling.
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Thanks for the informative links Dan. I'm glad I use CFL's now. I never realized that mercury was a by-product of coal plants producing electricity. We can reduce the demand by using the CFL's which will reduce mercury pollution even if all of the CFL bulbs were disposed of improperly in the landfill (trash). We should all try to make the switch IMO.
 
cschmid said:
The mercury content of a CFL is no where near hazardous levels.


In one bulb but in 50 million there is hazardous levels of mercury and proper disposal, come on give us a break this is the American public we are talking about only 1% will be disposed of properly..
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But after reading the link posted by DanZ you will find that EVEN if all of the bulbs were not recycled the amount of mercury that would be reduced from the demand of power from the coal power plants exceeds the mercury in all those bulbs.
 
steelersman said:
But after reading the link posted by DanZ you will find that EVEN if all of the bulbs were not recycled the amount of mercury that would be reduced from the demand of power from the coal power plants exceeds the mercury in all those bulbs.
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What about from the nuclear plants? There is not a simple solution and I don't trust have the stats. I would, of course, learn to turn lights off.
 
Dennis Alwon said:
What about from the nuclear plants? There is not a simple solution and I don't trust have the stats. I would, of course, learn to turn lights off.
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I've never been one to leave the lights on unnecessarily. I turn them off when I leave the room. Just because i now have CFL's doesn't mean that I changed my habits and now leave the lights on.
 
wow nice responses..I promote conservation of some things and others not so much..I will run extra copper for safety of the unqualified..I do not turn my faucets all the way on..I open drapes and use natural light as much as possible..I install only t-8 or better fixtures..

education is a must on CFL's..I have seen them burn by improper installation..al most everyone I talk to did not know that the bulb have to be rated to hang down, the are special bulbs for dimming, special bulbs for enclosed fixtures..the cheap ones are rate for a vertical operation with the base in the down position..you pay lots of extra cash for the ones rated for the job..if you look at cost per back on individual bulbs not so cost effective anymore..and most all bulbs end up in landfill..there are other ways of saving electricity then the HO doing it alone on their back..

commercial institutions can save more by mistake then the HO's can by working hard at it..so if energy savings was the issue then why the push for electric cars and the increased pollution created by the disposal of the batteries..our energy savings do not always offset the pollution created by alternatives energies..
 
cschmid said:
wow nice responses..I promote conservation of some things and others not so much..I will run extra copper for safety of the unqualified..I do not turn my faucets all the way on..I open drapes and use natural light as much as possible..I install only t-8 or better fixtures..

education is a must on CFL's..I have seen them burn by improper installation..al most everyone I talk to did not know that the bulb have to be rated to hang down, the are special bulbs for dimming, special bulbs for enclosed fixtures..the cheap ones are rate for a vertical operation with the base in the down position..you pay lots of extra cash for the ones rated for the job..if you look at cost per back on individual bulbs not so cost effective anymore..and most all bulbs end up in landfill..there are other ways of saving electricity then the HO doing it alone on their back..

commercial institutions can save more by mistake then the HO's can by working hard at it..so if energy savings was the issue then why the push for electric cars and the increased pollution created by the disposal of the batteries..our energy savings do not always offset the pollution created by alternatives energies..
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Woah, woah, woah, woah...you favor T-8s and not CFLs because of the mercury content of the CFL...you do know that T-8s have, on average, TWICE the mercury content of CFLs, right?
CFLs have about 5mg of mercury, where as low mercury T-8s have 3-5mg and standard T-8s have 5-8mg!
Are you educating your customers on the proper disposal of the mercury containing T-8s?
 
Personally I don't use CFL's in my house. I do put them in for customers that request them. I take all of the information about CFL and all of this other "green" stuff with a grain of salt. It is all about $$$$$ I don't care what they claim.

These are the same people that told us we had depleted the worlds supply of oil in the 70s then in the 80s or so killer bees were going to take over the world, then the world was going to end from a computer crash in the year 2000, now it is global warming and we need to buy "carbon credits" to save the world.

I do recycle plastics, paper, etc and am definitly not a wasteful person, but I do not buy into the media's scare tactics.
 
DanZ said:
Woah, woah, woah, woah...you favor T-8s and not CFLs because of the mercury content of the CFL.
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Per watt consumed and per lumen produced, T-8s have less mercury than CFLs.

Per bulb, T-8s have more.

The T-8s need the same care for disposal.

-Jon
 
winnie said:
Per watt consumed and per lumen produced, T-8s have less mercury than CFLs.

Per bulb, T-8s have more.

The T-8s need the same care for disposal.

-Jon
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T-8s are also more widely used than CFLs, and I'm willing to bet average Joe six pack maintainance tech doesn't know or care that all Fluorescents have mercury and need to be disposed of properly, so they end up in the dumpster.

As far as scare tactics, it's good to take things with a grain of salt. But we do have things that will be issues in future that we can start solving now, like how to produce enough energy to feed our energy hungry lives, and how to produce enough food to fuel our energy hungry lives in 10, 20, 30 years.

If we start working on solutions now, in 10,20,30 years, we can have the problem licked! Look at how far solar panel technology and microprocessor technology have come in 10, 20, 30 years! We need to keep working on what's going to be next...like how to make usable screw in LEDs...etc, etc.
 
DanZ said:
Woah, woah, woah, woah...you favor T-8s and not CFLs because of the mercury content of the CFL...you do know that T-8s have, on average, TWICE the mercury content of CFLs, right?
CFLs have about 5mg of mercury, where as low mercury T-8s have 3-5mg and standard T-8s have 5-8mg!
Are you educating your customers on the proper disposal of the mercury containing T-8s?
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Here you must recycle 4' & 8' florescent bulbs but yet the average person throws the CFL in the garbage..Until it becomes mandatory to recycle CFL's I think they are a bad idea..

Remember only 1% of the water on planet earth is drinkable and we want to use that 1% to produce hydrogen..I know there are other ways of producing hydrogen but as demand increases so will the HO making their own hydrogen and they will be using drinking water..so we are only at the beginning of the conservation game..
 
cschmid said:
Remember only 1% of the water on planet earth is drinkable and we want to use that 1% to produce hydrogen..I know there are other ways of producing hydrogen but as demand increases so will the HO making their own hydrogen and they will be using drinking water..so we are only at the beginning of the conservation game..
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That's the kind of thing I'm talking about! We need to be working on ways to truly fix things now, so when they do become a major issue in the future, we have an easy way to solve them!

I'm also all for proper education on all new products. I've heard too many people say things that make you want to slap them in the head about new technologies and cars. Way too many stupid things about new car technology. Alternative fuels is another one.
 
We use food for fuel food prices raise at alarming rates..use water for fuel and what is going to happen to water rates..the waste from the junk alternatives they are after is not going to be Eco friendly..we are going to have to change our life styles..global economy is very iffy especially when 3rd world country are in poverty levels..wonder what a living wage is in say Nigeria, or Indonesia, anyone got any info on it..I have not researched it..
 
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