OT Rant- Cheap light fixtures !!!!

[jose bagge]

Getting old and eyes are poor, plus I like light- so last year I put a dozen 8" dual bulb light fixtures in the barn, all bought from home crapshot.
one by one, these suckers have died off- ballast is more than the damn fixture...this morning I flip the swith and i'll de damned if i only have one fixture in the whole place working. It's a damned shame when the bulbs outlast the fixtures!
I've been replacing 'em one by one with regular boxes, ceramic screw in fixtures and screw in flourescent- and chalking it up as an expensive lesson learned. I HATE WORKING IN THE DARK!!!!!

 

[fixerupper]

I'm really impressed with the screw in flourescents. Someday my shop will have a lighting upgrade, where all the 48" flourescents will be replaced with screw-in lights.

The flourescents that are up there now are the old fashioned ones out of a school, have been up there thirty years, and have been as relaible as the day is long, but they don't give off nearly as much light as a compact florescent.

All together I have 32- forty watt tubes up there, and I could probably have twice as much light from 16- 23 watt compacts, if I use the right ones. The compacts will be inside glass fixtures to protect them.

By my figures I'll only be using 28% of the electricity I use now, so that'll be a savings. What I don't know is if there will be any savings in bulb replacement costs. Right now I probably replace eight tubes per year. The replacement rate for the compacts is the unknown. Jim

 

[Jeff-oh]

Going from 32-40 watters to 16 - 32 watters will save you approx. 1 KW per hour. At 8 to 12 cents per KW hour you'll save $.80 to $1.20 for a 10 hour day or enough to change out one of the compact floressents every week or so.

 

[Dairy Farmer in WI]

they are making everything cheaper these days anyway. you will like those screw in floresencet bulbs. i replaced all my incondecent bulbs in my barn with them and they really light the place up! now if only them made them in 300 wt strength for my shop!
DF in WI

 

[Lee in Iowa]

I got to where I just wire up an outlet and use the plug in things you can screw a bulb into. If you need more light plug in another one. Lee

 

[Anonymous-0]

While the law has pinned the 40 watt tubes as inefficient, they aren't worse than compact fluorescents in light per watt. Compact fluorescents are only efficient compared to the incandescents they handily replace.

Gerald J.

 

[Mike M]

I have tried some of the flouresence replacement bulbs in the house. They were expensive to buy and didn't hold up well at all. These were the twisty looking ones. I put some others that were a straight loop due to clearance problems in the ceiling fan and those are still working. The ones that went bad had a lifetime quarentee but really what good is that as you have to send the old bulb at your expense back to them. For the price of shipping you can just buy another.

I wish they still made a GOOD old fashion light bulb ! These new ones are so cheap they don't last at all ! I once heard a news story about an old original Edison light bulb that has been in constant use at a fire house somewhere ( maybe Ohio ) for 100 years ? or something like that ?
I was able to get a bunch of used take out 4 bulb flouresent fixtures from a local bank remodel and have used these in my shops. A few of them have needed ballasts but they are good heavy duty lights.

 

[fixerupper]

So maybe I'm not saving as much as I think I will. I don't know a thing about figuring this stuff up so that's where you guys who do know someting about it come in handy. Jim

 

[Ken Macfarlane]

I bought some good electronic ballasted fixtures from the electrical supply store. Not cheap but the fire up even if it is -30 and the tubes are really efficient.

If you do some looking, not all florescents put out the same lumens per watt. Some are about half again more light than the worst.

 

[Anonymous-0]

That 100 year old lamp is in San Francisco. Its running at less than half voltage and so is just glowing orange, not actually producing much useful light.

Based on the rule of thumb that reducing the voltage 5% drops the light by 10% but doubles the lamp life, half voltage on a lamp should let it run for over 100 years.

I'm not getting the multiyear lifetimes from the curly compact fluorescents either, seems like sometimes I'm only getting the same life as an incandescent round about 1000 hours. But the energy savings with 14 cent per KWH electricity is still several times the price of the CFL. A 1000 hours of a 23 watt CFL is 23 KWH, costs $3.22, 1000 hours at 100 watts is 100 KWH, costs $14.00. Pays for at least two CFL. At 2000 hours the savings are more.

There is a difference in brands, but I'm not sure which is better. I suspect any at wallyworld were specially made for low price and so have shorter lifetimes.

Gerald J.

 

[Mike (WA)]

I've been using the curly-cue flourescents to replace incandescants, mainly because lots of them are on sale to tempt you into trying them (electric company just gave me a couple when I went in to pay my bill, and Costco had them for 39 cents each in lots of 10 the other day). Seem to work fine in the house, except take a few seconds to warm up to full brightness, which I can live with. Barn is a different story- they often fail to fire (or never get bright) if its below freezing, and don't seem to last very long. Guess I'll stick with old fashioned bulbs for outdoor applications.

 

[504-2]

Are you sure that it is not just to cold for them to come on? I have some that won`t work till spring.

 

[jose bagge]

I would have thought that 2 weeks ago, when it was actually cold here...but thanks to global warming and the hot air generated by the politicians about 40 miles due north of me, it was about 60 degrees here today. and- I even paid Home Crapshoot an extra $10 a fixture for the "cold weather" ballasts.
Some one mentioned getting old fixtures from a school remodel, and that's where the fixtures in my "race car barn" came from- free 20 years ago and still crankin' bright light.
What impact does the cold have on screw-in" flourescents?

 

[teddy52food]

If you want good bulbs that last a long time, get those that they use in the stop lights. A friend of mine got some from his friend that works for the city. They replace those bulbs on a scedule and we got some of the used bulbs. They lasted longer than new ones.

 

[Eric SEI]

I put a compact fluorescent bug light on the back porch. When I first turn it on (around freezing) it barely glows. A little bit later it will be fine.

 

[Jeff-oh]

It is rather easy. Cost of electricity is $$$ per kilowatt hour. In my market it is around $0.10 Kw-hour. Others may be more, check you electric bill.

To figure take the bulb wattage i.e 40 watt. and multiply by the Number of hours used. i.e. 10 hours ... 40 watts X 10 hours = 400 watt-hours. Divide by 1000 to get kilowatt hours.... i.e. 0.400 kilowatt hours. Thus with electic at $0.10/ kw-hr., in a 10 hour day, one 40 watt bulb will cost you .4 X $0.10 = $.04 to run.

Now multiply that by number of bulbs and days of the year.

Savings is calculated the same way. 32 bulbs * 40 watts * 10 hours /1000 = 12.8 kw-hours/day

The proposed system is 16 bulbs * 23 watta * 10 hours /1000 = 3.68 kw-hours /day

a savings of 9.12 KW-hr every day. or at $.10 a KW-hour $0.92 a day => *7 = $6.39 week => * 52 = $331.97 a year => *4= $1327.88 over a four year life span of the bulb.

Like bank interest the power is in letting the small numbers build up over time.

 

[mj]

(quoted from post at 06:21:29 02/18/08) Getting old and eyes are poor, plus I like light- so last year I put a dozen 8" dual bulb light fixtures in the barn, all bought from home crapshot.
one by one, these suckers have died off- ballast is more than the damn fixture...this morning I flip the swith and i'll de damned if i only have one fixture in the whole place working. It's a damned shame when the bulbs outlast the fixtures!
I've been replacing 'em one by one with regular boxes, ceramic screw in fixtures and screw in flourescent- and chalking it up as an expensive lesson learned. I HATE WORKING IN THE DARK!!!!!

I hear you, Jose! I finally put those patio-type fixtures with motion-sensors in my barn. I've got 60w incandescent bulbs in them as they only come on in low light when somebody walks in. I don't spend a lot of time out there at night so they only run 10 min. or so when I feed after dark or before sunup. I've got them on the outside of the stalls so the horses don't trigger them when they're inside. They come on as soon as I go in and shut themselves off after I've gone back up to the house. I've got four in the barn and only one has crapped out in the last 5 or 6 years. The funny thing is that the cheapies that I bought at Wally World are still going; the one that was pretty spendy at ACE is the one that died after a year or so. :shock:

 

[caterpillar guy]

And the cost to dispose of them with the mercury in the new florusants is more costly than the old incandesant bulbs we use now.

 

[BillinCentralMO]

You should purchase the flourescent fixtures and bulbs with the zero dgree ballast. Those cheap ones you bought work fine at 70 degrees .As you experienced , they work very poorly if at all in cold weather. Good Luck.