Grow up never changing a light bulb?

[QUOTE="ponykilr, post: 1338630, member: 12662"

I put new light fixtures in my bathroom over the two mirrors. Each has 3 100W equivalent LEDs, it is like daylight at the beach in there.

[/QUOTE]

That is all about color temperature nto wattage fyi
 
Won't be long before kids will be waving their hands under a regular faucet waiting for the water to come on. That and looking for the window switch when they get in a car with manual windows.
 
6/8 years ago we rented a house in Harlan for the fall crawl and they had a big console style TV in the house.The boys(including my son) spent about 10 mins looking for the remote and couldn't believe you had to turn the tv on and change the channels by hand.
 
Jake. said:
Won't be long before kids will be waving their hands under a regular faucet waiting for the water to come on. That and looking for the window switch when they get in a car with manual windows.
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My kids do that now, at least in public bathrooms!

shawn said:
There's a reason for that. Everybody in this thread is talking about spending all sorts of money on light bulbs... and for what? You won't save any real energy. But the ban wasnt about saving energy. It was about a government handout to a bunch of manufacturers who had a neat product that no one would buy.
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That depends. I'm not ditching good CFLs for LEDs, just incandescent bulbs as they die and it makes sense.
For example one chandelier had 5 75W bulbs in it. At the time when i put it in, I was like, Ah, fuck the power, I want the light to look nice, and needs to be dimmable, etc.
Then I realized that light is on 12+ hrs a day, every day, and did the math. 5 $8 LEDs @ 11w each cut the annual expense down dramatically, enough to pay for it in very quickly. Even if the lifetime is 1/2 whats advertised, I'll save a ton of $$, $120/year at our current rate. The bulbs will pay for themselves in 4 months.
It dosn't really make sense to throw away CFLs for LEDs, but if you're starting from scratch or if its a high wattage/lot of bulbs you might as well.
 
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RatLabGuy said:
I'll save a ton of $$.
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Probably not.

Consider this: office buildings are typically not heated. They'll get a bit of morning warm-up, a bit of heat around the perimeter throughout the day in the winter, a bit at the entrance doors, etc, but they're cooled year-round for the most part.

In the last ten years, CRT monitors have been replaced by LCDs that reject a fraction of the heat, fax machines have been eliminated, desktops have been replaced by laptops, interior fluorescents have been replaced with LEDs, etc, etc, etc. Numerous "inefficient" sources of interior heat, most of which were located in close proximity to building occupants, have been eliminated in the name of "saving energy".

Now, instead of cooling office building in the winter, which is pretty energy efficient, we're having to heat them, which is not. Not only that, many buildings simply aren't capable of providing the accommodating the new heating loads with the existing HVAC equipment, so you're faced with either uncomfortable building occupants, expensive retrofits, or lots of 1500w electric space heaters (and a bunch of desktop UPS devices, since all the heaters keep popping the breakers).

Ah, but you say: I save so much money in the summertime, it makes up for what it's costing me in the wintertime. Not really. Your heating degree days in Baltimore vastly outnumber your cooling degree days. And depending on your HVAC system, you're exchanging (relatively cheap) summertime air conditioning for a gas furnace or electric furnace/heat pump combination.

Anecdotally, I was recently involved with a "super efficient" office project. Everything from top of the line HVAC systems to more passive things like automatic window blinds, ultra low-flow fixtures, etc. The energy models promised all sorts of savings... which the completed building absolutely did not provide in practice. To say the facilities engineers were unimpressed is an understatement.

Also, studies show that if users think a device is "energy efficient", they're more inclined to leave it on, further negating any potential energy savings.
 
shawn said:
Probably not.

Consider this: office buildings are typically not heated. They'll get a bit of morning warm-up, a bit of heat around the perimeter throughout the day in the winter, a bit at the entrance doors, etc, but they're cooled year-round for the most part.

In the last ten years, CRT monitors have been replaced by LCDs that reject a fraction of the heat, fax machines have been eliminated, desktops have been replaced by laptops, interior fluorescents have been replaced with LEDs, etc, etc, etc. Numerous "inefficient" sources of interior heat, most of which were located in close proximity to building occupants, have been eliminated in the name of "saving energy".

Now, instead of cooling office building in the winter, which is pretty energy efficient, we're having to heat them, which is not. Not only that, many buildings simply aren't capable of providing the accommodating the new heating loads with the existing HVAC equipment, so you're faced with either uncomfortable building occupants, expensive retrofits, or lots of 1500w electric space heaters (and a bunch of desktop UPS devices, since all the heaters keep popping the breakers).

Ah, but you say: I save so much money in the summertime, it makes up for what it's costing me in the wintertime. Not really. Your heating degree days in Baltimore vastly outnumber your cooling degree days. And depending on your HVAC system, you're exchanging (relatively cheap) summertime air conditioning for a gas furnace or electric furnace/heat pump combination.

Anecdotally, I was recently involved with a "super efficient" office project. Everything from top of the line HVAC systems to more passive things like automatic window blinds, ultra low-flow fixtures, etc. The energy models promised all sorts of savings... which the completed building absolutely did not provide in practice. To say the facilities engineers were unimpressed is an understatement.

Also, studies show that if users think a device is "energy efficient", they're more inclined to leave it on, further negating any potential energy savings.
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Thanks for the info on office buildings, That's a really interesting fact, and something I had not considered before.
But please clarify how this relates to my 50 year old home that has only a few lights in comparison, gas heat and shoddy insulation?
I find it very hard to believe that changing out a handful of 75 Watt light bulbs will have anywhere close to the effect on my heating load (just so we're clear, you're implying that the lights were providing free heat) as the decreased cost in electricity.
Purely by the numbers, changing that one chandelier saves $120 a year, $10 a month, on electricity. Cost-wise I would have to have an >8% increase in my total gas usage during the heating months to not break even, and that dosn't account for any savings in the other months at all.

You have a good point, but it's really hard to see how it relates at this level.
 
Did your electric bill go down by $10?
 
I mean, we did a pretty extensive renovation on our house a couple of years ago. It had very little insulation, old windows, etc. We insulated the whole house, changed out fixtures, replaced windows - theoretically greatly improved the energy efficiency of the house. But the energy consumption change wasn't measurable.
 
shawn said:
I mean, we did a pretty extensive renovation on our house a couple of years ago. It had very little insulation, old windows, etc. We insulated the whole house, changed out fixtures, replaced windows - theoretically greatly improved the energy efficiency of the house. But the energy consumption change wasn't measurable.
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I hear what you're saying - basically, these things are complicated, interrelated systems.
I'm used to that... I do brain research for a living.:flipoff2:
But this is a pretty simple case. swap something that uses 83% less electricity. Even if the actual savings is HALF of what is predicted, it still pays for itself in under a year.

I'll tell you in a year, how about that.
 
I am looking now for a good VHS VCR. I have a DVR but I want the nostalgia and ability to record whatever I want, on demand movies and all.

I guess you can still buy tapes LOL.
 
I don't think light bulbs or televisions are required to understand how lazy or uneducated kids are. I think you will really start to see a spread in generations between the button pushers and creative logical thinkers. I think you could boil it down to people that use a smart phone as a tool vs. people that let a smart phone run their life. I saw it in public education...when a child asks you what time it is and they have an iphone in their pocket and a clock on the wall, how else do you answer that question?

This is not a problem because skilled labor will peak in value again which is good news for someone that can use a voltmeter, can turn a wrench, or can go through a diagnostic manual to fix the car for the owner that pushes the window button and is confused why the window won't go down :)

Either way, it is interesting to see things change. I like watching old movies and seeing people use pay phones and address books.
 
Common sense and sweat are under valued at the moment.

A far as the light bulb deal you'll NEVER see 10+ years service from any product you buy and use. It's engineered lifespan. Companies like Tupperware and Croc almost figured this out too late.
 
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