Writing for Beans

Sometime yesterday, I got a visit at the house by http://www.projectporchlight.com/.  They left me a little note, saying sorry they missed me, and they left me a light bulb to change out my porch light to a compact fluorescent.   I think it's a brilliant idea, to change up the external lights on the house to low wattage bulbs, like compact fluorescents, or even, if you can afford them, LED bulbs.   I thought it such a good idea several years ago, that I have my porch light as two CFLs already.  (I can't remember whether they are the 3W or 7W model.  Either way, much more efficient than the two 40W bulbs that had been there before.)

So, Project Porchlight folks, even though you missed us, you can rest assured, we're on the same page.

As an aside, I've been an early adopter of the CFL.  I started switching over as much as possible, back in my apartment days in the late 90's.   So I've been using them for over 10 years.   I've replaced most of the lighting in the house with compact fluorescents where possible.  The only gotcha is the number of circuits with dimmers in this house.   And as dimmable CFL's come out, I've started to purchase those so that I can replace the other bulbs too.  The only problems I've so far encountered is when I replaced all the candelabra bulbs in my chandelier, they wouldn't turn on.   So I've ended up alternating, incandescent, CLF, incandescent, CLF... etc.   And my wife thinks the room is too dim.   (Which, if you knew my wife, you'd understand how gobsmacking that statement is.)

On CFLs in general, I've noticed that most of the bulbs I have still have a considerable ramp up time.  Which is to say, that they turn on dimmer, and then warm up to temperature and then achieve full brightness.   I'm used to it at this point.  (Note though, just because I'm used to it, doesn't mean it's not annoying.  It still is.)   What I'm wondering, though, is this due to the fact that I'm buying the CFL equivalent of the 50 cent bulb?  (IE the cheap CFLs)  I haven't done any substantial testing of various bulbs and manufacturers to see if some are superior in that regard.   I imagine it's likely that some are better than others, or else why is there such a broad range of prices on the bulbs?   

What I know, is that they do save you money.  When we first swapped out all the bulbs in my old apartment, we saw the electric bill drop by somewhere between $20-30 a month.  Which means that by the end of that first year, we pretty much hit the ROI on the bulbs.  (Note, that apartment had almost every single fixture as  a double or triple bulb fixture, as well as the exterior hall light, which was ALWAYS left on.  and had been either a 75W or 100W to illuminate the stairwell.   So, knock that one bulb down to a CFL, and that alone probably saved us most of the $$ per month.)   The price of the bulbs these days are so much cheaper than when I first started using them, that I almost can't see why anyone wouldn't want to save money by using them.   I know that some folks don't enjoy the light that fluorescents put out, but there's multiple types now.  Just as with incandescents.  There's a cool light, a bright light, a warm light.  All sorts of light.  

So if you haven't jumped on the CFL bandwagon yet, my question to you is this:  why not?