CFL Bulbs - Compact Florescent Lamp Bulbs

Energy saving light bulbs. If you are an average Joe like me who can be confused easily by terms and acronyms, it’s easy to understand why so many of us shy away from ‘new stuff’.

Yet, as a home owner trying to make ‘ends meet’, no one is going to take responsibility for you saving money on your household expenses except you. And, you are not a renovation expert (who really is?) but you do want to make simple changes in your house that can both save you money and help you feel good about ‘protecting the environment’.

Here are the two terms that might help to get things started regarding light bulbs you use in your home:

• Incandescent light bulbs - energy wasters and very short life
• CFL light bulbs - energy savers and much longer life

I could go on and on about the different aspects I am learning about CFL light bulbs. For now, here are a couple of thoughts I wanted to share.

First, I came across a web site from TCP International, a very large player in the manufacturing of CFL light bulbs, that can help the average, and not so average , home owner understand the cost savings, options and environmental greenness of CFL light bulbs.

The web site is called SpringLight CFL, after the name of the new brand of CFL energy saving light bulbs manufactured and sold by TCP International. One of the things that is very cool about this site is the SpringLight In Your Home page where you are provided with pictures of different rooms in the home and their different possible lighting.

These pictures are interactive in that you can click on each of the different lights shown and compare the savings of the manufacturer’s SpringLight brand of CFL’s with other types of light bulbs for the same usage. It’s pretty cool and very eye appealing.

There are other areas on the web site about the product line, about different aspects of CFL type of light bulbs and so on. I knew that CFL light bulbs can last longer than incandescent light bulbs; but I didn’t know it was up to 10 times longer. That is also confirmed on the page within the ENERGY STAR (yes, that ENERGY STAR) web site on CFL light bulbs.

The second thought I wanted to pass on was about a recent experience I had in changing a light bulb. I wanted to try a CFL (the energy saving kind) light bulb instead of the incandescent light bulb within one of the recessed (pot) lights in the ceiling in one of our rooms. I had been in the room for about 5 minutes with the ceiling lights turned on to read the packaging of the CFL light bulb, etc.

I had read that CFL light bulbs were not as hot when turned on compared to the incandescent light bulbs. I turned the ceiling lights off and waited for about 2 minutes. I then went to remove the incandescent bulb. I almost burnt my fingers. I had to wait a good 10 minutes before the light bulb could cool down sufficiently for me to remove it. I never realized just how much heat those incandescent light bulbs can generate. Wow! Now we know why certain rooms in our home with incandescent light bulbs in the recessed (pot) lights in the ceiling still feel really hot at night in the summer causing our air conditioner to still run on and on and on (not the only reason of course, but one of them).

When I did replace the light bulb with a CFL type bulb I did a quick test to see how fast it would cool down to compare. I left the light on for what I thought was the same amount of time and then turned it off. I was able to easily remove it after only 2 minutes (perhaps less…. I am not a scientist).

So, as stated above, lots and lots of different aspects of CFL light bulbs that one can talk about and discuss. We hope the above gets you thinking about educating yourself about an easy and inexpensive way to help reduce your direct and indirect electricity costs in your home.

I’ll leave you with one more thought. According to the ENERGY STAR web site referred to above, did you know that “If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.”

Wow!