This morning when I picked up my latte at my favorite cafe I noticed that something had changed: The place was really gloomy. Why? Well, several track light spots had burned out and had been replaced with squiggly CFLs! Not a pretty sight!
A spiral compact fluorescent lamp is not designed to be used in a recessed can or a closed track fixture. It doesn’t do well with the heat build-up and will just not last as long.
It also doesn’t really produce enough light, so there goes the energy saving concept.
Cans generally need bulbs with built-in reflectors that push the light out into the room instead of illuminating the inside of the can.
If you want to use CFLs in your recessed lights or track heads, there is actually a solution: CFL PAR lamps. They look like a reflector lamp, but are compact fluorescent. We of carry them in our showroom, but you can find them many places now.
Compact Fluorescent, energy efficient, Track Lighting
What an impact a few changes we make in our everyday lives can have on the environment!
I found it amazing what I read today. Seems so trivial, but what a difference a simple change could make!
“If every home in America replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an Energy Star qualified CFL, in one year it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes. That would prevent the release of greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of abut 800,000 cars.”
Read more here: Mercury Fact Sheet (PDF)
So, love CFLs or not, I think we all have a spot or two in the house – or outside, where we can replace an incandescent bulb for a CFL.
Personally I can’t take the plunge and live without the warm light of incandescents, but I’m making small changes here and there.
CFL, Compact Fluorescent, energy efficient, energy saving, green lighting
“I have this beautiful antique foyer light with exposed bulbs and it will look horrible with squiggly compact fluorescent lamps. Will incandescent bulbs soon be unavailable?”
We get questions like this almost every week, so here I’ll try to clarify a few things.
The energy bill that was signed end of 2007 does require that all light bulbs use 30% less energy than today’s incandescent bulbs by 2014, which is a good thing.
The phase-out will start with 100-watt bulbs in January 2012 and end with 40-watt bulbs in January 2014. After this a second tier of requirements will become effective which asks for all bulbs to be at least 70% more efficient, which would mean that they will have to be as efficient as the CFLs we are using right now.
Since the manufacturers of incandescent bulbs are probably more aware of this than anyone else they are of course working hard on finding ways of improving the efficiency of their products. It might very well be possible that a next generation of incandescent bulbs could satisfy the requirement of 30% increased efficiency by 2012.
All this said, there are now so many really great CFLs on the market that are good looking and fit a variety of needs: You can get candelabra bulb-shaped CFLs that will fit your foyer light and not change the overall look.
In our showroom we actually now sell more unique CFLs than anything else. (CFLs for outdoor use, dimmable CFLs etc etc).
Another lamp we have now introduced is an LED mR16. It is WONDERFUL.
More about that in a later post.
Compact Fluorescent, energy efficient, green lighting
