Lucky Me--FREE!

[Dace]

CONGRATS....what a great free deal!

 

[eggrookie2010]

Thats IS awesome! I wish they werent so hideous. I have them in all the fixtures that I cant see the bulb in. I know the incandescents are going to be gone soon and I have to get over it. I just hate how those look sticking out of the end of a nice fixture. Cry baby me.

 

[FarmerChick]

yea I hate that spiral look of them also but for the money savings it is worth it lol I can't wait til LED bulbs are reasonable cost cause they look more like an incandescent bulb but heck the ones I saw had big black lines around the bases..hmm..

 

[MamiPollo]

I have some CFL bulbs in my house that have been going strong for more than 5 years. I love the little workhorses! They save me so much $$$ I don't care if they look a little weird. I finally got sick of buying new round bulbs for my bathroom fixture and popped some CFLs in there. If it bothers any of my guests they can pay my electric bill for me!

 

[bsrb13]

How long are they supposed to last?

Here at my grandmother's we've had to replace nearly all of them, and they haven't been installed for more than a year! A couple had to be replaced in about 4 months.

I dislike them intensely because the lighting is terrible (or it's my eyes...). It doesn't look right, and it takes a while to warm up, and they make my headaches worse, and the cost is outrageous.

I want my old bulbs, darnit. Although, I think the spiral look is neat, lol.

 

[hqueen13]

bsrb we have a number of them that have been working for probably 4 or 5 years now. Maybe the ones that you got were not as good? Maybe they were from when the CFL's were "newer" and they weren't as well made. Also some of the original ones came with instructions that they were not to be used in fan light fixtures, and you couldn't turn them upside down (or right side up, I never remember, I just know they had arrows pointing in the direction they were "safe" to use!).

You might investigate using LED's. They are able to better control the color temperature of LED's and they don't have the same warm up period that CFL's do. Yes, they cost quite a bit more, but the savings to your electric bill will be even GREATER than the CFL's, and they last a very long time, too. If they don't cause you a headache, it would probably be worth the extra expense. You might be able to go into a store and find a style that you like, and then shop online and use something like Ebates.com to get a % back to increase your savings.

Good luck and

 

[~gd]

FarmerChick - that's excellent.

Here in Northern Ohio, the power company would supply bulbs at $10 a pop. They would drop 2 off at your house, whether you were home or not and then bill you for them.....that program lasted about 2 days.

Back before the power grid was deregulated [If you can call the current mess deregulated] the local [NY then] power and gas company would leave a' bulb of the month' on your meter everytime they would read it IF you payments were up to date. It seems the GREENS had stalled the permits for a new generation plant and their pencil pushers had determined that if they could get people to use the new bulbs [bought by the truckload] it was cheaper to give the bulbs away rather than having to pay big rates for peak power brought from those suppliers that had excess peak power.
I must admit that in my case this worked very well since I converted to the new bulbs as the old ones burnt out. You could order what you wanted to buy from them via phone or internet they would add the charges to your bill and if you could wait until the next meter read delivery was free. They were able to under price the big box stores even the mighty Walmart [which POed them no end but the more they complained was just free exposure for the power company. I think they were very smart in their thinking.

 

[cheepo]

wow...congratulations!!!!
sounds great

 

[~gd]

Maybe I should have bought more?

I dunno even if it's a good price. There were TONS of them for sale in dollar stores in southern California. They had a logo that the electric company was giving them out. They were $1 (the kind of dollar store where everything was $1.) I can't remember if that was a single cfl bulb or more.

I bought several, and have been using them. I don't really like the look of them in fixtures where they are exposed, but I will say that I don't think I've had any burn out yet. That alone would be a worthwhile savings, the way some fixtures seem to go through bulbs.

My new-to-me house has overhead fixtures in every room [they were in fashion when? the place had been built by hippies in the '70s] they have milky glass globes or domes over the bulbs. I bought the place in daylight and the power was cut off. At night I have seen caves that had better light! When I opened one of these up I really started to swear because of the heat traping design limited the bulb to 40 watt max. After I cooled off I got the bright [pun intended] idea of replacing the bulbs with CFL bulbs to get about 100 watt light equivent from 23 watt CFL bulbs. I knew CFL or any FL tube did not work well in the cold and got hot when on and I had some fear that the fixtures could get too hot and shatter the fixture or even set the house on fire so I converted one fixture and left another identical fixture with its 40 watt bulb. turned them both on and started checking which was warmer. Short there are now only 2 regular bulbs in my house. one in the refrig and one in the oven I just can't bring myself to expose my food to mercury.

 

[hqueen13]

Wow, that is awesome, gd! I don't blame you on the mercury and food issues...

The trouble that we have is that our ceiling fan in the bedroom has a globe over the light, too, but the bulbs are the skinny candelabra bulbs. We tried to buy the CFL version, but with that white part that sticks out of the fixture plus the twisty part of the bulb, they won't fit in the globe I guess I could look at LED's...