A while back I wrote about compact fluorescents and how great they are and all that.
I figured a 2 year follow-up was in order.
So far, I've replaced 1 bulb that burned out, and I had one break when I moved.
Every other bulb that I bought two years ago is still shining as bright as they day I bought it.
My electricity bills dived noticeably (about 20%) after I switched. I've never had a pre-CFL electricity be higher than a post-electricity bill on a month-by-month basis. The biggest savings are in the winter which is nice here in the northeast, where heating costs are pretty expensive compared to my electrical bills - which are very cheap compared to my peers since I choose to forgo air conditioning.
What has been harder though, is to get my parents to convert to compact fluorescents. Lots of people their age say the same thing - "I don't like the light it throws".
I'm wondering what the deal is with that. The light doesn't bother anybody my age that I've talked to. At all. Sure, I can tell that there is a difference. But I'm not able to say one is superior to the other.
Is it that the older generation is more used to having bulbs that look the same way they always have?
I don't think that's entirely it. My parents switched from "soft white" to the bluer hued light bulbs a few years ago. so its hard to say that they're entrenched in one particular style of lights.
Maybe they just psychologically think that blue is superior?
Maybe CFLs have a stigma because they were poorly implemented a couple
decades ago with inferior technology.
Maybe their eyes are different? Can we figure that out? we know that the actual areas of the light spectrum that incandescent give off is different than a CFL. Does the human eye get used to certain frequencies of light and prefer them? Does the eye lose sensitivity to certain frequencies as people age?
My mom says the light is ugly. If I had to see it through her eyes, would I agree? (As in, if I could somehow take a picture through a filter that exactly matched her retina, would I be forced to agree that - yes - when seen through her eyes it is ugly.) This would be as opposed to saying, our eyes physically see the light the same way - but our brains interpret it differently.
I don't know which it is.
If its the eyes themselves - then maybe when I'm older I'll have CFL light too.
If it is psychology, then the light would probably just take some getting used to.
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I did the same thing. The regular lightbulbs burnt out too much, and were costing me a ton of money. I switched to a the environmental friendly ones and thigns have been great since. They are somewhat expensive to buy at first, but i took them with me when i moved to a new apartment (not cheap, just frugal)
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