Bootlegging Lightbulbs

[sparechange]

Back in the 1960's it seemed like a big deal to illegally get some beer or cigarettes before we were of legal age. Then came the bootlegged recordings of rock concerts, which everyone enjoyed. Of course most boomers at least occasionally enjoyed some bootlegged marijuana. Back then, it seemed pretty normal to partake in these illegal activities, because almost everyone did it.

But who would have ever suspected that in the first and second decade of the 2000's people would have to bootleg lightbulbs? The government plans to take away our incandescent lightbulbs, and replace them with compact florescents, to save energy. Don't get me wrong, I do support energy conservation. After all, we only have one earth to live in, so we must all do what we can to eliminate pollution and environmental damage. At the same time, I like to save money on my utility bills.

However, compact florescent bulbs have their limitations. They do not provide the same amount of light, they often produce a color that is unacceptable, they contain mercury, so they add to harmful pollution, they are known to occasionally ignite and cause fires, they can not be used on a dimmer, they do not function well in cold weather in unheated buildings, and the biggest complaint seems to be the amount of time they take to get to full brightness.

I know this for fact after putting some of them in my garage. I'd walk in the garage to grab a plyers and a few bolts out of my bucket of odds and ends. I'd find myself standing there for 5 minutes, waiting for the CF bulbs to get bright enough to see the contents of my bucket, or find the plyers in my cramped tool box. I dont know about you, but I become really irritated when I am trying to get something done, and have to stare into near darkness waiting to be able to see what I'm trying to do. In the winter these bulbs were almost useless, and never got to full brightness due to the cold. I lived with these bulbs for a full year, before I finally had enough, and put back standard, cheap incandescent bulbs. Now I can walk in my garage, have instant light, and be back to the house with my items, in the time I was spending waiting for these CF bulbs to get bright.

On a more positive note, I do find that the CF bulbs are efficient in lights that are left on for hours. For example, I leave at least two lights turned on in the house all night, mostly for safety when we have to go to the bathroom or something while half asleep. In this case, they do consume less power and are plenty bright for a safety light. Of course, I still am concerned about the fire hazzard they can cause.

I want to do my part in conserving energy, but I am not willing to cope with CF bulbs in my garage or in cold weather. I am not willing to pay the price of these bulbs, which never last as long as they claim, and in most cases have the same life expectancy as a 25 cents standard bulb, and I am worried about thier fire dangers as well as exposure to mercury if one breaks.

I forsee the day coming when I and many other people will be bootlegging incandescent bulbs from other countries, because the US government will no longer allow them to be sold.

I'm afraid it won't stop there either. What will be the next products the govt takes away from us? They already took away many of the older automotive solvents (such as carb cleaner), and replaced them with nearly useless solvents that dont work. They banned the original treated lumber, leaving us with *NEW* treated lumber that now rots as well eating up nails, unless we spend a fortune for stainless steel nails. Whats next? Will it be laundry detergent or paper plates, or toilets? Will we soon all have to stop using computers and other electronics because they contain chemicals, are we all heading back to the days of candles for light, wood for heat, a hand pump for water, and a horse and buggy for transportation, and a creek and some rocks for doing laundry? It sure seems this way.

Does anyone want to join me in my horse and buggy caravan to make a trip to Mexico to bootleg some lightbulbs? The round trip will take three months, or longer if the weather is poor. We'll risk going to prison as we cross the border, but if we are successful, we'll bring back 50 cases of bulbs in our horse drawn buggies and will make $50,000 when we get back, since each case will be worth $1000 on the black market. Sorry, pot smokers will not be allowed to join us.

[ransley]

Id suggest you try some HD soft white Cfls they are cheap 1-2$ and make all your statements about their performance inacurate. It is time the Gov taxes incandesants and rebates Cfls. You just had a bad experiance from older style, or crappy bulbs. Coal plants release 4x the mercury to generate the power for a 100w incandesant, that you are breathing right now. I could go on with proof but you honestly have it wrong.

[Eric in North TX]

I'm in....ROAD TRIP You've got it right; the measures enacted to save the planet are doing more to kill quality of life than they do to save the planet, most come nowhere near solving a problem, most cause new problems that are worse that the problem they attempted to solve, yet they persist, it's for the children. Oh, and the toilets are already done, 1 1/2 gallon toilets don't flush as well as 3 gallon ones, go figure. Taken out a small loan to buy a loaf of bread lately? Good job pushing ethanol wackos, and yet; it still takes a gallon of diesel to make a gallon of ethanol, really helping the planet there guys.

[Telstra]

How about a false petrol tank full of INCANS and some of those oil sprays so you can make the revenue boys run of the road and then a couple of thomsons to finish them off.

[Telstra]

In New Zealand we pay 22 cents / kWhr so i love power savers YOU BETCHA

[Kurt Ullman]

Actually they are turned out because of the "least restrictive environment" clause in the Community Mental Health Centers Act passed under JFK. Although many of the problems with keeping them on their medications extend from the Supremes saying there is a constitutional right to refuse medications.

[dadiOH]

Fewer people would be a good start. Instead of tax deductions/credits for kids let's start taxing them. ____________

Good place to get them...most stores have a hot, non-screw in socket by the bulbs so they can be checked before buying. And no, no one sticks their finger into the socket - who would be that dumb?

[Mike Dobony]

How about just getting rid of the morons in congress, like Kennedy and Kerry and Sharpton, etc.?

[Phisherman]

Reading buy fluorescent lighting gives me a headache if I have to do it more than 10 minutes. That leaves me with either 1) Only reading during natural daylight hours, or 2) Stock up with incandescent bulbs. Already I have stocked up to last me the next 25 years, so it will be awhile before I consider buying bootleg bulbs. And then, I can always use my kerosene lamp or read by the campfire, if that is still legal.

[Kurt Ullman]

Of course if you are one of ones not covered, you might also realize that it would much easier and more efficient to address the reasons why you are w/o healthcare as opposed to ripping up the entire system and maybe then not addressing your concerns/needs.

[mtco]

Any chance that you might have old fixture that doesn't have an electronic ballast? With an electronic ballast, the "flicker" frequency is in the tens of kHz range -- way too high to be noticeable as flicker. That's not to say it can't give you a headache, but if flicker was the problem, a modern fluorescent lamp with an electronic ballast might help.

Even if you can't stand reading under fluorescent lighting, you may still be able to use them in areas where light quality is less critical. Also, you may want to look into LEDs and see if they work for you as reading lights.

[bud--]

It seems the media can't report this story right. Incandescents aren't banned.

A couple recent treads from this newsgroup:

other posts by Paul Eldridge - what the regulation actually is)

and

Klipstein]

[Cheri]

With the drug lords killing people in the streets of Mexico, I'll take my chances here. ;-)

Cheri

[mtco]

While sometimes - not always - measures enacted to help save the earth affects quality of life in some way, the root cause of problems is often unsustainable lifestyles. If a lifestyle is unsustainable to begin with, you shouldn't have any illusion that you can keep living that way forever.

You can live like a king on borrowed money too, but that's not going to last. Eventually you will have to cut back on your spending or face financial ruin.

Environmentally unsustainable lifestyles are just like that. Of course, life is good when you don't have to be careful with resources and when you don't need to clean up after yourself. You can live that way for a while, but eventually you'll have to change or face the consequences.

There are toilets with two-stage flush. You can flush with less water when it'll work, and with more water when the job requires it.

I agree that the current way of making ethanol from corn makes no sense. It doesn't seem like it's designed to help the environment at all. Sometimes you have to be a little cynical about politicians' real motives and not take what they say they're trying to do at face value.

[The Reverend Natural Light]

Grand idea. Would you bring me a vented gas can while you're there?

[Mark]

I hear the smugglers hide cans of R12 inside the bags cocaine...

Mark

[dnoyeB]

Slow starting bulbs last longer. If you get one that comes on right away, its probably a cheaper one that wont last. Probably...

I agree with most of what you said though. They do start slow and are dim and don't have the whitest light. But regular bulbs are cheap as hell and burn out unacceptable fast. The whole situation is crap and you know why...

[Mark Lloyd]

And I've still never seen a CFL that took longer than 2 or 3 seconds to start. But then, I don't use them in freezing cold places.

[Kurt Ullman]

I have been interested in health care stuff for over 20 years now. I have seen that figure bandied about, but I haven't seen anything about where it came from. Do you happen to remember, or do you just bandy it about? The healthcare expenditures data published yearly by the Feds don't back that up.

[Don Klipstein]

As it turns out, incandescents that will meet the mandates that take effect in 2012 and 2014 are already available. The hurdles imposed are low enough so that lightbulbs with about 40% of the efficiency of better compact fluorescents can meet these mandates until 2020.

Ones I already saw on the market are Philips "Halogena energy saver",

70 watt and 40 watt units. The 70 watt one produces about as much light as a 1500 hour "soft white" 100 watt incandescent, or about 92-93% as much light as a "standard" 750 hour 100 watt incandescent, or about as much light as a good 23 watt or a poor 28 watt CFL. The 40 watt one similarly compares to 60 watt incandescents and 13-15 watt CFLs (and the dimmest 18 watt non-dollar-store CFLs). These appear to me to have more efficiency than usual for halogens (of such voltage, wattage and life expectancy) by using "HIR" technology and maybe also more-premium main fill gas inert ingredient.

Often but not always fall short - so use one size bigger CFL. If a

13-15 watt one fails to achieve what a 60 watt incandescent did for you, use an 18 watt one.

The various brands do differ in philosophy as to greenishness-vs-pinkishness and many brands give many color temperature options.

Among 2700K spirals 23 watts or less:

Want more greenish (or whitish and yellowish as you may see) - use Philips. Want more yellowish (greenish and warmer) - use Feit Electric. Want one level less greenish (or more purplish/pinkish) - use GE, common at Target and other places. Want more purplish still and also whiter (I find this "harsh") - use Sylvania 3000 K, common at Lowes.

Want something whiter but still warm? Get 3500K ones, such as Sylvania ones (often they call that "Daylight", as opposed to other brands using that term for icy cool colors), or N:Vision "Bright White" (Home Depot).

Higher wattages (mostly over 23 watts) in my experience tend to be less yellow-greenish and more purplish-pinkish.

On average they actually reduce mercury contribution to the environment, because on average the amount of coal burning required to produce the "coal share" of electricity saved by a CFL over it lifetime releases more mercury than a CFL contains.

If you want to improve upon that, dispose of your dead CFLs by means recommended for your locality by

Most complaints I hear of actual flaming come from the dollar store stool specimens. Most of those lack the UL listing that I find to be the norm for "lightbulbs" that include ballasts (with exception of mercury lamps ballasted by an incandescent lamp filament). Heck, one of the dollar store "brands" had one model recalled for failure to have its plastic construction of the flame-retardant plastic. I would not be surprised if many other dollar store "stool specimens" were/are similarly faulty, given lack of regulatory action to force them to meet light output claims in lumens, and to make such claims ("general purpose" lightbulbs have to state light output in lumens ["specialty" ones such as colored, reflector, oven, nightlight, decorative, etc. lack that requirement]). All the "spectacular failures" for "better brands" that I saw better documentation of were from the early years of the spiral ones, and they did not ignite since proper flame retardant plastic appears to me to be necessary to gain that UL listing.

Less true now - I see dimmable ones at Target now. I suspect the mandates will force an increase in availability of dimmable ones soon.

Outdoor ones do quite well there once they warm up.

I have heard of technology to combat that - I expect market forces to bring that to market soon.

Meanwhile, the warmup issues are worse with ones that have outer bulbs (including outdoor ones). For CFL usage in non-chilly areas, go for CFLs with bare tubing.

That is an application for incandescents.

Keep in mind that only specific incandescents will be banned in 2012 and

2014. Most "specialty" types get around the ban. So do ones with light output outside a certain range that mainly affects wattages 40-100 watts. It apears to me that 200 watt and probably many 150 watt incandescents will be unaffected by the 2012 and 2014 bans.

In my experience, most CFLs either meet their claims of life expectancy or only mildly/moderately fall short. Most last over 4,000 operating hours in my experience.

Since only specific incandescents will be banned effective 2012 and

2014, and improved models that have high enough efficiency to get around the 2012/2014 ban are already on the market with more already in the pipeline, I see only minor bootleg market.

Few cars nowadays have carbs. If you have one of those, I would not give up before trying turpentine.

I thought stuff like this for toilets already went through in a lot of areas. Now I see many 1.6 gallon/flush toilets that work as well as toilets ever did. Sadly these, like airbags for cars, needed a government mandate to come into existence.

I seem to think that both industry lobbyists and common voters will not let anything that drastic occur.

$1,000 a case, with a case probably having 48 of them? That's a little over 4 times the price of the 3,000 hour Philips "Halogena Energy Saver" at quantity-of-2 retail price at Home Depot. That price will certainly drop when GE brings their similar products to market in a year or two.

- Don Klipstein ( [e-mail])