Floodlights in a domestic setting are obscene. They waste huge amounts of energy, cause light pollution for neighbours and astronomers and are a dangerous distraction for passing motorists.
BTW, my preferred measure isn't the number of coal power stations saved. I prefer the number of low lying Pacific islands not submerged, or the alternative measure of how many millions in Bangladesh don't die in the monsoon floods.
Christian.
[...]
It's an interesting point of discussion this - are small, cheap changes better / worse / just as good as large expensive changes? We've probably shut down more power stations in this country in the last 30 years or so due to the closure of steelworks than we will ever do by swapping out lightbulbs, lagging hot water tanks and insulating every loft, wall and floor in the country, but I have yet to hear the politician brave enough to suggest that an easy way to make our contribution to saving the planet would be to close down the remaining arc furnaces, mothball the chemical plants using electrolysis and switch off every second street lamp.
Back in 1976 I remember being told to "put a brick in the cistern". The idea being that a brick would save a pint or so of water on every toilet flush (mum & dad never took theirs out). A much larger saving could have been had by forcing everyone to use low water-content loos, but (apart from the fact they weren't generally available) that would have been phenominally expensive. Over time, of course, these things *are* making their way into the housing market. What are we looking at? 3 liters saved per flush? Pfft; hardly worth doing, a lawn sprinkler can throw out 3 liters in less than a minute ;-)
To wrench the discussion back to lightbulbs, we have just moved house and brought our four CFLs with us. This year (what with everything else) we have less than no money available to insulate the loft or the walls or install double glazing, but should one of the CFLs fail or should we discover another potential site for one I am sure we can cough up the money for a new one. Just because it is cheap and has a small effect doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
That's the way I look at it anyway :-)
Hwyl!
M.
Agreed, with reservations. There are a few situations where they are quite useful, and should they be installed with thought they can be very effective. I have never installed anything larger than 150W, by the way. The last lot was a string of four all pointing more-or-less straight downwards lighting hard-standing for the car and the path into the back of the house. Control was by stand-alone PIR, carefully aimed so that it didn't go off (most of the time) when people walked down the lane.
Unlike our neighbours up the road who had what seemed like a 1kW lamp (probably only 500W) at the top of their garden, aimed down the garden straight at the back of their house, and their neighbours' house, and their neighbours' neighbours' house (us). We slept at the back, and ended up installing blackout linings on the curtains.
Somewhat less easy to quantify though :-) times 45W of electricity saved (15W CFL -v- 60W incandescent) equals coal-fired power stations of generating capacity, equals approximately tonnes of CO2, CO, SO2 and so on. After that you're into the realms of chaos theory to try to predict the overall effect on global climate :-)
Hwyl!
M.
Hi,
If there is a serious drought any water saving counts, and using a sprinkler will earn you a hefty fine.
cheers, Pete.
not necessarily - in cold weather the energy saved by using CFLs will just have to come out of the heating system instead in order to keep the place at a given temperature.
That depends. Gas is a fraction of the price of electricity and heat near the ceiling isn't as good as heat near the floor.
Christian.
I can accept half your point. :) CFLs are used year round, in hot and cold weather. The cost saving is the majority of the electricity saving, though not all:
Regards, NT
Yeees..... but a small proportion of it - perhaps 300W or so vs. 10kW.
Even if electricity costs 3-4 times gas, pro-rata it's still at least
10:1..andy
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I dont think this is relevant though. They save money, its that simple.
Regards, NT
Maybe. My point was really that there are areas where much more significant changes may be able to be made quite easily.
I looked at the *whole* energy picture over which I have control, look at each element in order and figure out which are the largest items, which are the most expensive and also the cost to address them factoring in issues such as payback. These aspects can be worked out reasonably well to arrive at an effective cost.
I also factored in issues such as convenience, comfort and aesthetics. It's difficult to associate those directly with cost, although there are some obvious ones. For example, the house has cavity walls with insulation. I'm not going to add Celotex inside to improve on that because I don't want to lose the space or redecorate or move things. The workshop has a single skin brick wall. It's definitely worth adding Celotex to that.
Considering all of that, I have done things like
- the insulation mentioned,
- loft insulation to a reasonable level of 200mm (more than that is pointless in the context of other things)
- condensing boiler with effective control systems
I may at some point change windows for double, possibly triple low-E glazed, but only when replacement is required for repair reasons.
In the context of all of these, lighting, especially as I don't tend to like high wattage bulbs anyway is a very small factor indeed. On an economic basis, it comes a very long way down the list.
When the other factors of comfort and aesthetics are weighed in as well, then for me, switching to CFLs is off the agenda completely. This does not give me angst over the economics or the small energy saving.
.andy
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