Are energy-saving light bulbs now a thing of the past already?

[Capitol]

Fuses work well!

[Capitol]

No, it's fashion. Putting low energy bulbs in ceiling mounted holders gives crap lighting. So use halogen instead.

[Chris J Dixon]

Indeed so. After replacing a couple of ageing CFLs with what should have been equivalent LEDs, I've actually changed them to a lower rating.

Chris

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's one of the major problems of LED - they tend to look a lot brighter when looking directly at the lamp. But don't actually produce that light level in the room.

[LumpHammer]

Not me. I've still got about fifty unused CFLs of various types that I bought for 20p each at Tescos in a cupboard. Good thing I'm not paranoid about Mercury.

[MM]

But there must be hundreds of thousands of homes with bulbs blowing all the time, whether the old filament type or the CFL type. I reckon most are still using the filament type, which are far easier to obtain, still.

MM

[MM]

Ah! I wish now that *I* had bought many more at the 50p price! Could have stored a couple of hundred in the loft for a hundred quid.

MM

[charles]

You should see the LED theatre lanterns I've got.

[Chris J Dixon]

I can only say what I have experienced, which is higher room light levels. Maybe my old CFLs were worse than yours. ;-)

Chris

[ARW]

Think flared trousers

[ARW]

May I ask what sort of fittings they are? I thought there was an LED equivalent for every fitting apart from certain downlights:-)

When my parents complained that one of their outside lights was not working even after they had swapped the lamp it was cheaper (and a lot less hassle) to replace the PL lamp with a LED PL lamp and bypass the faulty ballast than replace the fitting.

[PeterC]

Lots of CFLs in B&Q today. Apart from lights that are used occasionally, my house is now LED or(2) T5

14W tubes. The CFLs are in a shed and the loft.

[PeterC]

Not only the various wattages of CFLs from Morrisons (10p for Philips) but all the E14 ones that arrived with the new fittings - where the hell will take those off my hands?

[Gordon Freeman]

I'm not sure why you can't find any such bulbs, I see them all the time in Wilko, Tesco, Sainsburies, everywhere that sells light bulbs. They're not

50p any more though since those prices were subsidised by the electricity companies under their green obligations.

If you mean specifially 11w = 60W that's probably because it was a lie, a

11W CFL would really be equal to about 45W, and manufacturers do finally seem to have stopped making wildly exaggerated claims about them. Smaller CFLs are about 4x the efficiency of filament bulbs, bigger ones (>20W) about 5x, to get better than that you need either strip lights or LEDs.

The main difficulty I find with CFLs is not finding low wattage ones but high wattage ones - anything above 20W has become strangely rare for no apparent reason.

[Gordon Freeman]

I don't think I've owned any filament bulbs since I moved house about 25 years ago and fitted CFLs throughout at the new place. Even though they were much more expensive then (about a tenner each), and electricity much cheaper, I'd worked out that each bulb would save its purchase price a number of times over during its lifetime so it was a no brainer to switch to them. I was always amazed that people kept buying the old style bulbs (except where it was neceassry for use with a dimmer or something).

[Nightjar]

Outdoors: bulkhead lamps each with 2 x G23 9W CFLs, floodlights with two or four of the same. Indoors: downlighters each with 1 x G24 32W CFLs, one of which, over the consumer unit, has an emergency light kit fitted.

I have suitable lamps in my lighting spares stock and don't really expect any problems buying more. If any of the lights need more than a lamp replacement, I'll do what I did in my porch and simply replace the whole unit with an LED version.

[ARW]

And most unlikely IMHO to actually make much difference when a lamp blows.

[alan_m]

You have actually paid £500 for those bulbs in the past 5/10years. It's the stealth tax added on to your energy utility bills. Currently you are paying around £100/annum to subsidise those with electricity generating solar panels on their roofs.

[alan_m]

So did the CFLs when you purchased them. You may have paid 50p in the shop but the other £10/£15 was paid for by the energy companies who in turn just included it on your energy bill.

[alan_m]

Because the electronics in them get too hot and they expire quickly.