Insulation, fair enough. IIRC domestic heating is a large fraction - maybe 25% - of our total energy use, and insulation could halve that.
Light bulbs? Its completely minimal in the grand scheme of things.
Its simply a solution to be peddled as 'doing something' when in fact nothing of any real merit is being done at all.
Well, actually I do favour the things, but this government initiative, just like all government initiatives, is a complete failure, and much more likely to have the opposite effect than the one desired.
Ah, I thought we were talking politics. ;-)
We have many of CFLs (and full size flouros) and would have a few more if only I could get them in the fittings or if they would dim (I guess you can get dimmable stuff but not a straight lamp swap type thing).
We don't have a problem with them. I fit them (and have done so since they were first available, no faux eco bandwagon here) and they last and work (by 'work' I mean they give off light using less energy and aren't also heaters).
But then we don't buy into this 'your house must have or look like this' b/s. We do what works for us.
Cheers, T i m
Bit tough on the vegetarians though. (Not as tough as on the little birds of course.)
Could we use gulls instead? Or chavs?
Owain
Owain wibbled on Tuesday 27 October 2009 10:49
Have to be the female ones. The bloke chavs don't have enough fat.
I wonder if the cavemen in the south of England 10,000 years ago knew that their little log fires were melting the glaciers?
Ash wibbled on Tuesday 27 October 2009 11:14
Yeah - selfish sods. Think of the polar bears ;->
Except they wern't, their log fires were not releasing fossil carbon. Now if they had found some black rocks and also discovered they burn't well that would be a different matter.
Isn't it the same thing just over a longer time frame? ;-)
T i m
I wonder how good your eyes are, Tim ? Mine used to be perfect not so long ago, and I don't think that back then, CFLs would have caused me too much trouble. Now though, as I get older, I find that my eyes are nothing like as good as they were, and reading seems to be made much more difficult under CFL light, than under standard tungsten - or even linear flourescent, for that matter. Which is odd, since you wouldn't expect there to be such a difference between different implementations of what is fundamentally the same technology. I don't know why, but I find the light from CFLs to somehow be 'offensive', even though they go out of their way to try and colour match the things to tungsten. Interestingly though, I have no problem at all with any colour of linear flourescents. I have them in my kitchen, utility room, and my workshop, where I sit all day.
One of the things that I particularly dislike about CFLs, and which is worse with some types than others, is the way that the light output ramps up, especially if we are talking from a 'cold' start, and the way the colour shifts during that warmup period. Although linear flourescents do 'warm up' in terms of light output, they don't seem to suffer from the colour shift thing. Other people I talk to, whose eyes are less than perfect, seem to agree on the reading thing.
Someone from Canada near the top of the thread also brought up the fact that the heat output from incandescents is not actually totally lost and wasted, but in fact supplements the deliberate heating applied to the room. Seems to me that this is a valid point, and one that is totally ignored by the green mist brigade, when they vilify the humble, simple and cheap tungsten lamp, for its claimed planet-damaging inefficiency ...
Arfa
So ... if they were not releasing fossil carbon, didn't have power stations, cars, industry belching out pollution etc etc then what made the earth warm up and bring the ice age to an end? And if the earth can heat up then why can't it now and if so there's nothing that we can do to stop it ... or for it to return to another ice age.
Woolly mammoths. All gone. Sob.
dont be silly. Betwen the end of the ice age and the forestation of britain, and around 1700, nearly every single tree in the country was cut down for farming, timber or firewood.
Only coal and iron reduced that to the point we are now more wooded than at any time in the last 300 years.
Yeah ... them environmentalists again ... when they band fur and ivory the poor devils were out of work and couldn't survive ... sniff.
[...]
Probably wouldn't now. Got to hit his targets for the month.
Pete
Probably volcanic eruptions..
Well if you dont mind going back to 50 million total world population, and easting raw shellfish, no reason at all.
>
Black rocks don't burn well, which is why coal wasn't seriously used or mined until the Tudor period. You need to have a fireplace and fairly well-designed chimney to burn coal. Even the first steam locomotives couldn't burn coal, they had to use coke.
Our use of coal for heat and power really is a very modern invention:
150 years for widepsread power, 100 for electricity. Be afraid. We broke this place, and we did it very quickly.
No.
Releasing carbon which was captured in the last few years, or even the last few thousand years, is not an issue (although lots of ecobollockists don't even understand that).
It's releasing the carbon which was captured during the carboniferous period which is (possibly) an issue. That's carbon which was trapped during a 50M+ year period in coal seams and the like, and resulted in mopping up the high level of CO2 in the atmosphere at the beginning of the carboniferous down to the levels at the end of the carboniferous, which are nearer to what we have today. Rereleased over a 100 or 200 year timeframe, that is a potential cause for concern.
Understood. My eyes certainly aren't what they were, needing strength (?) 2 ready specs for reading and watching the TV (3's for soldering etc). Long distance stuff is still fine without. However I do find I need plenty of light to do detailed work (something a carpenter mate also noted when we were working outside putting a new roof on my Mums shed the other day, how easy it was to 'see').
Hmm, I can't say I've noticed that particularly. I do have one of those 'natural light' spiral type CFL's and that is VERY white!
Strange, as you say. I wonder if the coatings on the physically bigger lamps has a higher fluorescent inertia .. (I've just made that up, the same a the thermal inertia you get on a heavier filament incandescent).
Whilst I've seen that effect it's only really obvious on one of those little Ikea 7W mini ES lamps I have over my keyboard area. It comes up in 3 stages but only takes about 4 seconds to do so (it's quite cool, looks like a soft start). ;-)
The Mrs is nearly 60 and has needed fairly strong prescription glasses since she was 15. She regularly reads in here to an 11W CFL laying on a bit of radiator heat foil on a shelf 18" from the ceiling (and the only example of 'mood lighting' we have). ;-)
So fine in the winter (or Canada when they are always under 6' of snow). ;-)
FWIW we don't have central heating either and haven't had any heating on this year yet. There were days when we probably would have turned it on but we just put a jumper on instead.
I don't get involved in the politics. I buy them because the work and (think they) save us money.
Cheers, T i m
p.s. I normally write the install date on these CFL's when I install them. I recently replaced one that was over 10 years old and it is used every day for about 6 hours (it's on a time switch so ~22,000 hours). If it was a 20W CFL and gave off the equivalent light to a 60W and if it cost me £5 10 years ago, would it have saved me any money over a 60W incandescent?
We're less wooded, in terms of native hardwoods, than we were in 1914
If we've gained any woodland, it's since 1947 and it's upland plantation softwoods by the forestry commision
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.