To really fucking hate energy saving lightbulbs?

[DarlingDuck]

Ok I realise it is a good thing that we use them and think we should but I hate the dim flourescent glow, am starting to notice it more now the nights are drawing in and remembering just how much it does my head in.

I didn't know that you weren't supposed to bin them. How are you supposed to dispose of them?

Whatmeworry

can you read my link?

Where can I get cheap bio bulbs? Actually I'll even buy exepensive ones, I don't care I can't take our yellow glowing rooms anymore

DarlingDuck you can get clear light bulbs that aren't Biobulbs, I really hate yellow light (which is what is emanating from my TF living room bulb right now and bugging me) so we got some really bright clear light ones from John Lewis in the past. Biobulbs are really good though and I think we're just going to order for every room, proper white light. You can get multibuy deals from some places. Last house was a basement flat and it made a massive difference.

Can you get them from Sainsburys?

Don't think so. Tried to add a link after Googling but keep cocking it up. Not difficult to find online, I know a local health food type shop stocks them locally to me but they will be more expensive somewhere like that.

I hate them, They give me a migraine or if I'm lucky a bad headache - so I'm burning candals most of the time.

DS can take his out and I have found them broken on a few occations - resulting in major pain in the arse decontamination of his room (now getting bathroom spotlights installed).

They are expensive, the small globe ones dont last 5 mintues and I really, really can not see how something that contains murcury (sp?) can be helping to save the environment.

nobody will read my link

I've read your link Piglet.

hooray!

any help to anyone?

I loathe compact fluorescents, but I do like compact halogen bulbs. They give out the same light as incandescent bulbs but do use less energy.

Hell is lit by compact fluorescents.

Pigletjohn, I will read your link once I finish the work I've been avoiding all evening!

Whatmeworry can you read my link?

Yes, but note how they evade the actual costs of disposal (their suggested approaches will cost 100 - 1000x more than chucking a bulb in the bin - which is actually what everyone will do in reality) and they claim a long life which is not a general user experience, as this thread shows.

But net net teh saving from lightbiulbs is miniscule compared to reducing heating and big utility costs, these lightbulbs are an expensive non solution to an energy non problem.

I don't know. What is the incremental cost of me putting a lamp in my bag when I next go to Tesco, so I can put it in their bin?

Anecdotal life length is not, as you say, the same as experimentally tested life length. Which do you prefer to believe?

I am willing to give bio bulbs a try but, if they do not light my life sufficiently, I will be tracking down Mrs Applepants' secret stockpile of lovely 150w bulbs.

Can someone please suggest what sort of bulb I should buy to replace the 100W normal bulbs I had before when I run out of them (which will be quite soon)? I want something which will give an equivalent amount of decent quality light (I have very poor vision in dim lighting).

"if they do not light my life sufficiently"

are you willing to tell us how many lamps, of what wattage, you are currently using per room?

"Can someone please suggest what sort of bulb I should buy "

Yes, I explained earlier (at great and tedious length)

Anecdotal life length is not, as you say, the same as experimentally tested life length. Which do you prefer to believe

My own experience re how long they last is what I trust.

Re disposing of bulbs, I suspect very few people will especially go to Tesco to dispose of them, I reckon most will chuck it in the trash and the cost is borne later in detoxifying the landfill.

I also think they are glossing over migraines and the like a bit too glibly, I know I feel worse reading under these globes and I know I'm not alone by far.

But big picture the saving from moving from incandescent to these is negligible compared to where energy is really used, so all this crap is for nothing - thats my biggest criticism of the whole thing.

Sorry Piglet, a nice tidy lab with nice tidy tests is not the same as real life.
For a good analogy, look at the fuel consumption figures given for new cars. Most sensible people would look at these as a guide but I certainly wouldn't expect to get the fantastic figures quoted by car manufacturers in a real life situation.

I loathe these bloody things, hate the fact they ruin colours (another frustrated cross stitcher here), take ages to warm up (lethal on landings and stairs, especially for older folk) and I can't see how they are energy saving since we end up putting on loads of lights in a pathetic attempt to see (and still cursing at my unfinished cross stitch). Like others I bittterly resent having choice taken from me. Am more than happy to have one in my porch since I don't sit there stitching and don't care about the colour of hte outside wall in the dark. In my home, I like to be able to see what I am sewing, get around safely in the middle of the night if I need to visit the bathroom (without waiting three minutes for the damn bulb to fire up), and for our colour choices to be visible. It's not even a nice romantic Gothic gloom - it's a sort of sickly dull miasma.

And as someone who has worked in waste enforcement for over twenty years, I don't believe for a moment that anyone but the most concerned lentil weaver will be trotting along to a specialist disposal facility. Most of them will be ending up in wheelie bins.

"My own experience re how long they last is what I trust."

Yes, I completely agree with you. That's why I write the installation date on the base of the lamps when I install them, so I can see how many years they last. How about you?

Ok, so when I go and look at it in the shop, how do I know what a CFL looks like? Sorry I haven't bought any bulbs for ages as I still had some old style ones left and have been using them up first (and they seem to last for ages).

I am completely out of the lamp-buying market, and when I have been in the supermarket and looked, there are so many different types I'm completely bamboozled!

I don't mind dim lighting in lamps but it's the overhead lights in the bedrooms.

I used to use 60W in each shade (2 lights) of the old type bulbs. I've tried converting to energy saving bulbs and the ones that are in now are supposed to be equivalent to 100W each but the room just appears grey

"take ages to warm up "

that's why I took the trouble to write my long and tedious post earlier, mentioning some that were quick and some that were slow.

Yes, I completely agree with you. That's why I write the installation date on the base of the lamps when I install them, so I can see how many years they last. How about you?

Sorry, life is too short for writing dates on bulbs.

But, I think one develops a sense of when things are getting significantly better/worse when you run a home, and these bulbs do not seem to last appreciably longer. For eg, there is an especially hard-to-reach one in the downstaris cloakroom and the ladder's been out plenty since these bulbs went in.