January 06, 2006

I wonder if Pat Robertson also believes that the Sago mine tragedy is God's special way of reminding a slothful nation at war to conserve energy?

After John comes over and gives us a sense of how much it will be to extend some kitchen cabinetry, I'm heading into town in search of a socket extender. Yesterday, I replaced close to 1000 watts of exterior flood light bulbs with compact fluorescents, but the ceramic ballast of the new bulb prevents these particular flood lights from making proper contact inside the flood light paulding. Each new bulb puts out about 75 watts of light using only 18 watts of power. If you do the math, you can quickly see the savings on that one simple chore.

OLD BULBS: 1000 watts (1 kilowatt) per hour (8 150 watt bulbs) for about 10 hours per night = @ 10 kilowatts. If a kilowatt of power runs about 8 cents, that's 80 cents per day, or $24 a month in electricity.

NEW BULBS: 144 watts per hour (8 18 watt bulbs) for about 10 hours per night = @ 1.4 kilowatts. That's only about 10 cents per day, or $3 per month. We save about $21. You can save even more by adding motion sensors available at Lowes of Home Depot and using much nicer exterior accent lights for constant night light source. We are testing a few solar compact fluorescents.

Throughout the new house, we also replaced about a kilowatt of light bulbs with smaller 12 watt compact fluorescents. We calculate we save about $5-10 per month throughout the house as not all of these lights are on at one time. Overall, the saving is pretty substantial, accounting to for almost a quarter of the home energy bill.

You can get these bulbs at Home Depot or Lowes. They are more expensive, but they do last much longer, and most of the time burn brighter. Check the lumens comparisons usually on the package and you'll see. Save the receipt and take advantage of the warranties. It may cost you shipping down the road, but it's better than buying them again. Get a couple extra to use as replacements while the new ones are being shipped.

Some people say they don't like the look of the spiral fluorescent, but who ever sees them in proper home lighting with lamp shades, globes or wall mounted fixtures? And besides, we're at war.