A few months ago I finally got around to trying out some compact fluorescent lights. The delay was due in part to the lighting situation in my house. I don’t have many of the 40-100W traditional (A-shape) bulbs. The main lighting I use are the reflector (flood) lights in the recessed cannisters in the kitchen and a 3-way bulb in the bedroom. I finally got around to trying our replacements for both, picking them up at Orchard Hardware Supply.

In the bedroom I had a 3-way (50-75-100 Watt) incandescent bulb which I replaced with a DuraBright Compact Fluorescent Springlamp 3-way (14-19-32 Watt) which is supposed to be equivalent to a 40-75-150 Watt incandescent. It is ENERGY STAR certified. I’m quite happy with this change. The new CFL comes on pretty fast, and overall has brighter, whiter light. The only problem is that I can not reattach the lamp shade since the CFL is much bigger. For some reason, the included harp extender did not work. I don’t really care though since I didn’t use the lamp shade before either. This way I can use the lowest setting and still have enough light for most of my needs.

In the kitchen I have 65 Watt R30 recessed flood lamps. For these I picked up a 14 Watt Medium DuraBright Flood Lamp, which is their R30 equivalent. I only got one and tested it in the single cannister over the sink. I was very disappointed when I turned it on. The light was so dim, I could not understand how they could claim it is equivalent to my old 65W bulb. I tried turning it on and off, then put back the old bulb to make sure it was as bright as I thought. I then tried the CFL in one of the 5 cannisters over the center of the kitchen. Still no luck. While I was distracted elsewhere, the light eventually warmed up, and was now as bright as any of the incandescents. I thought they didn’t need this much time to warm up any more. I would say it takes a good 2 minutes to achieve full brightness, and is totally unusable for the first minute or more. I put it back over the sink, but I have not replaced the other bulbs yet. After further investigation it seems this is a common issue with CFLs designed for recessed cannisters. Apparently to handle the higher heat produced in the enclosed cannister, a slower phosphor element is used. I guess this is something I can live with, so I should change out the rest of the bulbs sometime.

I need to look around at the rest of the lights in my house just to make sure I’m using the most efficient lighting I can. Maybe the LED based bulbs will really hit the mass market soon. I’ll be keeping track on the one billion bulbs website. I’ve sponsored a group there, so you can see what I’ve done or join my group by going here, or look for the one billion bulbs banner on the right hand bar.