Those fancy new light bulb thingies
I'm sure you guys have all seen those new-fangled weird squiggly light bulbs that are really expensive, but supposed to save you money in the long run:
Well, about 6 months ago I spent about $100 changing about 70% of the light bulbs in my house to that kind. All of them except the vanity lights in the bathrooms, and the ones that are on dimmers in the basement. When I did the math back then, I thought I'd save about $15 a month, meaning the bulbs would pay for themselves in about 6 months or so. Well, this morning I pulled the numbers from the past year and put them in the spreadsheet I've been keeping of bills since we moved into the house and since Excel has this neat-o chart feature, it was easy as heck to pull this:
Nov of '06 is unusually low because I got a rebate of some sort from the electric company that month, but every month after that is at LEAST $15 less, when you have the real #s (and not a chart) some are $20-$25 less and look at April... $45 less! I'm not a tree hugger by any stretch of the imagination, but damn, I wasn't expecting that much of a difference!
So, if you're thinking about it and have the extra money to buy a bunch of bulbs all at once, go for it. If not, even doing one at a time will help in the long run. I have had a few problems with cheap-o bulbs though, I had 3 bad ones (that got returned) and one that burned out already, but I've found that the Home Depot ones work the best. I don't remember the brand, but last time I went they only had ALOT of one kind... They are $7 each instead of the $5 ones I got at Lowes, but they're brighter and start faster, so hey.
The only bad thing I've seen with these bulbs overall is that any bulb thats mounted upside-down (in a ceiling fixture, for example) takes about 20 to 30 seconds to get to full brightness. Small inconvienence for a huge money savings though.
Oh and look at the difference between the pink summer (2006) and the yellow one (2005). Thats the savings from fixing that god damned hole in the venting in the basement. Scary, eh? I know I'll take a good long look at every little thing before I buy my next house.
Well, about 6 months ago I spent about $100 changing about 70% of the light bulbs in my house to that kind. All of them except the vanity lights in the bathrooms, and the ones that are on dimmers in the basement. When I did the math back then, I thought I'd save about $15 a month, meaning the bulbs would pay for themselves in about 6 months or so. Well, this morning I pulled the numbers from the past year and put them in the spreadsheet I've been keeping of bills since we moved into the house and since Excel has this neat-o chart feature, it was easy as heck to pull this:
Nov of '06 is unusually low because I got a rebate of some sort from the electric company that month, but every month after that is at LEAST $15 less, when you have the real #s (and not a chart) some are $20-$25 less and look at April... $45 less! I'm not a tree hugger by any stretch of the imagination, but damn, I wasn't expecting that much of a difference!
So, if you're thinking about it and have the extra money to buy a bunch of bulbs all at once, go for it. If not, even doing one at a time will help in the long run. I have had a few problems with cheap-o bulbs though, I had 3 bad ones (that got returned) and one that burned out already, but I've found that the Home Depot ones work the best. I don't remember the brand, but last time I went they only had ALOT of one kind... They are $7 each instead of the $5 ones I got at Lowes, but they're brighter and start faster, so hey.
The only bad thing I've seen with these bulbs overall is that any bulb thats mounted upside-down (in a ceiling fixture, for example) takes about 20 to 30 seconds to get to full brightness. Small inconvienence for a huge money savings though.
Oh and look at the difference between the pink summer (2006) and the yellow one (2005). Thats the savings from fixing that god damned hole in the venting in the basement. Scary, eh? I know I'll take a good long look at every little thing before I buy my next house.