On Apr 19, 2:16*pm, Paul M. Eldridge
wrote:
On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:31:00 -0400, Marissa Payton

wrote:
Do you think that mandating light bulbs containing MERCURY helps the
environment? *Sure, a few people might even attempt to dispose of them
'properly' (whatever happens to them then), but most won't even do that.

I use 100 W light bulbs in a shed, in the garage, and a few places in the
basement where they might be on a few hours per year. *The energy savings from
replacing these with the Mercury bulbs are nil, but the environment damage
from producing/handling/disposing Mercury will be the same as bulbs that go
anywhere else. *The Congresspeople really didn't think this out to thoroughly
(shocking, I know) but I guess it "feels" better to mandate this nonsense for
everyone else.

Hi Marissa,

There is NO ban on incandescent lamps; the federal government has
simply established minimum efficiency standards similar to what it has
done with selected household appliances. *A 70-watt high-efficiency
incandescent (HEI) provides the same amount of light as a conventional
100-watt lamp but uses 30 per cent less energy. *Philips offers HEI
lamps that exceed these new standards and they're now available at
Home Depot.

Cheers,
Paul

So a new HEI 70 watt incandesant = 100w in conventional incandesant
output, a 25w cfl = 100w in conventional incandesant output, there is
still no comparison in savings, And new models of CFLs out now do 70+
LPW, vs 60-65 LPW of what we see now in most stores. An incandesant
bulb is esentialy a heater outputting light in limited visable
spectrum. A 100 watt incandesant outputs no more than 4-8% of its
consumed energy in light we see and benefit from, the rest is in heat.
In winter its not so bad, you get a big benefit of extra heat, in
summer, incandesants even HEI, are a big load on your AC bill. Now if
for most of the US electric costs were as cheap as Ng per Btu it would
not be so bad, but for me electricity is still much more expensive per
BTU than NG and my company is raising it again. Electricity costs will
be above fossil fuels cost, since most electricity is made from them.
And at what true cost in hours life does this HEI give? All higher
output bulbs Ive seen last less in hours, from Thinner filaments. We
should Tax the incandesant and rebate the CFL. Think what you will pay
extra this summer for AC cooling your home, to offset the lightbulbs
heating your house this summer. You will complain about those high AC
bills near to come, and they are for me to. 10 regular 100 watt
incandesants will be dumping at least 920 watts of heat inside, heat
you then pay to remove, how smart we are.