Please do not feel morally ambiguous about this. Halogen lamps are fully allowed under code and they replace your incandescents with everything you love about incandecents and less energy, allowing them under the code because they have enough lumens per watt.
They are basically an incandecent bulb with one important distinction: Instead of the vacuum of an incandescent they use a halogen gas (every manufacturer has a different mix) to burn brighter with less wattage. Otherwise they are the same old hot wire that you are used to. Last longer, use less energy, dim, and look as nice as incandescents. I buy mine at the local hardware store, they are readily available and about a buck twenty five each.
The other option you have is to use ārough serviceā bulbs, which have a plastic coating on the outside or specialized 130 volt lamps designed for ālong lifeā due to being underdriven at the standard 120 volts.
Do not despair, do not rage. There is a perfectly serviceable replacement that is allowed.
I really wish congress wouldnāt mandate technology. A friend of mine ran into this sort of thing. Someone got the bright idea to essentially ban mercury in Maine. One of the largest employers at the time freaked out because they need a special type of mercury bulb to do a type of photolithography. They are safe with it, only have a few of the bulbs, and disposes of it properly. The legislation was eventually killed because the company screamed bloody murder loud enough, but it shows the point.
Donāt fucking ban things unless they are truly awful. Blank bans are as horrible as three strike laws and zero tolerance policies. Tax it. Take whatever you think the cost of the externality is toss it on top as tax. Want to play it safe? Take whatever you think the cost of the externality is and triple it. Donāt fucking ban it.
Do you think that inefficient light bulbs are bad? Cool, put a price on the badness and then triple it. Further, do it based upon a metric, not a technology. If someone can make an incandescent light bulb that takes less power than an LED (they canāt, but for the sake of argumentā¦) than that should be judged on the same standard. Congress are roughly the last people on this planet that should be picking technlogical winners and losers.
Tax externalities based upon metrics. If someone is willing to shell out for an incandescent that costs more than an LED after the brutal externality tax, there is probably a good reason.
That had been the fear. Nuclear plants are shutting down due to Japanās leak. Fracking is finally starting to meet a lot of resistance. NIMBY protests about windmills happen all the time and solar takes up a lot of space people are not willing to give it. Coal, oil, and gas plants are assumed non-starters in this environment.
So, as the nation has observed California over the past two decades as some kind of messed up social experiment and then seen the addition of electric cars and battery powered devices, where did you think the power was going to come from if we are not adding the infrastructure to make more? We have to use less in the first place.
Yep! All the Planet Savers were so hot to get to an efficient bulb, that they were perfectly willing to push the fluorescent and halogen bulbs on people who cannot tolerate them - epileptics get to have seizures, people with sensitivities to certain light freqs get to enjoy the brain-fry and even physical pain that result. Why? Probably, ignorance of those consequences, mostly. But donāt sweat it - you can still be saintly, just not quite infallible!
Now, weāre going to get better LEDās instead. And they have already improved significantly. Try the Utilitech brand from Lowes. I switched everything out when I found those. The price is nice, and simple wattage equivalents definitely arenāt everything - we need ambient light, and those do a good job. We may get something even better in future, but those will meet the equivalent light and bulb-life-vs-incandescent-price challenge nicely.
Hmm. Congress wants us to sacrifice. EXCELLENT Idea. We need an appropriation for 535 large stakes, a kiloton of firewood, several kilometers of rope. . . and matches.
Halogens are merely painfully, blindingly bright. I guess thatās aā¦modest improvement? Sorta?
That problem also exists in car headlights, heard many complaints, and cussed many drivers myself. Yowee! Iām sure they have some good applications - but for cars or ambient lighting? Really? Do you use them for that?
Awwww, mang! You left out all those NSA internet spooks and a whole bunch of other assorted douchecrats. Think we might get a bigger group discount on supplies, or something?
Iād suggest the frosted bulbs for you then. The filament size of the halogens is actually larger than the previous incandescents. Add the soft white bulb exterior and you should have no complaints, a lower electrical bill and no seizures.
Halogens are not the ānewā technology in car headlights that you are complaining about, weāve actually been using them in cars for about 25 years. The newer ācoolerā lamps are xenon metal halides. The issue with a lot of those retrofits is that the refractor systems in older cars were not designed for that brightness, hence the light being aimed in directions that were not an issue for the original light levels.
You will find very, very few xenon metal halides, or metal halides in general home use. There have been some that have been specified for very specific uses, but they are too rare to be ones you have likely been in.
Oh yes! Right - I remember now. Sorry about the headlights remark, and thanks for reminding me.
Nope - canāt do the frosted halogens, either. I checked them out in the displays. Thereās another thing called scotopic sensitivity, where various freqs can be seen with the eye itself, but the brain cannot process properly. That can cause severe headaches, body pain, mental confusion, etc. Others have to use different shades, but my problem is in the visible red range. So, I just wear turquoise shades when I have to go inside any place that is brightly lit. Itās far more common than ever gets diagnosed, but then we have the problem of lighting being harmful to various humans, ever without epilepsy being present.
Iāve taken them off (briefly only!) to look through many interior lighting displays, and found most to be problematic. There are some other ways to control it, such as wall paint that will not reflect the offending freqs - but thatās at home. In public? Shades!
Anyway - Iāve noticed that both the halogen and fluorescent lights can certainly aggravate those kinds of problems. The Utilitech lights I mentioned, like other LEDS presently on the market, produce softer light - and sometimes, you even see the blue LEDās. Anyway, I still favor those, because I know they arenāt capable of harming anyone, including me. No disposal hassles, either, but with the same or better efficiency and the pricing is better than most brands. The worst of it with LEDSās is just that they are so directional that itās harder to produce good ambient light. These have overcome most of that. So as far as Iām concerned, we really donāt need to wait any more to convert. Its only annoying to pay as much for a single bulb as youād ordinarily spend on a couple of cheap 4-packs of incandescent, but if you bought those, youād also have to change out the bulbs several more times to equal the lifetime of the LEDS. The changes are usually no big - but if you have a high ceiling or a chandelier to deal with? Royal pain, and a waste of time, these days. I got so sick of in in one place where the fixture was over a staircase, that I had the chandelier rigged to drop down for bulb changes.
But this time, I did the LED conversion all at once after a test run with a single fixture for my small place about 9 months ago, and havenāt touched a bulb since. Iām really enthusiastic about it! Iāll only upgrade now if a really significant improvement comes along. Tere may be a ways to go for large industrial applications, but for residential? Weāre already there.
Sure. No prob. Iād never heard of it, myself, until a doc at the Amen Clinic saw my scans and diagnosed it. It was pretty amazing. He just told me to read printed page aloud, then suddenly stopped me and flopped a colored transparency over the white page. It was like my vision improved suddenly, and I could feel all kinds of odd muscles relaxing. (Enough to make me audibly sigh without even realizing.) I later heard of a woman so severely affected that she had been locked up in a ward and called psychotic because she was so messed up that way.
The article was cool. The top part, I mean. When I got down to the vid, and saw idiots pimping shadeless lights, saw how Phillips had built convenient bright white wall around their display, then heard people standing under stage lights talk about the quality of the LEDSā I giggled a little, tho. Gotta me a major hassle to rig that lighting to film yet other lighting.
Iāve got an old house tooā¦ I love the new LED bulbs, because they put less current on my late stone age wiring.
Some of my friends have had good experiences with blown insulation in the walls, and I hope to eventually put a pale-colored metal roof on mine with 24" of foam sprayed on the underside. In my area thatāll eventually pay for itself in reduced heating and cooling bills.
Spray foam didnāt just save us a lot in heating costs: we went from not being able to be in the kitchen eating area in winter (despite the furnace being on) to being able to be there in normal clothing.
Much sympathyā¦ our dining area has large expanses of north facing glass, and the insulation is probably best described as āwhimsicalā. (and ānot my doingā.)
Not my doing, either, and I would say ignorant rather than whimsical, based on the many poor choices the previous owners made!
Iām not sure of the brand name of the spray foam. I could try to look it up, if youād like. The workman cut 2" diameter holes in the drywall at about 2-3ā intervals and pumped the foam in very quickly and at a decent price. That made it relatively easy to patch and repaint afterward (reusing the cut-out circles).
