On Lightbulbs

At the grocery store on Saturday morning, I came across the lightbulb section. Oooh, CFLs. I took a closer look. I found "60watt" replacements that use 13watts and "40watt" replacements that use 11watts. I bought 10.

I should preface my story by saying my first foray into CFL usage did not go well. Husband broke one in the middle of the night in the nursery/office requiring that we clean up the mercury-laden debris. No more, he said.

I bought them anyway.

You should know that Dan is an electrical engineer. His idea of saving energy is to let the bulbs burn out one by one on our 3 bulb fixtures until the light is so low that we can't stand it or the last one goes.

Evidence:

Anyway, 2 burnt out 40watt bulbs + 1 functioning 40watt = 40watt. Then ...

Dan replaced them with 3 of my new 11watt bulbs.

Now we are using 33watts instead of 40watts, and getting 3 times the amount of light. Dan is happy, but his eyes are happier, given that this fixture is above his desk.

Feeling confident, I moved on to the fixture above our bed: a 4 bulb light fixture with attached fan. This thing is on a dimmer and has a remote. I switched all of them to CFLs, again 11watts. Great! Now our whole room is eco-friendly!! Oops. I read the package. CFLs do not do well on dimmer switches.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

AFTER I READ THE PACKAGE:

Feeling dejected, I went downstairs to find another, non-dimmer fixture, for my 4 homeless squiggly lights. Note to CFL manufacturers of the world, what about those of us who like mood lighting, er, night lights?