21-06-2015, 03:15 PM
Let’s have a quick look at the three basic types of lighting available at your local store.
Incandescent -This light source, invented by Thomas Edison, is the most widely used and the cheapest to purchase.
While its high energy consumption sucks, they are all what we had at our disposal since Thomas figured out a way to take large amounts of energy and convert it into heat that provides a very good light source.
Fluorescent –Introduce some gas into a bulb and replace the heating filament of Thomas’ original design with a spark results in the gas illuminating.
No longer restricted to the size and shape of the original Incandescent bulb, it took on the form of long humming tubes for offices spaces and fancy neon signs you see in Vegas.
For domestic use, the “tubes” were simply rolled up into a snail shell to reduce their physical size so they could fit into the original Incandescent socket.
LED (Light Emitting Diode) – The LED has been around for generations and its original intention was not illumination but rather indication. The semiconductor LED is a type of diode (a small device that restricts the flow of electricity in one direction) that was accidentally discovered to emit light.
Building on this original technology, man has found ways of making the diode generate large amount of light from something the size of a pin-head.
While there are other types of lighting available, they are normally not used for domestic use. IE: you street lights which use a concoction of poisonous substances like mercury.
There is a myth that states that you can save money by using energy saving light bulbs.
Current LED light bulbs hold true (the first generations were utterly unreliable and provided not much more than a couple of candles could).
It is mostly seen as a sin when hitting the checkout with an Incandescent light bulb in your cart.
Most people who notice will think to themselves “that person has no care about the planet’s resources”. In fact, some countries are now phasing out and banning the use or sale of Incandescent light bulbs (rightly so).
So why are people so intent of still using Incandescent? Because that are cheap and have a long life span (irrespective of whether they are energy consuming culprits).
Let me tell you a little story so you can get a better idea. It goes something like this:
A couple of years ago, my conscious got the better of me. Conscious told me that I could spend just a little more and fit out my whole house with energy-saving Fluorescent bulbs. I would save the energy resources and my power bill would be a bit lower.
Eager to make this happen I hit on down to the local hardware store and returned home with some “reputable” brands of bulbs of all sorts of “brightnesses”.
After trial and error and going back and forward to the store to replace most of them with brighter ones, I was eventually content.
Contentness was short-lived.
Some of the bulbs took ages to get to full brightness after being turned on. Some of them developed a mind of their own – sometimes working sometimes not.
The bulb failure rate was astronomical!
I was constantly replacing them and taking them back to the store for warranty replacement.
I eventually got so sick of this ritual, never knowing if the light was going to turn on or just simply quit while in the middle of doing something important.
The amount of fuel and time spent driving backwards and forwards to the store almost bankrupted me!
I drew a line: I pulled out ALL the Fluorescent bulbs and replaced them with old-school Incandescent ones – I was very happy and my bank account and insanity were saved.
I never returned the Fluorescent bulbs – I took so much joy in smashing each and every one with a hammer giggling with joy at the sight and sound of them splintering into a million pieces.
Later down the line and during house renovations I decided to give LED a good go.
The initial bulbs were utter crap – insufficient light, still the odd failure after a few months use and goddamned expensive.
I persevered for a while, spent MORE money replacing them with brighter and better ones as their prices came down – I learnt NOT to use 110/220v direct replacements but opted to change all fittings with 12v fixtures and transformers.
Now my entire house is LED, I have had one failure in 7-months and it was a faulty transformer.
If needed, I could power all required lights in my house for nearly a week on a single charge of a car battery – how efficient is that!
So, it took me trial and error to learn that ALL advertising around Fluorescent energy-saving bulbs are so false that someone should step in and declare war on their makers.
While there were teething issues with my LED experience, most all of the problems I had were due to a technology that had either not quiet matured or my purchase of direct LED bulb replacements for old-school Incandescent light fittings.
LED is your friend as long as you keep it low voltage.
Incandescent -This light source, invented by Thomas Edison, is the most widely used and the cheapest to purchase.
While its high energy consumption sucks, they are all what we had at our disposal since Thomas figured out a way to take large amounts of energy and convert it into heat that provides a very good light source.
Fluorescent –Introduce some gas into a bulb and replace the heating filament of Thomas’ original design with a spark results in the gas illuminating.
No longer restricted to the size and shape of the original Incandescent bulb, it took on the form of long humming tubes for offices spaces and fancy neon signs you see in Vegas.
For domestic use, the “tubes” were simply rolled up into a snail shell to reduce their physical size so they could fit into the original Incandescent socket.
LED (Light Emitting Diode) – The LED has been around for generations and its original intention was not illumination but rather indication. The semiconductor LED is a type of diode (a small device that restricts the flow of electricity in one direction) that was accidentally discovered to emit light.
Building on this original technology, man has found ways of making the diode generate large amount of light from something the size of a pin-head.
While there are other types of lighting available, they are normally not used for domestic use. IE: you street lights which use a concoction of poisonous substances like mercury.
There is a myth that states that you can save money by using energy saving light bulbs.
Current LED light bulbs hold true (the first generations were utterly unreliable and provided not much more than a couple of candles could).
It is mostly seen as a sin when hitting the checkout with an Incandescent light bulb in your cart.
Most people who notice will think to themselves “that person has no care about the planet’s resources”. In fact, some countries are now phasing out and banning the use or sale of Incandescent light bulbs (rightly so).
So why are people so intent of still using Incandescent? Because that are cheap and have a long life span (irrespective of whether they are energy consuming culprits).
Let me tell you a little story so you can get a better idea. It goes something like this:
A couple of years ago, my conscious got the better of me. Conscious told me that I could spend just a little more and fit out my whole house with energy-saving Fluorescent bulbs. I would save the energy resources and my power bill would be a bit lower.
Eager to make this happen I hit on down to the local hardware store and returned home with some “reputable” brands of bulbs of all sorts of “brightnesses”.
After trial and error and going back and forward to the store to replace most of them with brighter ones, I was eventually content.
Contentness was short-lived.
Some of the bulbs took ages to get to full brightness after being turned on. Some of them developed a mind of their own – sometimes working sometimes not.
The bulb failure rate was astronomical!
I was constantly replacing them and taking them back to the store for warranty replacement.
I eventually got so sick of this ritual, never knowing if the light was going to turn on or just simply quit while in the middle of doing something important.
The amount of fuel and time spent driving backwards and forwards to the store almost bankrupted me!
I drew a line: I pulled out ALL the Fluorescent bulbs and replaced them with old-school Incandescent ones – I was very happy and my bank account and insanity were saved.
I never returned the Fluorescent bulbs – I took so much joy in smashing each and every one with a hammer giggling with joy at the sight and sound of them splintering into a million pieces.
Later down the line and during house renovations I decided to give LED a good go.
The initial bulbs were utter crap – insufficient light, still the odd failure after a few months use and goddamned expensive.
I persevered for a while, spent MORE money replacing them with brighter and better ones as their prices came down – I learnt NOT to use 110/220v direct replacements but opted to change all fittings with 12v fixtures and transformers.
Now my entire house is LED, I have had one failure in 7-months and it was a faulty transformer.
If needed, I could power all required lights in my house for nearly a week on a single charge of a car battery – how efficient is that!
So, it took me trial and error to learn that ALL advertising around Fluorescent energy-saving bulbs are so false that someone should step in and declare war on their makers.
While there were teething issues with my LED experience, most all of the problems I had were due to a technology that had either not quiet matured or my purchase of direct LED bulb replacements for old-school Incandescent light fittings.
LED is your friend as long as you keep it low voltage.