Do you still use incandescent light bulbs?

[Stereodude]

Yes, in my fridge, attic, and a few rooms that I infrequently use. Most my lighting is CFLs. I'm not replacing them with LEDs until they die and I use up my remaining few CFLs.

 

[bestellen]

I was still buying G25 bulbs for my bathroom though because it was only a few weeks ago that I found a suitable LED replacement bulb.

 

[markr6]

I was still buying G25 bulbs for my bathroom though because it was only a few weeks ago that I found a suitable LED replacement bulb.

At least you didn't stick A19 bulbs in there! Why they hell do people do that!??! Not that those fixtures are appealing to start with, but throwing in 4, 5 or 8 A19 bulbs with big white plastic bases and writing all over them without any cover to hide them...not for me

Do you like the LED replacements so far? I have two bathrooms with these fixtures and a lot of bulbs.

 

[Subterrestrial]

So after I got home from work yesterday, I went to move my car out onto the street for a "free car wash" (storm coming) and I noticed a cardboard box under the tree next door that says Incandescent Light Bulbs. It's actually printed on the box, not hand written. It's in an area where people leave stuff they're giving away (and don't want to dispose of properly) and there's an old address label for my neighbor. I'm intrigued, so I cautiously lift the flap with my foot and sure enough, it's a case of GE Reveal 100W bulbs! There were a few broken and a few missing, but I still ended up with over 40 of them. Some of them are already being put to use. The Reveal bulbs were my favorite incans and I feel no guilt about being able to continue using them for a bit longer (though I'm sure I'll be sharing them with family and friends as well).

 

[bykfixer]

^^ Very cool story!!!


Kryptons here.

Places like the attic, crawl space and other hard to reach areas got curly fries... due to the pitb to change factor.

But a couple reading lamps still get kryptons, which so far have lasted a couple of years since swapping out the cfl's in them.

 

[Illum]

I still use them because they haven't burnt out yet. When we bought this house 21 years ago the house was already 35 years old. The former tenant left a gallery of different lamps that fitted to different fixtures in separate parts of the house. Our dining table light has literally never been changed during our time in this house.

Some odd reason I bought a few equivalents and installed them in place of the old ones. The new ones were so much brighter and whiter and.... rather short lived. The old ones are a little more dimmer, output a little more orange, but they just chug along like its day one.


Same goes with those 350W/500W Halogen work lights. I have not put enough runtime into them to fry them just yet.

 

[espresso]

140W Halogen in my dining room. 200W equivalent. It's a beast. The food always looks good.

 

[jimsy1]

hi
is any led ok for a light bulb and somekind of SMD 5730 led is also ok? or do i need somekind of cree leds?

 

[brickbat]

No - that'd be fine - just watch out for excessive capacitive diractance on those 5730's.

 

[iamlucky13]

I still use a moderate number.

Closets - not used enough to be worth replacing. Nerd that I am, I actually took the time to confirm this, digging around until I found life cycle environmental assessments that academics have done on incandescents and LED's. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think I concluded a light needed to be on for somewhere in the ballpark of 30 minutes a day before an LED would save enough energy to make up for their more resource intensive manufacture and disposal. That was a couple years ago. LED production has improved since then, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's more like 15 minutes/day crossover now.

Bathrooms - so far, high CRI LED's that render skin tones well have been expensive. That's probably changing. The Feit bulbs from Costco are 93 CRI. I'm using them in my dining room and they look good, so I might try them in the bathroom next.

Range Hood - Unconventional two level dimmer switch does not work at all with LED's.

A couple outdoor photocell lights - had flickering trouble in the past with LED's and CFL's.

 

[idleprocess]

15 months later, little has changed:

• Entry fixture is still sporting candelabra incandescents; it is used rarely and I intend to replace the fixture if I service it
• Living room ceiling fan light kit is also sporting CFLs; also used infrequently
• Stairs lighting fixture also unchanged, however I may be motivated to replace the fixture sooner since the slow startup of those candelabra floros is annoying
• Dining room proprietary T5 circline fixture isn't going anywhere - I enjoy the 3500K light and use it for work-from-home days
• I re-wired the kitchen T8 fixtures for direct AC and installed 4000K LED tubes from a local supplier; so far so good

Closets - not used enough to be worth replacing. Nerd that I am, I actually took the time to confirm this, digging around until I found life cycle environmental assessments that academics have done on incandescents and LED's. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think I concluded a light needed to be on for somewhere in the ballpark of 30 minutes a day before an LED would save enough energy to make up for their more resource intensive manufacture and disposal. That was a couple years ago. LED production has improved since then, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's more like 15 minutes/day crossover now.

Inexpensive LED bulbs lacking the upper-end power LEDs and massive heatsinks of previous years are becoming the norm. Philips, Cree, and GE now have widely-available bulbs following this formula. Rising efficiency and greater thermal ruggedness seems to be the key.

 

[markr6]

I've been running the GE Reveal LEDs (60 equiv) in my family room for over a year now in two table lamps. Last night my back was hurting so I just lied flat on the floor. I really noticed how nice they are compared to incandescents by looking at the white ceiling. The light above the GE bulbs were PURE WHITE, compared to the 2700K bulbs in my kitchen chandelier just 10' away which painted the ceiling yellow. But the GE bulbs don't give the impression of being cooler; still have that ~3000K look. Very nice!

 

[Pellidon]

In the winter to keep pipes from freezing is my only incandescent light bulb in use.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Well the incandescent bulb in our microwave has burned out. That leaves only one surviving incandescent bulb in our house - the fridge bulb. Not sure what I'm going to do with the microwave bulb yet - that seems like a hostile environment for an LED bulb with the strong RF field from the magnetron.

 

[Barabus]

Only in fixtures where I have been too lazy to access or where bulbs are rare/expensive

 

[brickbat]

Well the incandescent bulb in our microwave has burned out. That leaves only one surviving incandescent bulb in our house - the fridge bulb. Not sure what I'm going to do with the microwave bulb yet - that seems like a hostile environment for an LED bulb with the strong RF field from the magnetron.

Actually, I'd be surprised if that was the case. Any microwave lamp I've ever looked at was on the 'outside' of the Faraday cage. IOW, looking at the bulb from inside the oven, it's 'behind' a screen.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Actually, I'd be surprised if that was the case. Any microwave lamp I've ever looked at was on the 'outside' of the Faraday cage. IOW, looking at the bulb from inside the oven, it's 'behind' a screen.

True. What makes me wonder though is that I've measured at least some microwave leakage around every oven I've ever checked, and if some energy is leaking outside, I'm guessing that some energy is making it through that cage and over to the bulb.

 

[brickbat]

Of course every microwave has measurable leakage. But if it's high enough to harm a nearby LED, I'd be more concerned about my eyes (and and other parts )...

 

[ameli0rate]

I moved in to the new (to me) house in mid 2014. The first thing I did was to replace all bulbs.
The odd round fixtures in a hallway and a couple of closets and pantry were already the weird round fluorescent. Good enough.
Everything else got the remaining CFLs I had from the "$1 each!" sale my Colorado utility company offered back in the day and I stocked up.
The few remaining fixtures got IKEA LED bulbs, which surprisingly work well in the photosensitive, motion activated carriage lights outside! I expected a short life, but they're still going strong.

The remaining incan bulbs are 4 candelabra bulbs in the hallway fixture hanging 15 feet up! I don't know how to get to it, but I also rarely use that light.
The flood over the kitchen sink - rarely used due to the large 80's fluorescent tube fixture lighting up the entire kitchen (I want to replace that with some downlights over the island and LED can lights)
The two floods over the fireplace. They're angled towards the wall so as to light a painting or whatnot. I never use them.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I needed a high wattage ballast resistor for a project, but I couldn't find one in the specs that I needed at my local store, and I didn't want to wait several days for mail order. So I used a 100w incandescent bulb in the circuit instead. Worked like a champ! Does this count?

No, it didn't light up. I was only pushing around 100ma.