new American made incandescent bulbs

[eccerr0r]

Re: new American made incandescent bulbs

I had one of those torch 300W halogens, those were bright...and hot...
I was wonderring about those direct replacement screw in bulbs as Kiriakos was alluding to, which sounds like they do only use 70% of the power needed. How about color rendition index of these halogens, are they as good as incandescent or is the UV a bit more prominent? Annoying? Is it a frosted bulb or transparent glass?

I do have a lux meter, which might be worth it to see how it behaves except I need to buy a bulb They don't appear to be cheap though, sometimes a crappy CFL will be cheaper...

[cheapie]

Re: new American made incandescent bulbs

I'm tempted to go buy one of those halogen incandescent bulbs, anyone tried them? What do you think of them? Good enough compared to a regular incandescent?

They don't quite give off as much heat though, so if you wanted a 100W heater, it's a bit lacking...

They're okay, but I like the look of LED light better.

[Topcat]

Re: new American made incandescent bulbs

I've had only fair luck with the incandescent halogens. The sylvania ones (which are also made in the USA) have a horrible lifespan. I use them in my porch lights....which have been in place since June. I've already had to replace 4 of them already (of 7). Now the GE/Edison halogens, I've had really good luck with those. They're made in Hungary. I've got some of those that have been in service approaching 5 years. I never jumped on the CFL bandwagon either....but I must admit I'm intrigued by LED's. CFL has all kinds of toxic obnoxious chemicals/components in them....not very enviro-friendly. LED, not the case....and they last seemingly forever.

[tom66]

Re: new American made incandescent bulbs

CFL mercury is less than that produced by burning more coal for an incandescent.

However they never seem to last long (mainly the electronic ballast fails too quickly), have horrible buzzing when they are near the end of their life, and they take a while to warm up. Poor intermediate technology really. Can only wait for cheaper LED lamp.

[eccerr0r]

Re: new American made incandescent bulbs

I've not had bad luck with CFL, most of them last as long as they say as long as they're not the really cheap ones and they're not turned on and off constantly. Also sticking non-dimmer ready electronic ballasts on a dimmer tends to kill them (ha).

The number of CFLs that have burned out on me I can count on one hand, and virtually all the lamps in my house have been swapped to CFL (the remaining ones are my bathroom vanity bulbs, which I've started replacing as the tungsten bulbs burn out.)

LEDs are still too expensive. Though it may be inconsequential and possibly outright weird, LEDs apparently need heatsinks. I hope they can produce multiwatt LEDs that don't need heatsinks someday (need to make LEDs with a lower Von?). Also the dimmer problem is oddly an issue for LEDs as well as they also have switching CC PSUs (in the flicker free, low LED count lamps). The LED lamps that have 40+ LEDs in them that are connected in series are probably less problematic but physically large...

But to each their own, I'm surprised that E26-base halogens sometimes do not last as long as claimed. Also both LED and CFL have non-blackbody radiation, I'm surprised anyone would prefer either of these color outputs over incandescent (though honestly I can't tell, nor do I care as long as I can read resistor color bands. It's bad when I can't tell the difference from red/orange/brown...)

[cheapie]

Re: new American made incandescent bulbs

and they're not turned on and off constantly.

EXACTLY! Don't turn a CFL off if you're only leaving the room for a minute.