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And since IG uses electricity as main heat source, he can only save anything on days were he is not using the heat, I guess. On a cold day, the "wasted" heat of a normal bulb should reduce the amount of heat that his heating system needs to generate. Or are there levels of efficency when it comes to producing heat with electricity?
We had that conversation here not too long ago. It does seem that since electric resistance heat is 100% efficient, every watthour of electricity that goes into a light or appliance that produces "waste heat" in the same building is a watthour of electricity that didn't have to be expended on the heating coils.
(Note that "100% efficient" doesn't necessarily mean that electric resistance heat is the least expensive way to heat your home. It simply means that 100% of the electricity put into the system is converted to heat. Compare with 85% for a *really* well-tuned oil or gas fired system, 65-70% for a crappy one, or up to 300% for a heat pump operating under ideal conditions.)
I work from home. The LED bulbs in my office are on approximaly 12-14 horus per day. They last about a year and a half.
2016-05-17 14:42 from wizard of aahz @uncnsrd
Just a note on the lief expectancy of light bulbs. Careful reading says
"Will last 10 years*"..... Then go find the little writing where it
says "*Expected use of bulb is 2 horus per day".
I work from home. The LED bulbs in my office are on approximaly 12-14
horus per day. They last about a year and a half.
What brand are you using? Philips claims 50,000 hours, which is 11.4 years at 12 hours a day.
In a lot of bulbs, it's the driver circuit that burns out before the emitters do. Running it at a high temperature (such as inside an enclosed fixture) will aggravate that.
My LED and CFL bulbs have been such a mess that I think we spend more on bulbs than we would on electricity for regular incandescents.
Some fixtures just don't seem to be able to handle them. The kitchen light at my old house dissipated heat so poorly that it burned out any electronic bulb I tried to put into it. At one point I was thinking about drilling ventilation holes in the fixture, but I ended up just replacing the whole fixture with a non-enclosed one and I never replaced the bulbs again.
At the current prices, though, they still have a lower TCO than incandescent even if they only last 10K hours instead of 25K, 50K, or 100K (unless your electricity is *super* cheap).
They probably also know that most people aren't going to pursue warranty service on a light bulb.
The "mainstream selection sell in big numbers" bulb at Home Depot right now seems to be the Cree 4-Flow. I have a few of them and am fairly satisfied.
The light quality is good, and I haven't had one fail prematurely yet (but it's been less than a year). One is installed outdoors and has handled big temperature swings without issue. The 4-Flow is a weird looking bulb. The bulb body is made of plastic, and has vents at the top and base, which seems obvious enough. Where it gets weird is that the two hemispheres of the bulb appear to be made out of different plastics, or at least they are two different shades of off-white. This is only noticeable (but VERY) when the bulb is not lit. I haven't been able to find any documentation regarding the reason for this. The only thing I can guess is that maybe it's designed to set up a convection current inside the bulb.
I just installed some of the LED T8 replacements. They're a pretty nice alternative to the standard fluorescent.
I put an LED light in my bathroom, the fixture has three sockets and there might be another LED brand bulb in it. For some time after installing the bulb when I turned on the light I would get a bright flash like an incandescent bulb going out. I am not sure which bulb it came from I just guessed it was the new bulb, I am unsure if it still does this.
My problem with the cheap LED's is they have a tendency to "flash" when the voltage dips quickly, such as a major load change, where the AC goes on. Oddly, they seem to get brighter, rather than dimmer like a normal incandecent does.
A quick guess on that -- they are probably using a bucking power converter, along with the absolutely smallest (and cheapest) capacitor they can get away with. That could theoretically produce the effect you are describing (but only momentarily, of course).
A few weeks ago I turned on the water supply to my outdoor spigots (they're shut off from the inside during the winter so they don't freeze, of course) ... and one of the valves started leaking. I was having guests over that weekend so I elected to just shut it back off instead of starting a plumbing project. Check this out:
A crimp-on ball valve with plastic bushings? Why does this even exist? What kind of idiot uses this anywhere ?!
There was a stem valve upstream that wasn't shutting off at all; I'm assuming the previous owner just slapped this thing in as a remedy, but seriously ... it was inevitable that it would spring a leak at some point. So today I fixed it for good:
Proper valves and fittings, soldered together like a pro would do it. Not too shabby for a non-plumber. :)
Quick duckduckgo search says that this is a copper and pex valve
http://www.americanvalve.com/pdf/viperlokinstructions.pdf
Not sure why that was put in given that it was copper on both fittings, but I think my future is wet items and replacing copper to pex fittings in my 1968 house :-)
Agreed IG. Sounds like if the LED is getting brighter, it is due to increased current flow, which can come from a highly inductive load and a badly designed LED power source circuit. The spike in current would come from devices like a dryer or washer motor start up or compressor, really anything with a big coil of wire in it.
So it was just a matter of time before this one leaked. Now it's clear what happened: the previous owner found that the stem valve wouldn't close, so he shut off the water to the house, cut the pipe, slapped in a "push-on valve" and called it a day.
That's not my style. I lived in a house with crumbling plumbing for 19 years and I'm committed to keeping everything as solid as possible this time around.
I am very pleased that I've learned how to solder pipes. The first time I tried it a couple of years ago, I had very poor results. But now I've learned that as long as the pipes and fittings are properly cleaned and fluxed, and the joint is properly heated, it's almost impossible to mess up.
My mother needs a new refrigerator. The house is 30 years old, she has replaced a refrigerator before. There is a space between the kitchen wall and a cabinet for the refrigerator. For some reason, all the new models will not fit in this space unless you purchase a much smaller cubic foot capacity. I am sure why these design changes took place. I can remove the small cabinet on top of the refrigerator, but the depth and width also is a problem. Apparently the french doors are a big deal now, I have never liked them, other members of the family have complaints about them. She doesn't want a freezer on the bottom, and side by side limits space.
I guess people want larger refrigerators. How the phuque has a simple refridge changed so much?