Getting Compact Fluorescent Lighting for Your Home

Posted on March 16 2010 by Guest Author

A simple and cheaper way to update your home lighting system would be to upgrade from incandescent bulbs to Ceiling Fan Lights for your existing lamps. One compact fluorescent light (CFL) could pay for itself in as little as 6 months, and next, manage to save around $30 in electrical costs over its lifetime. CFLs employ 75 percent less power than a filament-dependent bulb, and could keep working approximately 10 times longer.

CFLs use much less energy resulting from the way they produce light. Incandescent bulbs depend on a current which passes through a wire filament and heats that filament until it begins to glow. That amber filament glow is what makes incandescent light. However, a CFL drives an electric current through a tube filled with argon and mercury vapor. The power heats the mercury/argon mix, which then reacts with a fluorescent surface inside the tube. That chemically excited coating is the source of the white fluorescent glow. CFLs require slightly more energy when they are initially turned on, so these light bulbs have a ballast to power up the CFL and then control the power level to keep light on.

The mercury gas inside a compact fluorescent bulb is essential to its glow, yet mercury is a dangerous material which people should not let contaminate a building or the environment. How do we successfully answer this conundrum? Well, to begin with, CFLs each have only about 4 miligrams of mercury per bulb, and this mercury won’t be released from the bulb as long as they are unbroken or lit up. Actually, the one time that mercury may be released from the fluorescent tube is if the bulb becomes broken, prior to or during the discarding process, that’s why you need good Ceiling Light Fixtures.

If consumers are following the correct cleanup and disposal procedures when handling CFLs, the level of energy saved far makes up for any potential damage to the water table. The simple issue of requiring less energy means that using CFLs can cut down on the amount of mercury which is discharged by power plants. For that matter, if every American home replaced only one incandescent bulb with a CFL, the power savings could be enough to illuminate 3 million households.

Used CFLs ought to be gotten rid of employing established municipal recycling programs. If your nearest landfill does not have a recycling procedure for these bulbs, then damaged or used bulbs ought to be wrapped in two plastic layers and placed in an outdoor trash can to await pickup.

The beginning purchase cost of a Ceiling Fan Light Fixtures is considerably higher than the charge for an incandescent bulb, yet the extended working life and the possible energy savings quickly make up for the extra expense. CFLs contain mercury, which might be harmful to the environment, but if stored and disposed of properly, the environmental impact of the mercury is slight compared to the energy conservation potential. By and large, the benefits of using CFLs far outweigh the potential downsides, so why not swap your old bulbs for fluorescent ones? Today?

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