What have I done?
Tuesday, 30 October 2007 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I was just in the Student Centre, and one of the groups that was tabling is giving out free compact florescent bulbs. The goal is giving one bulb to every Canadian household, and they say they have the sponsors to do that.
I took my bulb, looked at their website, and was impressed enough by it to go back and ask a few more questions and whether I could give some out to my non-student friends and colleagues. For my troubles, they handed me a teeshirt and a bag of 50. :)
If you see me face-to-face in the next month, ask for your free bulb.
I might just start carrying a few around and giving them to strangers- I see very little downside to that, other than a little bit of talking-to-strangers phobia, which I'm trying to counteract by talking to strangers (win!). The package has non-embarrassing marketing materials, and the form-factor of the bulbs is smaller than a regular incandescent, which is an improvement on most of the CF bulbs in our house. They also claim to be instant-on, which is also an improvement. [edit to add: not instant-on, but maybe half a second, which is acceptable.]
(Boy, they might have made a mistake by handing me 50... how many unconverted lights does our house have?... hm, OK, not many.)
The women I spoked to said roughly half the people who took bulbs were also putting their names down to be contacted about becoming a volunteer.
I took my bulb, looked at their website, and was impressed enough by it to go back and ask a few more questions and whether I could give some out to my non-student friends and colleagues. For my troubles, they handed me a teeshirt and a bag of 50. :)
If you see me face-to-face in the next month, ask for your free bulb.
I might just start carrying a few around and giving them to strangers- I see very little downside to that, other than a little bit of talking-to-strangers phobia, which I'm trying to counteract by talking to strangers (win!). The package has non-embarrassing marketing materials, and the form-factor of the bulbs is smaller than a regular incandescent, which is an improvement on most of the CF bulbs in our house. They also claim to be instant-on, which is also an improvement. [edit to add: not instant-on, but maybe half a second, which is acceptable.]
(Boy, they might have made a mistake by handing me 50... how many unconverted lights does our house have?... hm, OK, not many.)
The women I spoked to said roughly half the people who took bulbs were also putting their names down to be contacted about becoming a volunteer.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 30 October 2007 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 12:26 am (UTC)But hey, it's only recently that CFs got small enough to fit into an incandescent-sized space; we still have some incandescents in that situation that we haven't bothered converting over to very-compact CFs. (maybe that would be subcompact florescent?)
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 12:53 am (UTC)No, wait, what I meant was: I like fruitcake too, assuming the baker didn't do it wrong.
I am very happy with dan's mom's fruitcake. She will probably bring us some tomorrow, along with a trunk full of guilt.
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 30 October 2007 10:41 pm (UTC)EDISON! BANISH!
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 12:54 am (UTC)Oh, well, our electricity is cheaper :)
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 01:22 am (UTC)Shame about the light frequency. I guess it's a much narrower band, even the "sunlight" CFs, though I bet eventually they may get around that problem too. I wouldn't want to have to design them. :)
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 01:35 pm (UTC)The good news, though, is that there are many different "colours" of CFLs, which whave different phosphors in the bulb, to fluoresce at different frequencies. Have you looked at the light emitted from any of the "warm" CFLs? Be sure to look at different brands, because it's likely that the perceived colour temperature will be slightly different on each of them.
We've purchased some more expensive CFLs, as well as some from the dollar store. The dollar store bulbs look positively blue next to the more expensive ones.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 02:13 pm (UTC)I did a bulb comparison last night, and I have a hard time telling the difference between the light from these CFs and an incandescent. Surprisingly so. They say "2700k" on the box, which suggests they're toward the warmer end of "warm white bulb".
Still, I know from vision issues, and that might not help S. at all. ;-P
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 01:38 pm (UTC)I'd like to use more CFLs, but we have some fixtures that require a high-Wattage bulb to give the room enough light, and the CFLs I've seen of that intensity are just too large to fit behind the glass domes of the fixtures.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 October 2007 02:06 pm (UTC)Says "2700k" on it as well, which is "warm white" incandescent-colour according to various sources.
Warrantied for 9 years :)