Lighting

So, one of the first things I did when I wanted to start making my life greener after getting a house was to replace the light bulbs. I went with the fluorescent bulbs, but did some research first. I wanted to be able to get the right ones without making it pointless to spend more. In my research I found that there are a couple different types of them, there are your normal ones and then there are the instant on type. The major differences between the two was the maximum life and how they were intented to be used. I saw that, though they had the lower life on them, that the instant on type were what I would need more of. We don't like leaving all the lights on in the house and with standard fluorescent bulbs you need to leave them on to warm up because a lot of on/off will eventually make them only last as long as standard bulbs, but the instant on could handle it a little better without losing so much life. So I went and got these. The power output is much greater than traditional bulbs, and if you want to stick with something close to what the traditional bulbs gave you then you would want the yellow light (not yellow bulb, that's for a different use) variety. I mixed it up a bit and chose different types for the different rooms. For the kitchen and dining area I wanted a bright, clean light so that I could see what I was doing a bit better and for the downstairs area where the TV was I wanted something a little more subtle and chose the ones that give a more yellow light instead of the bright white. Now, I didn't personally notice a major difference in my energy bill, this is mostly because I hadn't lived in the house long enough to get a feel for it before making this change, I just knew I wanted to consume less energy in the long run, so for me this was more of an environmental green choice, but it was very nice to have some good light in the areas that I wanted it most.

For the future in lighting I have been hoping to see more LED lights, I want to see what they bring to the table as far as energy savings is concerned but they are not very high in availability and so I'll wait a bit longer. Another thing I was looking at was into solar lighting, there are plenty of outdoor lights that use solar and I will probably have a good collection of them as I make my yard something I'd be more proud of, but I also saw some solar lights that I could install in my shed to get some light in there without having to run some conduit and power out to it, these lights I definitely plan to get as I get to work fixing up the shed. Anyway, I know this is a very well advertised thing, but I figured I'd give my thumbs up on it too, get those CFL bulbs and save some energy and go greener in your life, just also make sure you read up on how to dispose of them properly too, we don't need more mercury in our landfills either.