Up North Green Living

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Comment by Rachel North on June 2, 2009 at 3:38pm

hey gang, just wanted to let you know that our Northern Home & Cottage green issue is coming out in mid-July (August issue). We have two new ways to advertise, green advertorials, and green directory pages. The space is closing this week and these new options are priced nicely. If you're at all interested, email me at rnorth@traversemagazine.com or call me this week. 941-5756.

Comment by Elizabeth Edwards on June 2, 2009 at 10:42am

This is great info. I'm still baffled though because I had two LED bulbs burn out as well--so maybe there are problems with those as well?

Comment by Christian Cook......Bringing residential wind power to Western Michigan on June 2, 2009 at 10:25am

Great idea in the hard to reach spaces. I'm sure they will come down and take over the market. 2 years ago I couldn't reconcile CFLs in the spreadsheet and now they are in range of pretty much every budget. It is irritating that the whole industry is willing to publish those false usage stats.

Comment by Eric Hughes "The Green Home Designer" on June 2, 2009 at 9:57am

We have been using LED in hard to reach or high spaces. The also have a lenses now the gets rid of the blue. Yes the are expensive but are becoming more widely used which sould low the price idn the future.

Comment by Christian Cook......Bringing residential wind power to Western Michigan on June 2, 2009 at 9:47am

LED's are currently a little cost prohibitive aren't they? They are also very blue and take some getting used to like CFLs started out. I agree withe the lifespan problem of the CFL but with their better color light and price point they may still be our best "current" solution. I am having the same discussion in battery tech. New lithiums and capacitor technology will surpass the lead acid I'm sure but for now the best value I can give a customer when looking an cost verse usage is in still in the lead acid.

Comment by Eric Hughes "The Green Home Designer" on June 2, 2009 at 9:39am

I don't have much experience with LED's. We have put them in a lot of my client's projects lately. I have not heard of any burnout proplems with them yet.

Comment by Elizabeth Edwards on June 2, 2009 at 9:16am

Wow. How sad. Any info on LED's? The New York Times just ran a piece on their "bright" future yesterday.

Comment by Eric Hughes "The Green Home Designer" on June 2, 2009 at 8:51am

You Rarely Get the Rated Life of a CFL
Get used to frequent recycling. One of the biggest myths in all the CFL hype is the rated life of the bulb. You'll see blog post and article after article repeating the same misleading "fact" that you will get 6,000 or more hours of life from the CFL. Well, both consumer complaints and lab research are showing how untrue this is.

First, studies have proven what consumers have been discovering. CFL’s rarely meet their rated life in real world applications. Why? Well they may have been used in the wrong application. But they also depend on being turned on continuously or at least for 4 hours at a time to meet their rated life. If they are on for only 1 hour you get a 20% to 50% reduction in lamp life. If the CFL is used with 5 to 30 minute use cycles like most incandescents, the life is reduced 70% to 85%. That means your 6,000 hour bulb is now lasting 900 hours, less than many incandescent bulbs.

Second, the lifetime quoted on a CFL is just an average, meaning that 50% of the lamps can and do fail before the stated hours and can still be considered a valid rating.

Comment by Elizabeth Edwards on June 2, 2009 at 8:29am

We've tried to switch over to all C.F.L. and LED lighting in our house. I'm okay with the quality of light but we've already had several of both kinds of bulbs burn out within a year. What's the deal? These are supposed to last 20 years that aren't they?

Comment by Eric Hughes "The Green Home Designer" on May 27, 2009 at 6:20pm

Thanks! Christian the link works fine.

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