Mr. Green: I’m doing my part and switched out my bathroom fixture bulbs with CFL bulbs. My only complaint is the warm up time takes longer than I would care to wait. What can I do? –Judy McKee
Did you know that if every American home replaced one light bulb with an Energy Star qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and reduce greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.
I think most people understand CFL and LED bulbs are better and will save you money in the long run. The problem is sometimes the short run is equally important at the moment you are buying a bulb. While the price of CFL bulbs have declined over the years when compared to a regular bulb, it still is more expensive. The savvy shopper in all of us looks at the bulb and compares them to the other brand of CFL bulbs. They all have the same numbers in performance, so like many of you I too would buy the one on sale or the cheapest one out of all the brands. Unfortunately that is where the mistake happens. My son recently fell into this problem as well. He went to his local super hardware store and bought the one that was most abundantly displayed and cheapest. Just like any product CFL bulbs are made all over the world and in variable levels of quality. Some of the bulbs are massed produced for the large chains so they can meet a good margin on the product. I don’t typically like to promote one brand over another but the brand names that are known for quality in this arena still apply, like GE. Judy, I believe from the description that you purchased a lower quality CFL. There is nothing wrong with these bulbs you may just want to move it to a less performance based location and into an area like the basement were warm up time is not a factor. If you search Google there are reviews on CFL bulbs, but unfortunately there are not many on the warm up time. This is one of those personal preferences you have to figure out by trial and error, but a good place to start is a higher quality bulb. Thanks for the question Judy
-Mr. Green
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