An easy and affordable way to upgrade your residential lighting fixtures is to change from incandescent bulbs to Ceiling Fan Lights in your existing lamps. One compact fluorescent light (CFL) can pay for itself in the first 6 months, and then go on to save around $30 in light bills over its lifetime. CFLs use 75 percent fewer watts than a filament-dependent bulb, and can keep working approximately 10 times longer.

CFLs use significantly less electricity because of the way they make light. Incandescent bulbs use a current which runs across a wire filament and heats that filament until it begins to glow. That golden filament glow is the source of incandescent light. Alternately, a CFL drives an electric current into a tube filled with argon and mercury vapor. The power heats the gas, which next heats a fluorescent layer inside the tube. That very excited coating is the source of the visible fluorescent glow. CFLs require somewhat more power when they are just turned on, which is why these light bulbs contain a ballast to activate the CFL and then regulate the power level to keep light on.

The mercury mixture inside a compact fluorescent bulb is necessary for it to glow, yet mercury is a dangerous material that a person should not allow to contaminate a house or the environment. How could we successfully address this issue? Well, for starters, CFLs contain only approximately 4 miligrams of mercury per bulb, and this mercury won’t be released from the bulb as long as they are intact or being used. Actually, the only time that mercury might be released from the bulb is if the bulb gets broken, in advance of or during the discarding process, that's why you need good Ceiling Light Fixtures.

As long as consumers are observing proper cleanup and disposal methods when dealing with CFLs, the level of electricity saved particularly makes up for any theoretical harm to the planet. The single point of using less electricity means that using CFLs can reduce the level of mercury that is produced by power plants. For that matter, if every American household switched just one incandescent bulb with a CFL, the resultant electricity conserved would be enough to light 3 million households.

Used CFLs need to be thrown out employing existing county recycling programs. If your nearest landfill does not offer a recycling program for these bulbs, then busted or burnt out bulbs need to be wrapped in two plastic bags and secured in an outdoor trash can to await pickup.

The initial price tag on a Ceiling Fan Light Fixtures is considerably higher than the price of an incandescent bulb, yet the long service life and the projected energy savings easily make up for the price difference. CFLs use mercury, which might be harmful to the ecosystem, but if used and disposed of properly, the environmental impact of the mercury is insignificant when measured against the electricity conservation potential. By and large, the benefits of using CFLs far outweigh the potential downsides, so why not change your old bulbs for fluorescent ones? Tonight?

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • •