It's Gonna Be a Bright Sunshiny Day

[billroper]

It warmed up above 40 degrees here with lots of sunshine, which was good for everyone's mood. We ran out and took care of a number of errands after lunch, first stopping at Home Depot where I had gone to buy some replacement wood screws so we could fix the cabinet in the bathroom. As I walked in, I noticed that they had the original 60W equivalent Cree Soft-White LED bulbs on sale at $24 for the six-pack as they were on clearance. I ended up buying two packs, because they're more efficient than the replacement bulb (if slightly less attractive) and $4 / bulb is dirt cheap. I also bought an LED bulb to experiment with in the ceiling fan fixture in the bedroom, where we needed a particular type of small floodlight. Phillips is now making a 60W equivalent LED bulb in that form factor, so I figured I'd give it a try. The CFL bulbs that have been in there for years take forever to warm up to provide any decent light and I have wanted to replace them for quite a while.

Oh, yes. I also bought the wood screws in both the original and the next size up. :)

Then we returned the extra candy thermometer to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Katie's got her school's science fair coming up and was enthusiastic when I suggested growing sugar crystals for the project, but that meant that we needed a candy thermometer to get the sugar solution to the right temperature. daisy_knotwise picked one up at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, then found one at Walmart that was both cheaper and better suited to our needs, so I took the first one (still unopened) back for a refund.

At Sam's Club, I grabbed a few things while Gretchen gassed up the car for about 30 cents a gallon cheaper than anywhere else in the neighborhood. And then we finally headed home, where Gretchen dropped me and Julie off and took Katie out to Lee Wards to look for markers to use when making posters for the science fair project. I watched Julie play Minecraft, as I owed her some Daddy time. Mostly, this meant that I looked on approvingly as she fed and led her Minecraft doggie around. :)

While Gretchen was out, I popped in the new LED bulb in the bedroom and determined that I definitely liked it better than the old bulbs. (This was not a hard hurdle to clear.) When she got back, I flipped on the switch to show Gretchen the new bulb.

"Well, it comes on, but I can't tell if I like the color compared to the old bulbs, because they're too dim to be able to see yet."

True enough. So we fixed the cabinet in the bathroom, which gave the old bulbs enough time to warm up for comparison. Gretchen agreed that the new bulbs were an improvement, so I headed back to Home Depot to get three more of them and three more packages of the larger wood screws so that we could replace the rest of the screws in the bathroom cabinet which were, well, a bit shaky.

Now all of the bulbs are replaced and we can have lots of light in the bedroom on demand again. Gretchen still does not care for the glare from the overhead fixture, but -- as she observes -- after this many years, she's gotten used to it.

Comments

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

Last year, thanks to a sale at Costco, I changed most of the bulbs in the house from CFL to LED, and I'm glad I did. Since the change was gradual, it took me a while to realize how badly CFLs degrade over time. Long before they burn out, they take longer and longer to get up to full illumination, and that "full" level becomes dimmer and dimmer.

More recently (as in, a week ago), the halogen bulb in the floor lamp in my office finally burned out. I decided to get a new lamp that took standard bulbs (found one I liked at Target), and fitted it with two 100-watt equivalent LED bulbs. (Meaning they actually each pull 15W.) The office is about as bright as it used to be, and the power consumption should be considerably lower.

And the bonus, of course, is that if these bulbs live up to their billing, they should last 20 years or more.

[billroper]

I am hoping that they live up to their billing. :)

The overhead fixture in the office here at home (where I had to install a larger nipple, because the heatsinks on these bulbs are big) has one Cree 100W Soft White bulb and one Cree 100W Daylight bulb. It's kind of fascinating to see the color difference from side to side, but it sort of averages out the color spectrum.

[mdlbear]

I'm very fond of the Cree bulbs. Almost all of the lights in our new house are on dimmers, so CFLs weren't an option.