The Nanny State – Damn Details!
Via Don Surber:
Fire hazard fears over compact fluorescent lamps – after they’ve stopped working
Compact fluorescent lamps, which will gradually replace traditional incandescent bulbs, are a fire hazard that could burn down your home, experts have warned.
The lamps (CFLs) use electricity to heat an element in the lamp’s base that leads the mercury vapor gas in the coils to emit light.
But when a CFL can no longer produce light, the electronics in its base will still try to function, sometimes leading to overheating, smoke and fire.
Let us not forget the mercury in the things.
Don’t worry folks, they mean well.
Category: Geezer Alert!
When did this change from a milblog that talked about vet/mil/govt matters and was just a free for all about nonsense?
We’re multi-taskers, confused, we can even walk and chew gum.
UpNorth # 2: Thanks. I was about say similar. Enemies take many forms. Ignore the odd one at your own peril. YMMV
Grabbed the ladder as soon as I read your article. The completely burned out ones in my par 20 sized ceiling cans were cold, but the partially lit ones were too hot to touch the base. I have some par 20 LEDs in other cans which have been going for about a year with good light. They were slightly warm which is normal. Sam’s Club stopped selling them or I would have more. Par 20 LEDs are expensive and the ones I now see are low light. Hopefully this will change. I got some par 38 LEDs containing Cree LEDs from Costco for $38 each. Adequate light and warm color. I worked out the numbers and they are good if the life is actually 25,000 hours. I have 49 75 watt par 38 halogens in my kitchen that I could replace and save a lot of electricity. Par 38 CFLs are junk and don’t work well on dimmers and could pose a fire hazard because they get hot when dimmed. I have about 50 straight tube 40W fluorescents in my workshop and they are trouble free other than swapping out an occasional ballast. I wanted those in the kitchen too, but the wife. You know.
Before I had done much research, I put CFL’s in all 11 sockets in my little cabin. Place took a direct lightning strike, (through my computer, into my mousing hand, out my heel through the floor), and cooked every CFL in the house, even those not turned on. Two that were turned on exploded.
We need to be made to buy this cheap Chinese crap that is not inexpensive? Methinks not.
But, but, but, they MEANT well, and only wanted to HELP us all live BETTER lives. Forget reality. Doesn’t matter.
I was pissed when the government decided in their infinite wisdom to force us to change from working bulbs to CFLs. I’m super pissed when the government continues to force CFLs on citizens even when armed with all the data of their dangers.
I still haven’t bought one but have a small supply of the old bulbs, as does my local hardware store.
Hey, how about keeping the old light bulbs and getting rid of congress?
Confused, tell the family at 2312 W Vista Ln that CFLs and the danger they pose is “nonsense”. Their house burned to the ground on Friday, 16 Dec. A large beautiful home that went 1st alarm. The Investigator is looking at tract lighting in the kitchen…that had CFL bulbs.
And left/libtard do-gooders say they don’t want to destroy America…
Just like the Gubbment. Create a problem through legislation & regulation, then tell us that there’s a problem, then come up with more & new legislation & regulations to “fix” (hah!) the original problem that they originally created.
Go back to the top and repeat ad infinitum. . . .
@#8, that’s my intention at the polls in November.
Do believe the law was repealed by Congress last week?
It was…but not before all the US plants which make incandescent bulbs have been closed.
You know #1 would have a point if all military men and women hadn’t had any experience with that much loathed [insert your vile adjective here] the Good Idea Fairy.
She who whispers in the ears of Officers, and Sergeants Major alike. She who makes all subordinates bemoan the idiocy of their superiors. She who makes even simple tasks into uphill battles.
Too bad we’re not able to warn the country about the GIF. At this point I think the Administration is having a mad love affair with her, all the while snorting good ideas like an 80’s stock broker going after Coke.
Well, there’s no way those bulbs are as much of a fire hazard as traditional incancescent bulbs. Those are hot ALL the time.
One thing that always strikes me as curious: Why is it that Conservatives are always touting American innovation and reliance and perseverance EXCEPT for when it comes to conservation? I mean Rush was outraged when motor trends awarded the Volt the car of the year. And now you guys seem outraged because the bulbs that have replaced the incandescent bulbs aren’t perfect.
Even if they’re not perfect, there’s no doubt that they burn VASTLY less electricity then regular light bulbs so they do save you a lot of money. So even if they do pollute because of the mercury, regular bulbs pollute as well. So it’s a wash and you saved money. What’s the bitch?
The same is true for gas burning cars. Even if you don’t believe in Globabl warming, why do you want to send the Saudis and other countries that hate us our money? And even if you do feel generous to those countries, why do you want to buy gasoline so badly? Does the thought of spending 30+ gallons a tank give you collective orgasms? You would at least think that you’d like the money that can be saved, the less fumes in the air etc.
I mean really, do you mankind driving internal combustion engines 200 years from now? Change is going to come and sometimes that change may bring more problems. So we solve those problems. We don’t lament the fact that we tried.
Insipid you really ought to understand one thing about conservatives: they don’t like having anything forced on them. I don’t care what it is.
Now on the subject of conservation its one thing if we talk about “conservation” if we had some plan that say requires us to focus our energy output. But in the scheme of things, conservation is an awful lot like restriction. Imagine we actually switch to Fission/Fusion reactors (like France) would we need to worry about such things? As for Oil, I’m all for finding an alternative, and even more for using the natural world (and perhaps bio-engineering) to produce more Oil, until we can find an alternative.
Look up the X-6 sometime. Alternatives have been tried.
Now I gotta tell you I have yet to meet anyone that gets off buying 30+ gallons of gas. You really need to get off this big Oil schtick. It is very tiresome.
If you want to sell your thought process to conservatives, instead of saying “less less less” you need to sell it in such a way that it would allow us to do more with less, and how we might reinvest those savings in energy in (insert some methodology of manufacture here). Liberals always harp on the need to save energy, and what exactly do they propose to do with those savings? You want to save electricity with light-bulbs, then want to plug in Electric cars? How much wattage would those require? You want to save the environment from CO2 and yet completely ignore that those battery systems are horrendously toxic.
You should really stop and think about your own positions before you try to bemoan our orgasmic love of all things bad. we have common sense on our side 😛
“Even if they’re not perfect, there’s no doubt that they burn VASTLY less electricity then regular light bulbs so they do save you a lot of money”. Yeah, we can save VAST amounts of money on the electricity we don’t use for light bulbs, to spend far VASTER sums of money on charging electric cars, cars, incidentally, that go far fewer miles in the winter time. And, how do we generate the electricity to charge up all of those Government Motors electric cars? I don’t think the windmills will generate enough, nor will solar panels.
“why do you want to send the Saudis and other countries that hate us our money”? I don’t, how about we send the money to Canada, and drill here? Oh, that’s right, the dems don’t want to do that, they’d rather keep us dependent on Arab oil.
Odd the way libs so often coopt words and twist their meaning into something else entirely.
Take the word conservation. It’s something that ordinary folks have done forever for a multitude of reasons. Like saving money when you must or making a conscious choice to be thrifty just because.
Been wondering how folks are going to charge their electric cars when all the power stations are closed. And how it is efficient to convert fuels into other fuels. Or shipping the batteries for those electric cars back and forth across the oceans a couple of times.