Posts Tagged ‘save money’

Achieving Mood Lighting And Saving Energy – Are Fluorescent Lights Dimmable

Dimmer switches can give a extra relaxed really feel to your home, and prevent energy as well. But with the growing prevalence of compact fluorescent lights or CFLs, many individuals are questioning what choices they have for utilizing a dimmer with these lights – or whether or not it saves extra electricity to use a regular CFL, or to use incandescent or halogen bulbs on a dimmer switch.

Let’s begin by placing to rest some misconceptions folks have over the relative power use of fluorescent, incandescent, and halogen bulbs.

Many homeowners put in halogen bulbs, starting within the 1990′s, on the mistaken idea that these lights are more environment friendly than incandescent lights. In reality their energy efficiency is fairly much the same as that of incandescents. So don’t suppose you’re saving energy through the use of them.

CFLs, meanwhile, are very efficient – it takes about one fourth as much electricity to mild up a CFL as to light up an incandescent or halogen lamp with the identical light output. They also happen to final about eight occasions longer than incandescent lights.

So if you’re using a dimmer primarily to avoid wasting power, you is likely to be better off simply switching your incandescent or halogen lights to CFLs, and holding the dimmer switch on full, or going back to an ordinary on-off switch. That provides you with more light for much less power.

If you desire a more mellow lighting all the time, a method is to place in light bulbs that are not as bright. Whether you go down from, for example, a one hundred watt incandescent to a 60 watt incandescent bulb, or down from a 100 watt incandescent bulb to an 18 watt CFL, you may still get much less light and you may use much less electricity. Of course, the CFL solution will prevent much more electricity within the long run.

But chances are high you want the best of each worlds: the low running price and better sturdiness of CFL bulbs, with the pliability to dim them when you do not need their full light.

You might have heard that you cannot put an everyday CFL on an everyday dimmer switch. In reality you can, but it is not recommended, because it may possibly really scale back the life of the bulb. There is no increased risk of explosion or fireplace from installing a daily CFL on a standard dimmer swap – you may only increase the risk of shortened bulb life. And because the higher value of CFL bulbs is offset by the truth that they outlive incandescent bulbs by a ratio of 8 to 1, putting common CFLs on a normal dimmer destroys that value advantage.

If you select to dim CFLs, you have got two real options: buy a special dimmer switch that’s compatible with CFLs, or purchase dimmable CFLs which are designed to work with commonplace dimmers.

Both choices leave you with the energy-saving benefits of CFLs, as well as the potential to dim those CFLs. But for now at least, dimmable CFLs seem like the more affordable option, as a result of fluorescent-compatible dimmer switches are prohibitively expensive, while the worth difference between standard and dimmable compact fluorescents is miniscule.

Let’s consider the total cost for both options, for a fixture with three 60-watt mild bulbs. Let’s assume you already have a normal dimmer swap and regular incandescent light bulbs. If you want to upgrade to CFLs, your decisions are:

1. Installing three 13-watt commonplace CFLs at $3 a piece, and a $49 fluorescent dimmer switch. Total cost: $58.

2. Going for 3 13-watt dimmable CFLs at $3.50 a piece, and use the existing dimmer. Total cost: $10.50!

As you possibly can tell, using an current dimmer change is a more inexpensive alternative. Since both options use the same amount of energy, when it comes to payback period the answer with dimmable compact fluorescent lights is definitely much shorter.

Even if you need to buy a dimmer change because you don’t have one, it still is sensible to go with an ordinary switch and dimmable CFLs. You can get a regular dimmer switch for underneath $10. Even a trendy one for $25 is more affordable than a fluorescent dimmer at $49. And with the fee gap between commonplace and dimmable CFLs so small, the one way a fluorescent dimmer switch can be cost competitive is that if its value drops substantially, which it probably will over the coming years.

If your solely motive for using a dimmer swap with CFLs is to save lots of money, and you don’t already have an everyday dimmer switch, I would recommend you stick with basic CFLs and forego the dimmer switch. Use the cash you save on the dimmer switch to buy more CFLs for different areas of your house. Dimmer switches resulted in main savings for incandescent or halogen fixtures because the bulbs were so wasteful. For example, my rec room has six 50-watt bulbs on a dimmer switch. By using the dimmer at about half power, we use 150 watts as an alternative of the total 300 watts. Assuming an hour on each day, that might save 150 x 365 watts, or fifty five kilowatt hours a year.

But if we were to switch those halogen bulbs to 13-watt dimmable CFLs, we’d save 81 kilowatt hours a year at their full strength. By turning them right down to half, we might only save an additional 13 kilowatt hours a yr – that’s about $1.30 price of electricity. Not really sufficient to make it worth considering this alternative.

Consumer response to dimmable CFLs has been less than overwhelmingly positive. There were actually some teething issues with these lights – early burn-out, flashing light, and loud buzzing noises. These issues have been just about resolved in the more recent dimmable compact fluorescents. But if there is not a strong motivation for you to dim your CFLs, I would suggest sticking with customary compact fluorescents for a year, till the market offers a wider vary of choices for dimmable fluorescent lights. Who knows – in a 12 months or two, fluorescent dimmer switches might be as low-cost as normal dimmers.

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Smart Appliances Equals Big Savings

Stepping into a professional kitchen in a restaurant, you can easily see the way a professional chef uses his knowledge and his equipment to his benefit. Certainly his training has plenty to do with the way he carries himself and prepares meals, but the equipment he uses also helps a lot.

Professional cookware will produce a better meal. It’s because they are heavier and more solid than the ones we use at home. Obviously, they are usually quite bigger, but they are cooking for large amounts of people. Additionally, the use of nonstick cookware, even though it doesn’t show. But it doesn’t compare to cookware sets we use at home, at least not until now, thanks to the anodized cookware set.

This set enables you to cook like the pros and clean like them as well. Older versions of cookware sets that had nonstick surfaces were very delicate. In addition to that, they were very susceptible to damage with very high heat levels and through the use. Their integrity was compromised each time you use them and washed them.

But this new cookware is made very differently. It’s very much like those that the pros use. It helps you to cook any kind of food at any temperature, and it won’t stick to the surface. But the best part is that it is so durable, it is twice as durable as stainless steel. It won’t corrode and it is very resistant to any abrasion. So it’s very easy to clean without ruining its non-stick surface.

Smart consumers are picking these up quickly because they have many benefits. That’s what many smart consumers have in common. They know good deals, they know how to save money, and they know how to use products that are available to them to their maximum.

They buy things like small appliances that will make a difference in their lives. Things like a portable space heater. They produce the same heat they would normally get by cranking up their central heating systems, but they don’t have to. Instead, they turned down their thermostats, reduce their energy consumption and save money, all the while still staying warm in the room they are in.

Buying a quality one is the key to getting the most out of it, like the DeLonghi space heater. The reputable company provides consumers with an incredible appliance that is safe, easy to operate, and inexpensive to buy and.

Isn’t it time that you become a smart consumer and take advantage of the various options that you have available to you? Our crazy spending habits in the past seemed to come to a halt with the recession. We changed the way we were thinking and at the same time cut our costs and helped our planet out just a little bit. But if everyone did it, we would make a huge difference.

Ways To Put Your Own Money Back In The Bank

Save Energy!! Yes that’s the secret.

Many people have tried different ways to “go green” “get off the grid” “save money in the long run”. These typically involve solar, wind or hydro generation of some sort to power their energy needs from alternative “Free” sources. There is nothing wrong with these methods, and they do work, but it takes 10 – 20 years to pay off!! Nobody has that long! The simple solution is cut back on what you currently use. The below example will describe why energy savings is the first step to going green.

Example: Say you are interested in installing solar on your house. To keep it simple we are going to put 100 watts of solar panels on the roof. Solar currently costs somewhere around 6-7 $ / watt to install and you just installed 100 watts. That’s $600-$700 to save 100 watts!! That will take 10-15 years to pay it’s self off!!!

Now let’s consider that we are going to save 100 watts some other way. We are going to do it with simple compact fluorescent light bulbs. (the twisty kind) To save 100 watts (equivalent to installing 100 watts solar) we only need to replace 2 bulbs. A 100 watt replaces with a 23 watt and a 60 watt replace with a 13 watt. That’s over 120 watts and it costs less than $5!!!!! Your pay off will only be a few months! Wow!!

Yes there are a lot of considerations (how much the sun shines, how long you burn the bulbs ect. In the end however it all evens out and saving energy wins. There is a limited number of things that can be improved but by changing light bulbs, replacing appliances and other methods you are looking at thousands in savings. As the price of energy increases so will your savings, because you are using less of the more expensive energy!

This article is not saying that you should not go installing solar energy, wind or small hydro to generate power. These are great alternatives; they are just not as practical as a first step to using less. If you are looking to live a green lifestyle but would like to make an investment that will be worthwhile then energy saving tactics will be well worth your time and money. Listed on green-gizmo.com are many more energy saving rules that can save you money but listed below are a few.

New light bulbs – energy savers
Water Heater Blanket
Insulation
Chimney balloons…..
Ect……..

Hopefully this sheds some light on what your priorities should be for saving money – saving energy and saving the environment. To learn more, view energy saving products and other potential methods for saving energy visit green-gizmo.com!

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