A farewell to CFLs

This week, Brian and I received a free "Quick Home Energy Check-up" from our utility. Basically, they sent a guy out to our house who looked at our heating system, insulation, appliances, and so on, and made recommendations about ways to save energy. Most of what we learned from this was not news to us. Overall, our home is pretty efficient: our attic is well insulated, our faucets low-flow, our appliances mostly up-to-date. The contractor pointed out a couple of changes worth making (sealing the attic hatch and repairing a compromised double-glazed window) and one that we don't consider worth making (replacing our water heater solely on the grounds that it's over 10 years old, which I already knew was rubbish. We do eventually want to replace it with an electric one, ideally an efficient heat pump model, in order to get our whole house off of fossil fuels, but I see no reason to rush the process.)

The best part, though, was that we got a bunch of free stuff. As part of the checkup process, the checker-up made a whole series of minor efficiency upgrades on the spot. He insulated the one bit of our water heater's pipe that wasn't wrapped already and replaced both our 2.5-gpm shower heads with shiny new 1.5-gpm models that have proved just as effective and satisfying to use. And he replaced all our old compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) with new LED bulbs. Or at least, almost all.

We'd already installed LEDs in the fixtures where we thought they'd make most difference in terms of lifespan, looks, or performance. But other fixtures still contained CFLs, since we already had a bunch of them and figured we might as well use them up before replacing them. So this helpful fellow went through and upgraded the bulbs in our living room table lamps, our guest room lamp, and all the fixtures downstairs—all, that is, except the overhead fixture nearest the stairs. On that one, he spent several minutes turning the "nipple" that held the cover in place, and it just would not come off. It turned freely, but it refused to part ways with the bolt it was attached to. It was a baffling problem, one he'd never encountered before in 15 years on the job, and eventually he had to leave those last two lonely CFLs in place.

After he left, though, Brian messed around with the light for a bit and eventually managed to get the cover off. (He just grabbed the nut with his locking pliers and kept turning the entire bolt assembly until it unscrewed at the other end.) And once he had the light reassembled, he was able to replace those last two CFLs with two extra LEDs that had been removed from the fixture in our downstairs bathroom. (They didn't quite match, so the contractor had replaced them with a matched set of nicer-looking LED globes.) And with that, our interior lighting was finally 100 percent LED-based. 

This left us with a new problem: what to do with all our old CFLs. We had a pretty big collection of them, some left over from previous bulk purchases and some that we'd removed from the fixtures we'd already upgraded to LEDs, and there was no real chance we'd ever use them again. Normally, when we have stuff we no longer need, I try to Freecycle it, but I had a hard time believing anyone would want these old CFLs now that LEDs are so cheap and readily available. (You can buy them at Home Depot for as little as $1.75 apiece now, which is less than we paid for most of our CFLs.) And, as Brian pointed out, even if someone took them just because they were free, they wouldn't be taking the place of less efficient incandescent bulbs; as of this year, those are no longer on the market. All they'd be doing is delaying the transition to the still more efficient, longer-lasting, less-hazardous LEDs. So in the end, we bundled up the lot and hauled them all to the nearest Home Depot for recycling. 

We also brought with us two other CFLs that the contractor hadn't replaced: the two in the exterior light by our kitchen door. We figured if we going to Home Depot anyway, we might as well look for LED replacements for these bulbs as well. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to us to measure the fixtures first, so the pair of EcoSmart bulbs we picked up for $15 turned out to be too wide to fit—and we'd already disposed of the old CFLs. Fortunately, we had another exterior fixture by the patio door, so we just installed the new LED floodlight bulbs in that one. Then we transferred the two ancient incandescent floodlight bulbs from that fixture, which had been there since we bought the house and possibly for several years before that, to the side door.

So now, ironically, the only fixture at our house that doesn't have LEDs is still using old, ridiculously inefficient incandescents. But since that light doesn't get used very often, it's not that big a deal. We can pick up some new LED bulbs for it (that actually fit) the next time we're at a home store, and dispose of the old bulbs with our regular household trash. And at that point, we'll finally move all our home's lighting into the twenty-first century.

Doing the same for our heating and plumbing, now, that will be a much bigger job. But at least we've made a start.