westcliffe01
Veteran Member
When we bought our home in 2006, I added up the power of the combined fixtures in the kitchen and "great room" and arrived at nearly 2kW just for lighting !!!! Then when you add in the hallway, each bedroom (typically 500w+ not including the MES bathroom) we could easily be drawing 5-6kW of power just for lighting and that is without running a single appliance ! My wife, raised in Chicago, never has the slightest concern with simply turning on every fixture wherever she goes and never turning it off. When I would get home from work, every light in the house was typically illuminated including all the outside spotlights.
I fixed that pretty fast. Initially, everything went to daylight CFL. I too had the good and bad experiences with low quality substitute products that don't last and now also only buy brand names. We also changed several fixtures to reduce glare issues (to have upward pointing bulbs to a white ceiling and white diffusers for indirect light). Later, we replaced some of the bulbs in fixtures where we want a more "instant response" with LED, even though they are more expensive. Some of the LED lamps have been bad quality too, so we keep track of which ones fail to know what not to buy next time.
My winter time utility bill is about $70 with wood providing the primary heat source. We have a 15yr old NG water heater that is probably due for replacement anytime now. The NG furnace is set back to 68F and will kick in if for some reason the stove is not fed on time (like someone is away for a few days). We used to have pretty frequent power outages and now very comfortably run the entire house with a 5kW robin powered generator, including the well pump. The last few years we have not had power out for more than a day at a time, so consider ourselves lucky. Most of the CFLs are now going for 6+ years. The spotlamp substitutes that point down and go in the cans were the worst, but they too have now lasted for years after finally settling on a good brand/power level.
I personally would not want to go back to incandescent. Absolute rubbish. Those who want them can have them.
I fixed that pretty fast. Initially, everything went to daylight CFL. I too had the good and bad experiences with low quality substitute products that don't last and now also only buy brand names. We also changed several fixtures to reduce glare issues (to have upward pointing bulbs to a white ceiling and white diffusers for indirect light). Later, we replaced some of the bulbs in fixtures where we want a more "instant response" with LED, even though they are more expensive. Some of the LED lamps have been bad quality too, so we keep track of which ones fail to know what not to buy next time.
My winter time utility bill is about $70 with wood providing the primary heat source. We have a 15yr old NG water heater that is probably due for replacement anytime now. The NG furnace is set back to 68F and will kick in if for some reason the stove is not fed on time (like someone is away for a few days). We used to have pretty frequent power outages and now very comfortably run the entire house with a 5kW robin powered generator, including the well pump. The last few years we have not had power out for more than a day at a time, so consider ourselves lucky. Most of the CFLs are now going for 6+ years. The spotlamp substitutes that point down and go in the cans were the worst, but they too have now lasted for years after finally settling on a good brand/power level.
I personally would not want to go back to incandescent. Absolute rubbish. Those who want them can have them.
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