When we last saw our hero she was explaining the fundamental differences between incandescent lighting and fluorescent lighting. Let's continue our discussion, already in progress.
I started buying compact fluorescent bulbs about a year ago. When I first saw compact fluorescents in the 1990s they were tall and square and didn't fit most lamps or fixtures; now you can even get floodlights with the twisty stuff inside the globe, as well as chandelier flame bulbs. They take a moment to warm up after they're switched on; as soon as they're running at full force they give off as much light as incandescent bulbs but with much less generation of heat and usage of electricity. They're way more expensive than comparable incandescent bulbs but they're supposed to last up to seven years, as opposed to the approximately 1000 hours alloted to typical incandescent bulbs, except for the Centennial Light.
As incandescent bulbs would burn out in the kitchen or family room or entry hall I'd replace them with fluorescents, but something strange happened: after a couple of months one of the bulbs burned out. Defective, I figured, so I unscrewed it and took it back to where I'd bought it, where it was cheerfully replaced. A month later another bulb burned out, and I exchanged that one too. Every few months another bulb would go out and I began to wonder if maybe the combination of fluorescents and incandescents in the same fixture might be causing a problem, so I started replacing more bulbs. No change, and the house was growing darker due to my reluctance to bring out the ladder just for one or two or six bulbs.
Eventually I saw the light (pun intended -- sorry): maybe the rate of bulb-burning-outage had something to do with the way the Lutron system works.
A little background on Lutron: it's a programmable system that allows you to set a variety of lighting schemes for whichever rooms in your home are connected to it. We have four settings: one turns on all our kitchen lights, another turns on all our family room lights, the third operates the kitchen and the family room together and the fourth works the kitchen, family room, dining room and front entry all with one press of a button. The bedrooms, bathrooms and basement are all independent of the Lutron system. Anywhere in the house you find a Lutron control you can press the bottom button and the kitchen lights will go on while all the other lights connected to the system will fade out. To turn on all the lights connected to the system you press the top button on any control.
The advantage to the Lutron system for me is that, as a scared-of-the-dark person I can press the control in my bedroom and half the lights in the house will switch on. There are other advantages to the system also, which I've never used. For example, you can devote one button to a "romantic" setting, which will dim the lights in your chosen location.
And here's the problem: compact fluorescent bulbs burn out if they're repeatedly dimmed. Don't ask me why because I don't really care why; all I care about is that Lutron has the ability to dim the lights, and even if I don't choose to dim the lights and make the house romantic for me and the kids, the lights eeease on oh-so-imperceptibly when we press the button.
This means that every time we turned on the lights the fluorescents said to themselves: "Whoa! Dimming going on here! Not liking this one bit!" and within a few months handed in their resignations without even the courtesy of two weeks' notice.
So here I am with all the arm-and-a-leg light bulbs capriciously burning out and I'm returning them to Home Depot stores throughout the county so they won't peg me as a serial-returner, and now I have to remove all the non-dimmable fluorescents and replace them with dimmable compact fluorescents, which do exist but aren't usually (yet) available in your neighborhood supermarket. This requires me to drag a ten foot ladder through the house, trying not to drop it on my foot or slam it into walls, because I want my kids to see me using tools, although sometimes I wonder if it defeats the purpose when they see me using tools clumsily or inappropriately. Then I have to climb the ladder, whimpering all the way since, in addition to fearing the dark, I'm afraid of heights. Then I must exile Cleo to her bedroom until I learn whether the gases released from the fluorescent bulb I've just dropped from a great height will stunt her growth. Meanwhile, the compact fluorescent bulbs are all slightly different sizes from comparable incandescents, so many of them don't quite fit into some of the more than 24,001 different light fixtures in our house.
Check back in a few days for tales of the joys of shopping for light bulbs online.
