DIY Ways To Cut Your Electricity Costs on Lighting

If you want to save money on your power bills this DIY cut monthly electricity costs article is going to show you some great and practical ways. You could purchase some new green products or maybe even use the extra money to buy yourself a little vacation.

The abbreviation CFL stands for Compact Fluorescent Lamp, sometimes known as a circular fluorescent bulb. CFL and incandescent bulbs each generate light in different ways.

Since Thomas Edison's invention of incandescent light bulbs they have pretty much worked the same way. Light is produced after electricity is connected to both sides of the carbon filament causing it to get hot. CFLs and normal fluoro tubes contain a closed glass tube with a fluoro coating that glows when current is applied to the argon and mercury vapour inside.

Although you may have heard how these bulbs work, no matter how cheap they are, if you are turning them on more than about twice a year you are wasting your money. If you want to save money look for the green products. One of the newer Energy Star compact fluorescent light bulbs saves around 75% in costs over the equivalent incandescent bulb. A CFL light bulb will save you about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself within 6 months!

The CFL bulb has come a long way these days giving us a much wider choice of light spectrum that is omitted. Changing the mood of any room in the house, office, hotel etc is now very possible. The CFL bulb colors offer a variety of choices from daylight blue to warm yellow. If you prefer the look and feel of what incandescent bulbs offer choose a warm light. A good thing to remember is that the bluer light can be quite harsh and have negative effects on light sensitive people.

Take a look on the packaging for a number that ends in K which stands for Kelvin, it gives you the temperature of the bulb. If you want a warm/yellow bulb look for a Kelvin rating of 2700k-3000k. A cool white bulb would be a Kelvin rating of 3500K-4100K. And if you wanted the Daylight Blue bulb look for a Kelvin rated bulb of 5000K-6500K.

Use 9-13 watt CFL bulbs if you want to replace 40 watt incandescent bulbs. Use a 13-15 watt CFL to replace a 60 watt incandescent. Use an 18-25 watt CFL to replace a 75 watt incandescent bulb. And if you want to replace 100 watt incandescent bulbs look for the 23-30 watt CFLs.

All your used fluoro bulbs should be attempted to be recycled. It's forbidden in some states to throw away old mercury bulbs with the normal solid waste trash. The reason is there is around 5 milligrams of mercury in one CFL bulb.

Places such as ACE Hardware, Orchard (OSH), IKEA and Home Depot will take your used green CFL products and dispose of them responsibly.

If you are wanting decorative lights, consider Energy Star qualified light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. These bulbs create the exact same amount of light as their equivalent incandescent bulb and use up to 90% less energy! It has been said that you can power 140 LEDs with the power required to burn one single 7 watt incandescent bulb!

Give the CFLs a try for inside and the LEDs for the outside. They will save you some good money and reduce your carbon footprint.