Fluorescent FYI

by Jacqueline Lewandoski

I recently did a story on how to tighten up your home to be more energy efficient. (Look for this story on Home and Backyard at it's new time Sundays at 12:30 pm in October.) I spoke to an energy expert and we briefly talked about florescent light bulbs. There's no doubt that fluorescent bulbs save energy and dollars. However, the cost of your electricity bill is something like ten percent of your total energy costs. But that doesn't' diminish the fact that you'll still save. He just wanted to let people know that their monthly bill will not be drastically lower because of changing your bulbs. But if you really want to impact how much you save, you need to stop heat from escaping. This is done through insulation, finding the places where heat is escaping and making your heating unit more efficient. I'll chat about this at another time. One other thing I learned about fluorescent bulbs. My brother recently bought fluorescent bulbs for a new motion detector outdoor spot light. As an FYI many of these spot lights with timer options will not work properly without incandescent bulbs.