Fantastic, Incandescent bulbs are banned.

I just bought a 4 pack of the dimmables. And they really do work this time! They cost about $13 for the set of 4 and are made by Neptun Light. WWW.neptunlight.com if your curious.

I am planning to set up one on a dimmer and one running normally and do a life expectancy comparison test.

They also came out with 12 volt DC CFL's lights now as well. ( made by Fiet Electric if your wondering) They seem to be fairly stable with input voltages from around 9 -15 volts.

I think I am going to have to take one of each apart and reverse engineer the circuits some day.

For cold weather you have to use the cold weather rated CFL's.
I have three of them on a dusk to dawn photo sensor on my shop. Two are about 5 years old and the other is around 2 years old.
We also see that -30 to -40 F and colder weather around here as well. The regular CFL's last about 1 night at that cold but the actual cold weather rated ones dont mind it at all and have not given me any trouble even with thousands of running hours on them.

Its amazing how buying the right product for the intended application pays off!

Nigel Goodwin said:

As you obviously know, such a claim is nonsense - it's NOT 250% efficient, it's merely a heatpump, and pumps the heat from elsewhere.

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Yes it does. Yes it is a heat pump. But if you check the thermodynamic section of Eshbach's Handbook of Engineering Fundamentals, you will find that they are officially looked upon as over 100%. With a small temperature difference they can be 400%.

Of course, reversing the process and using the theoretical 400% efficient heat pump machinery as a heat engine, ie: running the process backwards with the same temperature differential, they can be no more than 25% efficient. So, don't get any ideas for an over-unity energy device like I did when I was younger.

It's distorting the reality though. It's 4k in 4k out no matter what you claim for efficiency. Even if it only used 1k to move the total of 4k

Anyone see the secret to claiming you have an over unity device yet?

Just ignore the second energy source in the equations if you have not figured it out!

Now if you could use 100 of those 300 units of heat energy to drive the pump that moved it then you would have a bragging point. Right now all I see is someone who is pleased with them self because they have an air conditioner hooked up back wards.

If a person bypasses the thermostat on a standard window air conditioner so that the compressor runs all the time and then mounts it facing out of the window instead of in they too can get cheap heat!
(until it gets too cold outside of course.)

To make a valid comparison to the 90% efficient boiler mentioned above, you have to compare fuel used to energy output so for a valid comparison the figure would be 250%. Or, if you want to think of it another way, the aircon unit will cost less than 1/5th to run as the boiler to heat the same house.

To use energy in to energy out is folly as this would be 6 in goes to 5 out. These are the kind of figures the 90% efficient boiler salesman would use.

Also, when the temperature outside drops too low the efficiency will still be better than 90%.

Mike.

To do proper cost comparison the cost of each fuel or energy source and the efficiency of the system that converts that fuel or energy must also be factored in.
A high efficiency boiler that burns natural gas that costs 13.53 cents per KWH would produce heat that costs around (13.53 / 3413) / 90% = .0044 cents per BTU delivered.
Electric heat at 13 cents a KWH would cost around (13 / 3413) / 100% = .0038 cents per BTU. If using an heat pump that does produce a 250% gain on its input power and then comparing that to the same boiler system then you would see a cost per BTU of around .0015 cents per BTU.

The heat pump guy wins by a nearly 3:1 cost savings.

However if your fuel source is not quantifiable with a direct cost per BTU equivalent there is no reasonable comparison to work with.
In the case of people like me who have the ability to collect wood for nothing but some time and effort added on to normal work that I already have to do any way.
My cost per BTU may run 10+ times less than others simply because I have so little added costs for getting and handling my fuel its hardly relative.
Whats another 20 minutes of your day worth if it was spent hauling or processing wood instead of just sitting in front of the computer or TV?

Pommie, you need to qualify that EXPLICITLY, 200% efficiency in comparison to....

Just another reminder of basic thermodynamic principals.
Energy in = Energy out always. If you get more or less energy in or out it went to or came from another system, period, this is one of the only truly irrevocable physical laws known.

Due to entropy and the whole space/time thing the same amount of energy will eventually have to be dispersed in greater and greater amounts of dimensional space. The total energy in a system when looked at as a whole though can NEVER go up and it can NEVER go down. If energy ever does go up or down it is a part of the system we do not yet perceive, but is in fact there.

Sceadwian said:

Pommie, you need to qualify that EXPLICITLY, 200% efficiency in comparison to....

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The 90% efficient boiler. I get 5 times more heat per kWh of energy than the boiler person. How else can you describe this except that it is 5 times more efficient than the 90% boiler. The fact that I use the energy to concentrate other energy is irrelevant, I still only use the electricity that is doing the work.

We all know that it isn't 250% efficient but for comparison with a standard boiler it is.

Mike.

It is not irrelevant. Not unless you want to throw thermodynamic law out the window.
We ALL do not know. Thermodyanmic law is at best just barely known by the general population.

According to Wikipedia it's supposed to be called the Coefficient of Performance (COP) in order to avoid the technicalities of the term 'efficiency'.

The 90% efficient boiler. I get 5 times more heat per kWh of energy than the boiler person. How else can you describe this except that it is 5 times more efficient than the 90% boiler. The fact that I use the energy to concentrate other energy is irrelevant, I still only use the electricity that is doing the work.

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If you look at it that way as the electrical energy required to move the other heat energy as being a greater than 100% total combined number then the boiler guy wins.

Heres why using my boiler as a reference since I know its electrical and thermal outputs numbers.

My boiler can do peak burns of around 750,000 BTU's. My pump that moves the hot water to the house can effectively transfer about 400,000 BTU's per hour.
The pump itself is rated at 85 watts. So by indirect reasoning of energy used Vs energy transfered it could be concluded that my boiler is around (400000/3413) / .085 = 137880% efficient!
However my heat exchanger can only transfer about 100,000 BTU's so that reduces my effective energy transfer efficiency to about 34470%.

Numerical slight of hand is fun!

A heat pump is just that, a pump. You have to relate it to other PUMPs in efficiency. It does not generate any heat, and therefore cannot be compared to other heat generators for efficiency.

I have this water pump. It actually creates matter from electricity. I put in about 20 watts, and out comes water! Going by E=MC^2 and the fact I get about 300 gallons per hour from it, I win this contest by a longshot!

Your pump doesn't create anything but an electric bill for you to pay. The water was always there, likely before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, Mass. BTW if your pump draws only 20 watts then your water table must be 2 inches below the slab floor in your basement, and in that case all you need is a drill, a carbide drill bit, and a drinking straw not a pump!

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Its not about who's heating system is more efficient. The guy who gets the most heat for the least money in the end has the better fuel source.

On my worst months my wood fired boiler system gives me around 33.6 Million BTU hours in the house per month for about $40 total financial investment.
(80000 BTU's * 14 hours a day * 30 days)

How much does it cost anyone else for that amount of heat?

Your pump doesn't create anything but an electric bill for you to pay. The water was always there, likely before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock, Mass. BTW if your pump draws only 20 watts then your water table must be 2 inches below the slab floor in your basement, and in that case all you need is a drill, a carbide drill bit, and a drinking straw not a pump!

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I was trying to make a point Obviously my pump doesn't create water, but once you stop dealing with a closed system and pretend >100% efficiencies are possible because of it, it's ripe for abuse.

Btw the pump is in an aquarium filter, moving water from and back to the same tank, so it's not dealing with any head pressure. An Eheim 2217 to be exact, 20W for 264gph flow at zero head. A little flow resistance due to tubing frictional losses and the filter media, but that's it. Hence the low power consumption.

Oh my god then what will happen to my remote controlled incandescent lamp dimmer!

Actually I gave lots of effort in the past to do this project.Hard coded & fine tuned my dimmer, it can fade down & up extremely smoothly than conventional manual dimmers.

I'm really worried after hearing this.

Gayan Soyza said:

Oh my god then what will happen to my remote controlled incandescent lamp dimmer!

Actually I gave lots of effort in the past to do this project.Hard coded & fine tuned my dimmer, it can fade down & up extremely smoothly than conventional manual dimmers.

I'm really worried after hearing this.

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Don't worry Gayan, halogen bulbs will work just as well.

Mike.

Hi,

It's hard to believe that a couple light bulbs could heat someones house.
Maybe that's partly imagination.

The little curly bulbs (as we call them here) come in warm white too now.
I hate that though (he he) as i like the cool white. Cool white shows
colors better like on that little 1/8 watt resistor, the color bands show
up better. I have a warm white i got with a lamp i purchased and
interestingly it has a two prong base, not a screw in. The bulb twists
and locks into the base. It's nice i guess, but i'll have to see if i can
get some cool white someday. If anyone knows of a source for them
please inform me...thanks. Remember though the base is a two prong
twist type, not screw in.