Leaving your porch light on at night. A proven technique to prevent crime or waste of energy?

A dollar or two is very cheap. The electricity to light up an incandescent bulb costs a lot more than that.

The toxic mercury in ordinary CFLs is significantly less than the mercury emitted by coal plants to light up the equivalent incandescent bulbs.

But please take dead CFLs in the hazardous waste collection point anyway. In my region, it is illegal to not do so.

 

20 to 40 lights on?! In one fixture?!!! I have to say it is emblematic about why we have an energy shortage in this country! We live quite well, with good lighting and don't have 20 lights in the ENTIRE house! With all our "normal" evening lights on we are burning, we have 6 in the kitchen, 4 in the living room, 4 in the library/hall and one in the bedroom going. (the six in the kitchen only during food prep/eating, baths and other rooms as needed) With all of these going at once we burn ~210 watts! Our daily average in our off grid house is under 1kwh/day. Your one fixture,,, even assuming 10 watts per bulb is 200-400 watts! Do you REALLY need to use that much electricity to be well lit?

As for CFLs and toxins. It is well documented that CFLs save more mercury than they create. If properly recycled the net mercury from a CFL is near zero! Many retailers offer free CFL recycling (Home Depot etc). Please don't perpetuate the myth that CFLs are "toxic" unless you can back up that claim with some facts.

Icarus

 

Holy Toledo! If they ran those originals for 8 hours/night every night they would use as much power as my house does each year (minus HVAC.)

Canisters are a bit tricky depending on specific arrangements. The Sylvania micro mini CFL's work well in some of the small tracks, and some of the lower wattage n:vision CFL's work well for this too. The enclosed spiral (globe and spot replacements) have issues with being very slow to reach full intensity, coming up at only 20% luminosity or so. I've replaced all of my globe style fixtures.

If the chandeliers are candelabra style then yes, the incandescents are a real pain and run about a buck a piece. I had two of these type fixtures in a style I didn't care that much for anyway (26 bulbs total.) I replaced both fixtures with a style I preferred and a total of 14 CFL bulbs @ ~$1.50 each. Net effect is 1/3 the wattage when on and better illumination...and no bulb replacements.

A whole lot of unfounded FUD in that, but unfortunately a lot of people believe it:
1. CFL's are not toxic. They are just fine unless you plan on eating them.
2. They very rarely burn out in my experience. I replaced one burned out several-year-old CFL about a year ago--and nearly every bulb in my house is CFL, long tube fluorescent, or LED. You will go through a whole package of incandescents before you burn out a CFL.
3. The coal burned for difference in electricity (incandescent vs. CFL) releases several times more mercury than the CFL contains. And the CFL mercury is not exactly released.
4. From what I've read the percentage of mercury in a CFL that would be lost, even with worst case glass breakage is minimal. Plus manufacturers are reducing mercury content.

Payouts on CFL's are incredibly short for any frequently used lights because of the reduction in power consumption. Longer term they will pretty much pay for themselves in bulb costs alone because they last 4 to 10 times longer.

Home Depot and Ace Hardware have recycling for CFL's here.

 

As I said, we are running our porch light with LED bulbs from Costco. Even less wattage than CLF bulbs, and the on/off thing doesn't bother them.

 

Do lights prevent crime: No.

Last night some vandals on foot bashed half a dozen mail boxes on my street. The first one they hit was directly under a street lamp and the most well lit area in the neighborhood. I heard the ruckus and investigated, wasn't quick enough to catch them, but I did see them. (Mine wasn't hit.) Best indication I have is that it was some college age kids visiting the most fully lit home in the neighborhood, the individuals in question left shortly after this occurred.

There was a burglary a few weeks ago a few streets down. Like so many it was broad daylight.

 

I never leave my Insecurity Lights on. However, my surveillance cameras have infrared LED's for night vision, and they work *very* well indeed

The IR is at around 940 nm, so is not readily detectible to the naked eye. Obviously, a criminal with surplus NVG's would see a dazzling white glare near each camera on my house

 

LEDs use about 5 to 10 Watts, less expensive yet. To go one step further use a motion sensor with LPS (low pressure sodium) lights. Many cities have gone to LPS street lights. The lights are pointed downward, thereby reducing light pollution and upward scattering and putting the light downward where it is needed. LPS has an added benefit of having a "warm - orange - pink" color that deters crime.

 

In the trade, LPS is commonly referred to as SOX

http://www.nam.lighting.philips.com/us/ecatalog/hid/pdf/p-1785c.pdf

When I first bought my hobby farm, it had a 55 w SOX slipfitter on the pole near the house. Gave off a sickly yellow glow. THe modern HPS lamps give off that pinkish glow

Although LPS are still considered the most efficient light source, that sickly yellow glow doesn't help much. They take at least 10 minutes to turn on, starting with a feeble red flicker. Their rated lifespan is around 10,000 hours

Frequent switching, and vibration, dramatically reduce the lifespan. Around a year after I got the hobby farm, the lamp burned out. I never bothered replacing it, instead removed the slipfitter entirely

I'm not even sure if you can find replacement SOX bulbs. I haven't seen SOX fixtures in 10 years

 

They do the same here.