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Does anyone here use oil lamps, kerosene lamps or candles for their primary lighting in the evenings? Have you done a cost comparison between electric lights vs. buying candles or lamps? We were going through the Lehman's catalog and figured some of the more efficient candles will give us light at 8 - 13 cents per hour.
In the evenings we typically light our great room with one of the three chandeliers which has 16 egg shaped bulbs in it.
If for the purpose of an illustrative example we assume electricity costs 12 cents per KWh, the chandelier is energized for 5 hours then since it is only using 64 Watts that is a cost of 3.84 cents for 5 hours of light or 0.768 cents per hour.
The chandelier is populated with 10,000 hour rated CFL lamps rated at 4 Watts consumption each. Even amortizing in the replacement cost of the bulbs and we still beat candles with no smoke, smell, soot, or fire hazard.
Scented lamp oil is just as sooty and smelly but has a strong odor producing additive to "mask" the stink of the burning oil. We have oil lamps for emergency use as well as candles (for just in case) but white LED flashlights are so convenient and energy conservative that batteries last a very long time. My wife has a set of imitation candles powered by an AA batt and has a grain of wheat bulb. A rechargeable AA will power one of them for a few nights and I have solar chargers that can recharge them just fine.
Different strokes for different folks. If you like candles and oil fires in the house by all means go for it but I doubt it will save money.
Pat
An alternative is one of the hand charged LED flashlights. Might be about the cheapest artificial lighting source going. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
I can remember the oil lamps and the gas lamps with the two mantles. I prefer electric light. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]
Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
When I was a kid, we were fortunate enough to have electric lights in the house; just a single exposed bulb in the middle of the ceiling of each room, but when we went to the outhouse after dark or to the barn to do the milking, it was kerosene lanterns (occasionally a flashlight, but flashlight batteries cost too much and didn't last long). I'm sure glad those days are over. Sometimes when we get to thinking about it, the "good old days" weren't so good after all. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]
Candle light and oil lamps???
You can't be serious!
JOKE ALERT-------
Do you have dirt floors and use an out house?
Hunt for dinner with a flint lock, smooth bore musket?
You have a computer and are on line so can I assume you are willing to use modern technology?
END OF JOKE------
Use compact fluorescent lights and the energy you now use will seriously drop!
Some homes save 50% of their electric bill with changing the lights alone!
The rest have old refrigerators gobbling up 1/4 of the electric bill or more!
And then you could install an appropriate sized set of Solar panels, tie it to the grid and the cost will drop to zero with the exception of replacement bulbs, but those compact fluorescent lights last a real long time!
If you have the right kind of net metering, then you might even make a tidy profit!
And if you add a battery bank to the solar system, if the power ever goes out, your system will disconnect from the grid and run on battery power until the sun comes up!
How doe you dispose of the new compact fluorescent lights when they no longer light? [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
We have also had one that failed at the base! [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img] That I did not like. There are warnings out about this happening! [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]
Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Try watching television without electricity. [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]
Always told the kids we did not have electricity when I was young and we had to watch TV in the dark. We did have electricity, however I do remember them putting in the phone.
I remember the party line phone where everyone had a different ring. Seems like ours was two shorts and a long, but I could be mistaken about that. And when you picked up the receiver to make a call, you turned the little hand crank to get the operator.
And I"ll probably never forget the time Mother was talking on the phone when the neighbor down the road got on the line and told her to hang up; that he had an emergency. So she hung up, then decided to pick up the phone again to see if he or his wife were injured or what, only to find him visiting with a friend and telling about the new calf that was born last night. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] After that he could have died if he'd had an emergency because she would have never hung up for him again. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]
The good old party lines where everyone could listen in on your conversation. If I remember correctly there were about eight people on the party line. Back at the old place, I do not think that you could even find eight farms with people living there within a three mile radius of the place.
Nobody was worried about big brother back then when all of the neighbors knew what you were talking about.
We did not have the crank telephones, just a rotary phone, but things had improved quite a bit by 57 or 58. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Well, most stores that sell them also collect the old ones, and the few that fail are offset by the ones that last a long time, besides, there is going to be some failure in some way no matter what you buy, be they incandescent or fluorescent.
The key difference between Fluorescents and Incandescents is how they "create" light. Fluorescent bulbs outlast up to 13 incandescent or halogen bulbs.
The Difference - Cost
Check the Facts! A compact fluorescent may cost more to purchase than an incandescent, but that's where the story ends. Compacts can typically save 8 to 12 times their cost.
Temperature
90% of the energy consumed by an incandescent bulb is wasted heat. This makes the bulb extremely hot to touch and very unsafe.
Fluorescent are at about 90 degrees.
Incandescent are at about 350 degrees.
A candle burns at 1400 ï½°C, that's 2552 degrees!
Can you say fire hazard?