The best lighting ideas and tips for the home lighting. New and tested how-to's from proffesionals.

After reading a lot of information on the topic, it seems that this is quite a serious problem. With traditional incandescent bulbs gradually moved out from the market, we are all forced to equip our lighting fixtures with the new CFL (compact fluorescent lamps). Well, they are not new anymore, but still we have to use them. A good price CFL bulbs could be obtained here: Cheap CFL lamps

There are so many ads and promotions, huge marketing campaigns and a lot of people convincing us, that these bulbs are so practical, useful and effective that we have found us running to the local store and buying these products, because they are nature friendly. And everyone wants to be a friend of nature, right?  But unfortunately, these bulbs apart of all the positive characteristics, do have mercury in them and that appears to be a huge problem to the environment.

Well, probably most of you are already having such bulbs in their homes installed, so what I would recommend is to be careful if you break or crack any. A lot of medical institutions and laboratories have confirmed that these bulbs cannot damage our health when used properly and I’m willing to trust them. I don’t want to think if this is not true – with millions of CFL bulbs already produced, we have to be doomed. So let’s don’t get paranoid.

One tip of advice here is to have these bulbs fitted in the lighting fixtures behind a diffuser – a glass or decorative paper.

So if by any chance a bulb cracks or leaks, you will have some protection. The real threat will be if the small amount of mercury that is in the glass tubes of CFL, spills out and contaminate the air in the room.  If this is the case you have to ventilate the area immediately to prevent anyone from inhaling the vapours. As stated by the Department of the Environment, you should vacate the room with the broken bulb for at least 15 minutes.

One more tip here – do not screw the bulb by holding it for the glass tubes! Use only the plastic base for manipulations!

Another bad situation is to have a mercury drop on your carpet, furniture, clothes or other porous items. It is extremely difficult to clean it of those fabrics and if it is not properly cleaned it will linger for years and provide severe health threat. Do not use a vacuum cleaner to remove the mercury as this will only contaminate the air. It is better to use a cloth and gather all the pieces. Use gloves to protect your hands from touching the mercury.

What to do when you have to remove your old compact fluorescent bulb? Obviously, you cannot directly put it in the trash bin. Why not? Because you can accidentally break it and release the mercury out.

As a result of all the mentioned cases, you have to dispose of the energy saving lamp somewhere safely. But the question is how and where?

Let’s try to answer the first one – the right thing to do is to put the bulb or the remains of the bulb in  a plastic bag. My suggestion – wrap it in a paper and then put it in plastic bag. You can even put two plastic bags. If you want to be sure nobody will open the bag accidentally, you can tape the bag.

Unfortunately, answering the second question is really hard. First, you can carry the packed bulb to the council or municipality where are supposed to be  containers for batteries and CFL bulbs or you can take the bulb to the nearest bulb / electrical store, where they should also have such containers for disposing of or recycling.

Waste disposal facilities can safely collect and dispose of old bulbs.

Regrettably, most of the people are just throwing the bulb in the nearest trash container. I cannot blame you for not going to the council or waste disposal facility everytime you had a burnt out bulb. If you are not keen on Greenpeace or environmental protection it is normal to treat these CFL bulbs as regular trash. If they invent more products with hazardous substances in them, than in the future we will have to build our own waste disposal facility in our own backyard.

 The other option is to have some plastic box at home to collect the bulbs and dispose of more pieces at once.

So we had a dilemma here – a real energy saving product, caring for the environment and on the other hand a product so hard to get rid of it, when it’s life is over.

What my solution is:

1.  Use the CFL bulbs, but be careful not to break any. If you care about the nature – carry them to a waste disposal facility, if you don’t – at least wrap them in a plastic bag before putting them in the trashbin.
2. Try  halogen bulbs – they also save energy – up to 30%. The light emitted is much better for us, they do not contain dangerous substances and could be disposed of in your regular trash.

You can buy all types of halogen bulbs here: Cheap Halogen Bulbs

No matter how trivial and easy this question sounds, there are a lot of people asking it, when they have to change a burned out bulb. Believe it or not,  sometimes such a small thing can make your life a living hell.
Let’s imagine that  you have a nice contemporary pendant in the kitchen, but when you press the light switch nothing happens or worse, you get some flickering followed by darkness in the room that you have just entered. (there is also some rare cases when instead of flickering the incandescent bulb just makes a small explosion, breaking the glass enclosure and leaving you a little scared). But don’t worry, no place for panic here. It is normal and there is no chance of any harm to you.

What should you do next?

Well, before making any attempts to replace the bulb or dismantle the lighting fixture, you have to cut the electricity, but not from the light switch. You cannot be sure if the switch is in ON or OFF position, and even if you are sure about that, there is a chance of live wire not passing through the switch, but connected directly to the lighting. So, you have to find the circuit breaker or fusebox in your home and stop the electricity. If you don’t know how to do that, you’d better call someone familiar with the basics of electricity.

Now that you have cut the electricity, you can examine the lighting fixture. If the bulb is inside some lampshade or protection glass, you should remove it carefully. In most cases the bulb will be with Edison screw and should be easily pulled up by rotating it counterclockwise. Such type of bulbs are incandescent and compact energy-saving lamps. You can check the lampholder for indication of the correct size of screw – E14,E26,E27,E40 etc.

Another type of bulb that you can encounter is the halogen. These bulbs are emiting much more brighter and pleasant light. They come in variety of sockets. You can have a linear halogen bulb, with R7s socket, or small halogen with G4,G9 socket or spot like halogen with GU10,GZ10 base. Linear R7s bulb is released by pushing at either side, G4 and G9 – just pull the bulb, GU10 and GZ10 – rotate ½ counterclockwise and pull.
All lighting fixtures have stickers with required bulbs, type, socket and maximum allowed power. You should check your lamp for this information.

Now that you have removed the old bulb, you can take it with you and show it to the local electrician to replace it with a brand new of the same type and power or you can write down the info from the bulb socket and show it in your local lighting shop.