My lightbulbs
have moved house with me, twice.

In my defence they are energy saving lightbulbs which cost a stack of money when I bought them.
I always got some cheap regular ones to go in their place
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 25 Oct 2008, 17:38, 17 replies)

Do
you leave toilet roll?
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 18:11, closed)

Energy saving lightbulbs
I can't go online without somebody sending me a box of the bastards which never, ever fit any of my light sockets. I have a giant basket of them: you are welcome to if you want 'em.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 18:19, closed)

Put them on freecycle if not
Someone will find them useful.
(Marmite Omelette ...but I feel better having screamed, don't you?, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 18:32, closed)

fine
but freecycle are shit. they make you get a yahoo id, then you have to *request* to be part of their smug fraternity. Fuck 'em.

If you have to go through a rigmarole to give stuff away for free i would rather leave it in the garage.

Also I am extremely lazy.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 22:44, closed)

the lazy twunt who I bought my house from
left every room full of the most shit furniture you've ever seen.

within about half an hour we had freecyclers coming to get it all.

they are freaks, but we've got some good stuff off there too.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 11:40, closed)

i cannot use energy efficient lightbulbs in my house
I can only use incandescent light bulbs. I heard on the news a few weeks back that incandescent bulbs will no longer be sold in 5-10 years, and that use of them will be illegal!
What the fuck am I to do?
My whole house is wired up to turn lights off when people leave the room, and turn on when people enter, and in the middle of the night when you get up for a piss, or to see to the crying baby, it brings the lights on at 30% brightness, so you don't get completely dazzled, and can still see clearly at that lighting level. Surely this is energy efficient ?
It will cost me over £2K to convert back.
( turb0t, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 13:58, closed)

You could use
LED lights. Expensive, but you don't lose your impressive-sounding lighting arrangement.

Alternatively you can get some dimmable-in-stages energy savers.

I'm considering installing Electroluminescent strips or single LEDs around the flat (on the unused faces of doorframes) to give me a low-level "sofa-avoidance" level backlight at night. I'm just pricing it up at the moment so I don't know if it'd be really cheap. Could you try that?
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Tue 28 Oct 2008, 12:14, closed)

You sad sack

( Mod Edit, Sat 25 Oct 2008, 19:54, closed)

Back then
they cost about £10 each. I wasn't going to leave them. That was two hours wages!
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 25 Oct 2008, 21:07, closed)

I went back to incandescent bulbs
I tried to do my smug but completely ineffectual bit for teh environments and spent a small fortune on those allegedly eco-friendly, low-power compact fluorescent bulbs. You know, the ones which save 1p off your electricity bill in a year, but cost a tenner each and are loaded with mercury so can't be chucked in the bin when they do finally fail. Yeah, them.

Did they last several times longer than incandescents, and did they reduce my electricity bill by enough to offset the cost of purchase? Did they, fuck. They burnt out in less time than the incandescents they replaced.

Fuck this going green malarkey, if that's how much it's going to cost me. Incandescents FTW.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 9:00, closed)

Better start stocking up
They are going to phase out the incandescents very soon.

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2543056.ece
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 10:41, closed)

yep
and Oh Fuck!
( turb0t, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 14:04, closed)

full of mercury...
made in china rather than germany and spain where many of our incandescents were made, due to the warm up time people tend to leave them on, and not simply turn on and off when required. Cost in materials alone, healthwise for the manufacturer/environment - the exceptionally higher rate of component 'carbon foot print' - all adds up to a typical government spin on something that at best saves the UK a tiny bit of energy, offsetting it to China...

Hmmm... now let me think which bulb I'll buy...
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 13:54, closed)

Privatisation of utilities will doom any green efforts to failure
This is not just for the OP, but for anyone who's thinking of doing his or her bit to cut energy usage to a) save teh environments, and/or b) reduce utility bills.

It's the latter consideration which will royally fuck up any plan to go green.

Companies have a legal obligation to maximise profits for their shareholders. Rightly or wrongly, that's what they're required to do, whether by boosting income, or cutting costs, or any other legal option. Fuck any of that ethical nonsense, if it doesn't make wads of cash for Johnny Sharecrop- er, I mean Shareholder, then it doesn't get done.

So you cut your electricity usage and thus your bill. Not for long, not if everyone jumps on that bandwagon. As soon as the utility company sees its profits take a downturn it will take steps to address that problem. And the easiest way to do so? Increase the per-unit charge. So last quarter you used 100 units of Nikolai Tesla's finest at a quid per unit, and paid the utility company £100 for the privilege. This quarter you did the smart thing and installed energy-saving gizmos all over the house, so your usage dropped right down to 50 units. You've just saved fifty quid! Well, you would have done, except those energy saving gizmos cost you well over fifty quid to buy. And, the utility company, not wanting to see another quarter with income halved, will raise the per-unit cost to two quid, so you'll be back to paying just what you paid before. That's assuming the utility company doesn't raise the price further to punish you for your temerity in thinking that you were somehow entitled to reduce your payments to it.

If a couple of people here and there do the whole energy-saving thing then fine, those people will benefit from it. The utility companies aren't going to care if a couple of customers work out how to dodge their protection money, er, I mean reduce their bill payments. But if everyone does it, then the utility companies will take action. And no-one will save any money. So why bother?

For green efforts to work, there has to be an economic incentive for people to jump on-board. Don't punish people for not doing something; instead, reward them for doing it. Carrot, not stick. In the case of energy usage, the carrot has to be smaller bills, and that won't happen while the utility companies are privatised. Nationalise them and remove the profit motive. Charge people enough to cover the cost of provision and maintenance, but take away the requirement to maximise profits. (The argument about the ethics of privatising utilities and treating them as commodities is another story entirely...) Once the profit motive is removed, customers will see a positive effect (i.e. reduced bills) from their green efforts, and from that will follow the reduced carbon outputs, and all the other pie-in-the-sky benefits we're told will miraculously happen if only we'd plug in a low-power light bulb or two.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 17:06, closed)

100% agree with you
You are a smart man (or woman - can't be bothered to look at your profile :))
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 19:33, closed)

I'm a bloke
Would a girl really be interested in realhamster.com?
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sun 26 Oct 2008, 21:38, closed)

Agreed
I wouldn't call myself tight at all, but I'd definitely take my expensive £10 lightbulbs if I moved. I'd leave basic lightbulbs and loo roll, but not 10 year bulbs. I might if I was rich, though.
(picmaestress, Mon 27 Oct 2008, 12:27, closed)