Certainly - I have bulbs that don;t get 10 minutes a year use. It would take 1000 years to break even on even a $3 bulb.
Plus incandescents are cheap to buy, weatherproof, and last forever if not used much.
Can;t say that about electronics in CFLs or LEDs.
wle
There’s no good reason to use incandescents anymore, LEDs are getting very affordable and are so much cheaper to run!
I went back to incandescent after I discovered my Phillips Hue uses PWM. Its for sale, PM me if interested.
I’ve got bulbs that get about 5 minutes a year use.
Those would take 3000 years to pay back.
I have $1 LED bulbs and don’t even use them there.
I think the energy savings with CFL or LED is a bit of a myth. In summer, when you don’t want heat in the house, we use very little lighting since the sun is up most of the time we’re awake. In winter, when it’s cold and dark and you do want heat in the house, the extra energy usage of incandescent simply goes into heating your house.
Often, you have a light on where you’re sitting, that is directly heating you, so you can leave the house thermostat 1 or 2 degrees cooler. It might actually be a net savings in energy.
Like most claims about saving the environment, I think it’s overstated.
I have LED bulbs, CFL bulbs, and incandescent bulbs. Only the incan give a nice light. The LED and CFL make people look sickly. They may be high CRI, but the spectrum they put out just isn’t natural.
I have LED, incandescent and CFL. I am ridding my house of CFL after one burst into flames without warning. I like 4000k led bulbs, but the cost and fact that they do still fail keeps me from swapping over. I am not also sure that humidity in the basement and outside storage would be good for them either. I will always have the 2 types in use.
I don’t have a single incandescent bulb left anywhere in my house, including outdoor lights. They don’t use much energy and I leave a few lights on inside the house, and the outdoor lights on while on vacation. Haven’t come home to burned out lights yet.
$1 at the dollar store, 3000k, and can use a dimmer. The front of the package says non-dimmable, but the side specs say you can use them a 120v 60hz circuit.
LED bulbs do fine outside. I replaced our outdoor CFL lights with LED bulbs, because the CFL bulbs would take several minutes to warm up to full brightness in winter. Even then, they wouldn’t get very bright when it’s –20 degrees outside.
LED bulbs work well. Instant full brightness, regardless of temperature. And they handle the cold and damp just fine. They’re not meant for outdoors (according to the packaging), but as long as they’re enclosed in a light fixture, they seem to handle the elements.
Outdoors, it makes a lot of sense to use energy-efficient bulbs. They’re on a long time, accurate color rendition usually isn’t important, and the wasted heat of incandenscent bulbs is truly wasted ourdoors.
If you heat with electricity then your baseboard heaters will run a few seconds longer on each run but if you heat with natural gas or most other fuels its 1/3-1/6th the cost compared to electricity.
Yes, all else being equal, then there’s a cost-savings by using less electricity and more natural gas. However, I’m not convinced all else is equal.
You generally have the lights on in the room you’re occupying, which means the heat is directed where it’s needed, not into an empty room. Plus, the radiant heat from incandescent lighting seems to warm better (like a heat lamp they use for food) than the convective heating from forced-air heating. And, the light is generally close to the person, especially if it’s a desk lamp, so it’s efficient that way. You can turn down the house thermostat a little, if you’re warmed by nearby lights.
I’m not saying that you won’t save money if you switch to LED lighting in your house. You most certainly will in the summer (even though lighting isn’t needed often in the summer), and you probably will even in the winter. I just don’t think the savings are as great as what environmentalists tell us. Call me skeptical.
That said, absolutely use LED lighting outdoors, and in areas where you leave lights on most of the time.
If you say so, the radiative energy of a 100W bulb in a heated house is more placebo effect then anything, but if you want it then go for it.
It’s not if you’re sitting right next to it, like a desk lamp. Most of the energy is emitted as infrared, which is great for radiative warming.
Sure, if it’s across the room, you’re not getting much direct heat from it. But, that’s still 100w of heat into a room you’re sitting, rather than an empty bedroom.
Like I said, you’re probably still going to save energy by replacing incandescents with LEDs. But, it’s not going to be as much as what is being sold as common knowledge. If you heat with oil or propane or electricity, you may end up spending more in heating costs in the winter. (You’ll still save in the summer.) Natural gas heat is a winner, as long as prices for natural gas remain low.
Some interesting information on incandescent bulbs and heat:
Regarding 100W light bulb-
How much of those 100 joules every second is converted to heat?
The answer is a little shocking
All of it.
A 100W heater will produce 100W of power.
A 100W light bulb will produce 100W of power.
They will be equally effective as heaters in a closed space.
Both the incandescent bulb and the Nichrome heater will produce 100 watts of heat.
Actually both the bulb and the heater will eventually convert 100% of the electricity going into them to heat. In the case of the bulb some of the energy becomes light energy first, then heat energy. But the bulb and heater may differ in where they distribute the heat.
I have enclosed fixtures so I can’t use LED everywhere without getting the spendy versions. In the bathroom and the dining room I got the dollar store bulbs and they are much brighter and appear to have knocked $5-10 off the electric bill.
Oven, range hood and fridge are still incan. I don’t think they make ones that would work there. Everything else is CCFL.
Great info. I can now stop feeling guilty of heating 2 small side rooms with incans I really was thinking I was spending bookoo bucks lighting the rooms when I just needed the heat. Some cold mornings, those rooms were warmer than the heated part of the house. Even though the rooms wer closed all night long.
I have no lights like this and like i said you can get halogen bulbs if you want them and enjoy your inefficiency.
I’ll always have some Incans in use since RFI occurs to some degree with all other bulb types, and located close to a sensitive radio receiver those can reduce the fun considerably. Incans are RFI-clean beyond the 60Hz your house wiring already gives in quantity.
And those aren’t 100W incan bulbs- they are “Easy-Bake Oven Heating Elements” so as to pass the scrutiny of regulations which do not want us to have anything except what they want for us 
Phil
IIRC, the old-style easy-bake oven that uses an incandescent bulb has been banned. The company had to redesign it to use a different method of heating.
I have replaced all incandescent lights into LEDs since last year. LED really saves me a lot!
lol!
cat house has a different meaning here!