Energy saving bulbs

Saw an interesting ref in a magazine to green cones, which I hadn't heard of before. These apparently take all food waste including meat and convert into oxygen and CO2- apparently odourlessly. Might be a small help. [broken link removed]
 
Thanks Vanilla! The green cone is an other composter on the market. The question is: Where do the nutrients go? Nitrate, phosphate,kalium and all the trace elements.Whilest they are good plant food there is naturally a saturation point. Since Liebig we know that an overdose of nutrients will either demage plant growth or make it impossible at all. Similar to some desserts. Neither around the salpeter mines in Chili nor on the guano islands is any plant growth. But here in Ireland with our rainfall this situation would hardly appear with back garden composting, the nutrients will be washed into the ground/surface water. On which our drinking water supplys depend on.
I just read an article in the papers that the people of Limerick have to enjoy a nasty bug (E.coli 0157) with their tap water because of leakages. Where the bacterias go the nutrients are already.They feed on them.
So if more and more amateur composting goes on -without nutrient harvesting- our already badly treated water ways will get worse. 30 % of the Irish population has no ready access to clean water, will back garden composting increase this number?
 
Here is a good calculator, from the ESB, delivering the total savings as well as the pay back time: [broken link removed]
 
Carpenter said:
I believe the new technology in this area is LED, but the lamps are very expensive and give out little light apparently.

Yes, I have read about this too. LED's can give light constantly for 11 years. I saw Craig David had them all over his house on mtv show cribs :) It was also possible to change the light to any colour in every room.
 
Don't be fooled. LED's are no good to read a book or to illuminate a work place.They are a very good alternative solution if it comes to mark a spot at dark , for example a traffic light or a traffic sign. Or a light switch.
But they give out very little Lumen, that is the unit to measure the intensity of light.
The ones that change colour are very expensive, as far as I know.
 
heinbloed said:
.
Composting in the common sense means nothing else but dumping to-be-released nutrients in the back garden.

Composting is the aerobic decomposition of organic material with the act of various bacteria, worms etc.

In landfills there is no oxygen, so the decomposition occurs anerobically, which gives rise to leachate and landfill gas (methane, 4 times worse greenhouse gas than CO2).

Composting is very different to dumping. For this reason the EU require that all ountries reduce the amount of organic waste going to landfill.
 
Ash said:
Energy saving bulbs can be very expensive.
Does anyone know anywhere they're reasonably priced? Major supermarket chains? Atlantic? Woodies? Builders providers? Independent hardware stores?
We're talking about six or ten.
The benefit of your eyes and ears on this would be great. :)

I finally got round to visiting Maplins in B'town but they hadn't any bulk deals on energy saving bulbs.
Saw some Phillips Softone in Atlantic. Price on shelf was €6.49 each. Or so I thought. At the checkout was asked for €9.49. I wasn't in the mood to argue so I just left them.
Was in Dunnes a few minutes later and saw same bulbs. Price on shelf was €6.49 each and that's what I was asked to pay at check out.

The method of pricing on shelves and using a barcode as opposed to individual pricing can be awkward. It is impossible to watch the price of each item as it is being scanned and particularly if there's a few items to be totted up, price discrepencies can go unnoticed until too late. Who the hell wants to join another queue in the shops this time of year?

Another thing about Atlantic. Had a number of purchased items to carry to car parked virtually in the next county but Atlantic offered only a single paltry bag to carry them in. Who in truth goes to places like Atlantic with their Tesco/Dunnes shopping bags in tow? Bad form Atlantic.
 
Well, that’s the reason why retailers in Ireland fear IKEA as the devil fears the holy water. Not only would the products be cheaper but the service and the staff would be better as well.
Concerning the Cfls the German consumer magazine “test” , January 2006 issue, page 71, published the latest test results on their Cfl testing. The fastest amortisation (pay back) time have the Cfls from Ikea consuming11W, after 80(eighty!) hours running time you would have your investment saved. That gives plenty of saving for the expected 10.000 hours lifetime ,depending on the price you pay for the electricity of course. The described Ikea’s Cfls cost as little as €1.50 (one Euro and fifty cents!) each when bought in packs of three in Germany.
The test by Stiftung Warentest is still running, since 2004, some Cfl’s gave it up very early, others are still delivering.
 
Ash said:
Price on shelf was €6.49 each. Or so I thought. At the checkout was asked for €9.49. I wasn't in the mood to argue so I just left them.
I've never had any problems with pricing of items in Maplin other than the odd € prices that they have due to conversion from GBP£. I presume you mean that you didn't make the purchase? Perhaps it was an honest mistake?
 
ClubMan said:
I've never had any problems with pricing of items in Maplin other than the odd € prices that they have due to conversion from GBP£. I presume you mean that you didn't make the purchase? Perhaps it was an honest mistake?

Clubman, the discrepancy described above in the shelf and check-out prices happened in Atlantic, not in Maplins. Maplins were fine, they just didn't have the bulbs in bulk when I was there.

Perhaps the error in Atlantic was an honest mistake. I don't know for sure. I didn't buy the bulbs there. I left them at the check-out and only took the other items.

I was in Tesco since then and noticed that Philips Softone energy saving bulbs on sale there were priced at c. €9.49 and c €6.49, for the equivavlent of 40w and 60w. Could there be such a huge difference for these items? Maybe that difference explains the difference in prices? Although the bulbs I attempted to buy in Atlantic and those I bought in Dunne's WERE the same wattage.
 
Ash said:
Clubman, the discrepancy described above in the shelf and check-out prices happened in Atlantic, not in Maplins. Maplins were fine, they just didn't have the bulbs in bulk when I was there.
Sorry - misread your post above! :eek:

Funnily enough I was charged €19.95 for a CD labelled €14.95 (and scanned at the checkout) in Golden Discs on Henry Street today. I pointed it out and received the €5 back but if I had said nothing I would have been out of pocket. :(
 
FWIW I recently bought some 15000 Hr rated CFLs in a Sainsbury branch for around GBP2.50 each

( last thing I expected to find there )
 
I bought some 20w (100w) energy saving light bulbs in Roches, with 20% off in their sale the price was €6.95, I was in Tesco later in the week and their price was €6.49 with no sale on. These are the ones that look like the usual lightbulbs.
 
I have my doubts about the efficacy of the energy savings bulbs. I would normally use an ordinary 60W bulb to read by, but have to use the 'equivalent to 100W' energy savings bulbs to be able to read!
 
Go to IKEA in Belfast, 2 energy saver bulbs for £2, can't go wrong with that, saying that, it was before Christmas when i was there so they may have gone up in price again
 
Go to IKEA in Belfast, 2 energy saver bulbs for £2, can't go wrong with that, saying that, it was before Christmas when i was there so they may have gone up in price again

If you are looking for cheap bulbs gotta check out the likes of Tesco's.

Now I'm not sure if the RoI Tesco's do the same deals, but there are some amazing deals in the NI Tesco's for bulbs.

I recently got 3 bulbs for 88p !! I bought a load of them, and I think the next week they were doing 5 for £1. I have even seen some of the deals in the North as low as 5 for 40p. Now these might not be the brighest bulbs, but they are a bargain.

I think that they can sell them so cheap as they are subsidised by the UK Gov or energy firms. Same as the loft insulation for £1 per roll in B&Q in the North.

Same offers may not apply down South.
 
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