CFL bulbs 6-pk only $ 3.49 at Costco

What state do you see this.
Is the price subsidized by a local utility.
Thanks

Are they dimmable?

horizon6 said: What state do you see this.
Is the price subsidized by a local utility.
Thanks

CA and subsidized by I am guessing either PGE or SMUD.

I did not check who the instant rebater was. I checked the price, liked it and bought it.

Thanks for the additional info although disappointing to me. I heard that CA was being aggressive on this and that NJ had some form of program going on now. In NY Consolidated Edison included one coupon with the bill recently - for one dollar off one CFL bulb

Ranch 99 also has some dimmable CFL bulbs cheap.

However, from what I could quickly find through a google search, these dimmable bulbs are more like 3-way bulbs in giving off 2-3 different light settings. So I don't know if they will work well for you.

Be sure to get the right color temperature. Pretty hard to live with if it's not right.

cjchaps said: Are they dimmable?

you cannot use these bulbs on dimmers

vacantblasphemy said: not bad. i've purchased the 4 pack for 1.99$ at several stores within the past 3 months.

fyi, most cfl bulbs contain a bit of mercury, so do not dispose them in your garbage can. you need to take them to a proper disposal center. also, if you ever break them, it's recommended that you get out of the house for about 30 minutes and clean up the mess using rubber gloves.
It contains mercury vapor, so by the time it explodes, all the mercury is out in in the air. However, I have never seen a CFL to explode indoor, under normal circumstances.

horizon6 said: Thanks for the additional info although disappointing to me. I heard that CA was being aggressive on this and that NJ had some form of program going on now. In NY Consolidated Edison included one coupon with the bill recently - for one dollar off one CFL bulb

I got that coupon too. You have to buy a GE CFL bulb and not something you get from a $99 store.

which stores in So.California carry LED lights?

Target and WalMart both carry GE's daylight balanced bulbs. However, they don't get any subsidy from SMUD here in Sacramento.

toothandnail said: CFLs are inferior to regular bulbs imo. They are not dimmable and take a while to 'warm-up' to full brightness.

If you'd made that statement 3-5 years ago, I'd have agreed with you. However, CFL bulbs have come a long way.
CFL technology is many times more efficient at converting energy to light. Regular Incandescent bulbs, which, dare I add, have been produced the same way using the same materials for more than 150 years, waste 90%+ of their energy by producing heat, not light. Essentially, they're great heaters.

I've purchased many different brands of CFL bulbs and the ones that I've had the best results with are the "Phillips Marathon series". They were also top-rated by some magazine (errr, can't remember the name), along with N:Vision.

N:Vision is Home Depot's brand. They're not the greatest bulbs, but they're awesome for the non-standard smaller mini-edison sockets. IKEA also carries super-small (i'm making these terms up) socket CFL bulbs which fit in my mum's room perfectly.

Anyways, here are the advantages to CFLs

Advantages
1) Saves a boatload of electricity. I'm not talking about a measly few watts. With the help of CFL bulbs, I reduced my home's electricity bill by 50%. Granted, it wasn't just bulbs that were the cause, but they were the biggest factor that saved us money.

2) Very little warm up time. This depends on what brand you get. The N:Visions take about a minute to reach max brightness. The Phillips Marathon brighten up in about 15 seconds, but they're admirably bright when one first turns them on.

3) Last 5-10x longer than incandescents (arguable). With CFL bulbs being pumped out of factories in China, it's hard to argue for quality control of these bulbs. So far, none of the 12 Phillips bulbs have burned out. Two of the N:Vision (mini-edison socket) bulbs did burn out, but I got replacements from HomeDepot the same day, so no big deal.

4) Saves the environment! Whether or not you believe the carbon footprint scare (Personally, I don't anymore) you're still doing a good thing for the environment and it feels warm and fuzzy

Disadvantages
1) Mercury - yes, if CFLs break, they do contain a little bit of mercury. However, if cleaned up properly, they do not preset any form of health hazard. In fact, CFL bulbs REDUCE the amount of mercury in the air by reducing the need for dirty power plants to pump out electricity.

2) Not dimmable - most CFL bulbs are not dimmable, and I am in agreement when I say that this is a HUGE disadvantage. I love dimmable bulbs, because a) they can use less electricity b) I can set them for my mood c) I don't need 2 or 3 different bulbs for the same fixture.

3) Cost - they're a little bit more expensive, but 6 pack for $3.49, I don't think we need to complain about this too much.

4) Recycling - even though I don't believe in recycling anymore, I do believe in proper disposal of CFL bulbs. Unfortunately, there's not many places around that do it properly.

Anyways, hope this helps people decide.

Calfornia has alot of incentives to buy CFL's because the cost is substitized by the electric companies. The rest of us expect to buy bulbs for about $1-$5 per bulb, depending on size and watts.

What I have noticed is that some of the bulbs are cheaper quality. I use CFL's in my hallway of my building turned on 24h a day. I brought some bulbs at a $.99 store and they only lasted for about 3 months. or even less. I brought some 3 pack of bulbs for $3.99 from Ikea and I found them to be a good quality for a good price. I have another light bulb which was on for about 12hours in a day and lasted for about 2 years. They are not twisted bulbs like you are used to.

garyc said: This bargain is not country-wide. I paid $11.39 today here in Michigan for the 6 pack of 23 watt (100 watt equivalent) bulbs at Costco. Works out to be about $1.90 apiece before tax, which is still a decent price.

That's because here in the GREAT STATE OF MICHIGAN with our OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP in government....-"We don't subsidize nuthin cause we wanna be the next Mississippi-Arkansas." Nice country, but you sure wouldn't want to have to live here.

BTW, garyc, good price. Thanks for the tip.

There are deals on CFLs in the greater seattle area also, as they are subsidized by PSE (puget sound energy) at $2 per bulb currently.

Some info on the program and participating retailers:
http://www.pse.com/solutions/rebatesOnLighting.aspx

Here are the specific deals at local stores I have found as a result of this so far:

Bartell Drug's store: Phillips brand compact flourescent twist bulbs at $1 each after rebate. 60-watt, 75-watt, and 100-watt equivalents are available. Or, 3-packs of the 60-watt bulbs for $2 after rebate (66 cents per bulb.) All prices were marked "advertised special" or "manager's special" in addition to the rebates.

At Walgreens I found 60-watt Feit brand CFL twist bulbs for 19 cents each after PSE rebate. They also had ceiling "pin-based" 2x60-watt equivalent compact flourescent fixtures that were free after a $20 rebate! (expect for $2 sales tax)

All of the Phillips lights have a nice, white light quality, with a 3000 Kelvin color rating seems a little whiter than others and whiter than incandescents, but still a pleasing color. The 60-watt ones are perhaps the best in that they "SNAP" immediately right on up to full brightness, even in the cold. The 75 watt ones turn on immediately, but take a while to come up tot brightness. And some of the 75 watt ones's have "buzzing" ballasts. The 100 watt ones are the slowest to get bright, taking 1-2 seconds initially to come on at all and at quite low brightness until they warm up over 1+ minutes.

The Feit 60-watt equivalent bulbs have a 2700 Kelvin color rating, with a more yellow/soft color that is closer to incandescents, which is also nice. They also take 1-2 seconds after initial cold turn on before they make light, which I don't like.

What I ended up doing is using the Phillips 60-watt "instant snap-on" for the single-bulb fixtures, for instant gratification for turning on the light switch. On multi-bulb fixtures I keep one of the Phillips for instant gratification but mix in some of the Feits for a softer color quality. That seems to combine the best of both.

The PSE coupons are in the stores, either taped to the packaging (at Bartells's) or behind the counter (at walgreen's.) The prices advertised in the stores were BEFORE rebate at Bartells, but AFTER rebate at Bartell's.

Be careful about buying CFL's from Costco. They sell a brand called "Feit", and they are terrible. I have about 30 recessed fixtures in my office. I started using CFL's about two years ago. At first I was using the Costco bulbs because they were cheaper. it occurred to me one-day that I seemed to be changing bulbs very frequently. I started writing the date of insertion into the fixture on the base of the bulb in permanent marker. I discovered that the bulbs were lasting about an average of two to three months. I'm all for protecting the environment, but the cost of this was ridiculous. Rather than abandoning CFL's, I decide to try different brand. I started trying Sylvania, GE, and Philips brands. The results were significantly better. The GE bulbs seem to last between nine and 14 months. The Phillips bulbs don't give out as much light, but they last longer. Sylvania bulbs were not as good as Phillips for GE, but significantly better than the Cosco ones. Space spaceI ended up taking back about 30 light bulbs to Costcoand getting my money back. Fortunately Costco is pretty fair about this. They gave me a hard time on one occasion but still ended up refunding me. I will never buy on off brand of lightbulb again and less it's an incandescent bulb and it's ridiculously cheap. There is really a significant issue in terms of quality when you're buying CFL's. At the rate they were burning out, the Costco brand would've been easily 10 times the cost of incandescent bulbs, even taking energy consumption into account.the Costco bulbs are so bad that I think there could be grounds for a class-action lawsuit on the basis of false advertising. These bulbs don't come anywhere near their advertised lifetime.

I don't like CFL bulbs. I have yet to find one that doesn't have some kind of serious problem. I have bought about a lot of cheapo CFL bulbs recently (in the range of $0.25 to $1.50 each) and experienced 6 different problems with the bulbs:

1. They don't turn on right away. The worst I've seen is 2 seconds before any light appears. (Lights of America)
2. They are too dim. "100 Watt replacement" never means 100 Watt replacement. Every single CFL bulb, when put in a lamp with a shade is extremely dimmer than the 100 watt incandescent under the same shade. Some of the bare bulbs appear as bright, but once they get put behind a shade, they are dimmer than incandescent for some reason. (Lights of America, FEIT, Fieldbreeze, YDJ Light)
3. They come rusted in the package. I bought several bulbs totally rusted out at the base. (Fieldbreeze from 99 Cent Only store)
4. They burn out immediately (1-2 hours at worst). Just because it is a CFL doesn't mean it will last longer than incandescent. (Fieldbreeze)
5. They fall apart. The bulb separates from the base after installation, leaving glass dangling by wires. (lights purchased from Food4Less)
6. They stink like toxic chemicals when turned on, and the smell never goes away until the light's off, even after using it for a couple of days. (FEIT 100 Watt replacement from Vons)

I did buy one "top-of-the-line" n:vision 150 watt replacement for $10 at Home Depot, and it's bright enough, it turns on right away, it hasn't rusted (yet), it didn't burn out (yet), it didn't fall apart after I installed it, and it doesn't stink. There still two problems with it. It was too damn expensive, and won't fit into my lamp with the shade on! It's too damn big!

I want a compact fluorescent bulb that meets ALL of these specs:
1. Costs the same or less than an incandescent (< $1.00)
2. Is just as bright or brighter than an incandescent under a lamp shade
3. Turns on immediately (< 1ms), and is bright as soon as it turns on.
4. Lasts as long as an incandescent.
5. Doesn't fall apart, rust, or stink.
6. Physically fits into any lamp that can use an incandescent.
7. Is dimmable and works in 3-way lights.

the CFLs have improved in recent years. Quicker on time, better price, better color spectrums than orangey 'soft white'. I still can't seem to find a decent price for higher wattage bulbs. They sell 23-26W multi packs for $2-3/bulb, but a single 30W-40W, or 50/100/150 equivalent 3-way still costs around $10?
Still bought a couple 3-way CFLs only because those 150W incandesents can be serious heat lamps.

Only issues I've had with them was one that died after a week (returned) and a few that have died after only a year or so, despite the grandiose claims of 3, 5, even 7 years (with restrictions). Just who ever keeps receipts and packaging for a light bulb?