Heat Your House with Light Bulbs in the Winter

In the winter I heat my house with 10 to 22 incandescent bulbs and incandescent floodlights [50 to 100 watt, 600-1400 watts total], two desk chair heating pads [130 watts total], a feet heating pad [50 watts], and occasionally an electric space heater [700-1500 watts].

Nearly 100% of the energy used by an incandescent lightbulb is turned into heat when used in an enclosed space. About 40% of the electricity in the U.S. comes from low-carbon sources.

Not using a gas heater will help slow down the climate monster heatwaves, madness, storms, crime, wildfires, floods and wars.

I added light bulb socket Y adapters so I can put two light bulbs in some of the ceiling light sockets and table lamp sockets.

I usually use halogen bulbs and small halogen floodlights in the normal E26 light sockets.

Sometimes I use little E11 halogen 75 watt bulbs in the regular E26 sockets by using the E26 to E11 adapters.

It can be a chilly 50F in some areas of the house when it gets close to zero degrees Fahrenheit outside, but I, or we, usually work and hang in the warm zones.

I use a goose neck floor lamp near my desk and another by a table to direct the heat from a 75 or 100 watt flood lamp into those areas. I like the look of a blue flood light for the desk goose neck lamp.

I get my net electricity from a community solar program. The solar farm by SunShare is a few miles away and is hooked up to the Xcel grid. That solar farm also helps a farmer of a vegetable farm by partially shading the plants.

To make your electricity low carbon too, join a community solar farm, install solar panels, buy renewable energy credits or carbon offset. Check out Sunshare, SolarSlice, Xcel’s Solar Rewards, CarbonFund.org, Colorado Solar and Storage Association, and other community solar gardens.

Again, nearly 100% of the energy used by an incandescent lightbulb is eventually turned into heat when used in an enclosed space. Even the visible light energy from a light bulb is converted into heat [infrared radiation/IR] as it bounces around a room. Both a 1000 watt space electric heater and 1000 total watts of electric light bulbs puts out the same 3412 BTUs per hour.

Conversely, my retired house gas heater was rated at 75% efficient – probably because a lot of the heat was lost through the flue. But another 30% to 50% of the heat might have been lost because of the poorly insulated metal forced air ducts that run under the floor in the crawl space. That old gas powered heating system may have been less than 50% efficient.

So every light bulb that you use to heat your home rather than using the gas heater might help slow down the climate monster floods,fires, heatwaves and other disasters.

The solar electricity I get from the solar farm is the same price I pay for fossil fuel generated electricity.

When it’s not winter, I take out all of the incandescent bulbs and go back to LED lights.

I wish I could put a heat pump in my place but it would be outside of my budget, and it would probably not work well with my old house anyway.

For a cool planet, Stele Ely / XOEarth.org/Incandescent

Note: Although heat-pumps the best, some homes are now built with electric radiant heating and heated floors that use electric resistance mats and/or electric resistance cables. That’s good because a resident can choose to use electricity from renewable energy to heat a home, instead of fracked methane gas that creates more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Resistance heating is my hero.

Whether it is a resistance heater or a resistance light bulb, they all put out the same amount of BTUs per watt. Each of these put out the same amount of heat per watt consumed: an incandescent bulb, heat lamp bulb, oil-filled electric radiator heater, open resistance coil space heater, ceramic resistance element space heater.

The conversion equation between watts and BTUs is 1 watt = 3.412 BTU/hour.

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Tiger Light : Future Cats Purr About LED Lights

Play >> Tiger Light .mp3 x Dave Weil and stele
Two tigers from the future have a few things to say about screwing in those LED lights to help make their lives possible 50 years in the future. Hear them growl about the “Tiger Lights” that you put in and how the LEDS you put in may be the ones that save their lives! Stop climate change, save a tiger.

Bengal Tiger /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_tiger

The Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is the most numerous tiger subspecies. Its populations have been estimated at 1,706–1,909 in India, 440 in Bangladesh, 163–253 in Nepal and 67–81 in Bhutan.[2][3][4][5] Since 2010, it has been classified as an endangered species by the IUCN. The total population is estimated at fewer than 2,500 individuals with a decreasing trend, and none of the Tiger Conservation Landscapes within the Bengal tiger’s range is large enough to support an effective population size of 250 adult individuals.[1]

Bengal is traditionally fixed as the typical locality for the binomial Panthera tigris, to which the British taxonomist Pocock subordinated the Bengal tiger in 1929 under the trinomial Panthera tigris tigris.[6][7]

It is the national animal of both India and Bangladesh.[8]

L.E.D. Advantages : via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.E.D.

Efficiency: LEDs emit more lumens per watt than incandescent light bulbs.[117] The efficiency of LED lighting fixtures is not affected by shape and size, unlike fluorescent light bulbs or tubes.

Color: LEDs can emit light of an intended color without using any color filters as traditional lighting methods need. This is more efficient and can lower initial costs.

On/Off time: A typical red indicator LED will achieve full brightness in under a microsecond.[119]

Dimming: LEDs can very easily be dimmed either by pulse-width modulation or lowering the forward current.[120] This pulse-width modulation is why LED lights viewed on camera, particularly headlights on cars, appear to be flashing or flickering. This is a type of stroboscopic effect.

Cool light: In contrast to most light sources, LEDs radiate very little heat in the form of IR that can cause damage to sensitive objects or fabrics. Wasted energy is dispersed as heat through the base of the LED.

Slow failure: LEDs mostly fail by dimming over time, rather than the abrupt failure of incandescent bulbs.[58]

Lifetime: LEDs can have 35,000 to 50,000 hours of useful life.[121] Incandescent light bulbs at 1,000 to 2,000 hours.[122]

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