January 5th, 2007 - Turning off lightbulbs

The other day, Eric watched an episode of MythBusters that dealt with the “should I turn it off or leave it on” question. Their answer was: turn it off no matter how long you will be gone!

According to their tests, leaving incandescant and CFL bulbs on saved energy only if you needed the light off for less than a blink of an eye. (Flourescent tubes were 23 seconds, however.) The also tested whether turning them off/on more ofen would decrease the life of the bulb. This test consisted of turning bulbs on and off at 2 minute intervals for an entire month. All the bulbs indeed were dead at the end. They extrapolated this to lasting a 5-year period if you actually turned them off every single time you didn’t need them anymore. [Please note: my apologies if I miscontrued the episode. this is second hand as I did not watch the show. But Eric knew I was very interested in the information!]

I’ve started turning lights off more frequently.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 10:01 am EST and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Turning off lightbulbs”

  1. hannah Says:
    January 9th, 2007 at 6:53 pm EST

    I saw the same episode! I have always been a fan of turning off the lights and they really proved it, at least to me. Slowly switching to Compact Fluorescents around our house too.

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