NO 2many
This is where you miss the boat and try to insist everyone building their own personal "Man Cave" / Garage follow you down your personal Garden Path
The customer is always going to have his preferences and design criteria with which the designer needs to work in. Simply telling them "No you have to do it my way" doesn't qualify you as a designer nor consultant. Just some one peddling a "1 size fits all" solution to lighting
I never said "you must do it my way". I even explicitly acknowledged (in this thread and others) that such things as "personal taste in decor" can have an influence which goes beyond the objective and rational (albeit, at a cost). So your Straw Man Argument is off-point and invalid.
What I
DO take issue with are flat-out misstatements of fact, such as "CFLs are cheaper" (as unequivocally proven above, they aren't, at least in the long run), or "CFLs put out more light" (also obviously untrue). It is misstatements such as these which can AND DO mislead people into making "unfortunate" decisions, for reasons which have nothing to do with "customer preference", or "design criteria", or (as previously addressed) "personal taste".
2many projects
I agree with the above post. I feel that all you ever do is push your dislike for CFL's with a very closed mind.
On the contrary, it is precisely because I make a point of approaching this with an OPEN mind that I try to consider ALL the cost and performance factors, both initial and long-term. Ignoring the latter and focusing solely on the former (as you seem wont to do) would be an example of having a closed mind.
You show the cost of the long tube florescent bulbs, but I can't recall a post with the cost on the fixtures that they are mounted in.
The links to the various example fixtures I cited all have prices listed.
There is a cost to them is there not?
As you would discover had you followed the links, typically about $80-100 for a decent four-tube T5HO fixture.
If you compare that to the cost of purchasing, installing, and wiring at least three of your "CFL specials", you'll see that the initial cost is not as wildly disparate as you attempt to imply. If you're paying for professional installation, it's probably even cheaper; but even in a DIY context, it's not "night & day". Heck, the difference in bulb cost alone will make up perhaps half of it right off the bat.
There are a lot of people that simply can not afford the Cadillac type system that you are advocating that we all use.
All the more reason to NOT lock yourself into something that is perhaps 50-150% more expensive to own and operate on a continuing/ongoing basis. I say again: By focusing solely on initial purchase price, you are being "Penny-wise and Pound-foolish." Besides, in at least the VAST majority of cases, this is all "play money" anyway. Virtually no one here
NEEDS a fully equipped home shop in the first place; it's a hobby pursuit. So if cash flow is especially tight at some given moment in time, then perhaps defer some part of your project until you can afford to do it right. That sure beats buying/installing the wrong thing, and having to live with it from then on (or equally bad, writing off that entire investment to rip it out and do it over later). It's something of a politically incorrect cliche; but consistently making foolish short-sighted decisions like that is one of the reasons poor people tend to stay poor.
I showed an alternative that puts out a lot of light for a small initial cash outlay. It worked for me, and obviously many others (Veno's post) yet you claim we are wrong. THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG!
There most definitely
IS a "right or wrong" when it comes to easily disprovable falsehoods like "CFLs are cheaper", or "CFLs put out more light".
And note, so far this discussion has focused near-exclusively on the relatively "easy" cost-related issues. We have yet to more than barely touch on the litany of other ways (primarily related to "liveability" issues such as color-rendering, cold-weather performance, slow warm-up, output degradation over time, environmental impact, etc.) in which CFLs compare very poorly to other forms of lighting (including linear fluorescent).
It's pretty clear that you "drank the Kool-Aid" when you bought into the CFL hype; and now, you just don't want to see the other side of the coin.
