[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekend warriors home improvement.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Show, built by bar lumber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Cory have got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Here they are, your weekend warriors, Tony and Cory.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Tony, do you know what led stands for?
[00:00:33] Speaker A: I could guess. Let's say light emissions device. Light emitting device.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: That's pretty close. It actually stands for light emitting diode.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Oh, diode. I don't even know what a diode is. It must be the little device in there that makes the light. Yeah.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: I'm not an electrical engineer, but did you know that the led was actually invented in 1927?
[00:01:03] Speaker A: What?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And for the longest time, the only led colors that they could produce were green and red. And you probably remember those from your.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Boombox back in the 1980s.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I can remember my little handheld football game.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Leds.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Yeah. With those little led lights.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: They were red. Red, yeah.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Red or green, right. Of course. Red and green. That's right. Green for go and red for stop.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: It's very interesting because it took that long or very long time. It's almost 30 years from the time that they were mass producing green and red leds to come up with the very first blue led.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: So they were mass producing in 1960 something. 1962, yeah.
And then they came out with blue.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Technically, the very first led that you could see on the visible spectrum was red. And it was in 1960, 219, 62. And it took up until 1993, where a japanese engineer developed the very first blue LeD. You know what's funny is I remember this. I remember back in the 90s when the blue led was such an elusive thing. When it came out, everybody lost it.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: When blue leds came out, it was the craziest thing. People were buying them and using them for everything. Oh, yeah. Tricking out the inside of the car. Tricking out the inside of everything. Like blue led was the thing to have everywhere.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Yes. Because here's the thing.
To get every color of the rainbow, you need three colors, right? You need red. Is it red, yellow, and blue? And with those three colors, I might be wrong there, but with those three colors, you can produce 50 million colors. Right. That's how tvs work. They have these lights in there. Now, the TVs are all made out of LED OLED, where there's three tiny dots, and then they light up with certain brightnesses to give you the picture. It's amazing.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Interesting, that is.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: But it wasn't until 1993 when this guy figured out that you would have to build these crystals out of gallium nitride. And he was ostracized. They thought he was crazy. And he worked on it incessantly for years and finally got it to work.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: He made a blue led.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Blue led. And with blue then came white. So commercially available leds, white leds didn't hit the market until 2002. And in 2002, they were very expensive. Like super expensive. And it wasn't until the late 20 08, 20 10, 20 12 when they really started coming out becoming less expensive. You could buy them at Costco, you could buy 100 pack at Costco.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Somewhere between those being available on the market and the price coming down to where it was more affordable, somewhere between.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: A.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: There was a mandate, no more incandescent bulbs. We're not making them anymore.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that wasn't that long ago, actually.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: They said they're not doing it. And yet here today in the market, they're still available.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they rolled that back. I would have to look that legislation up.
[00:04:45] Speaker A: I mean, I do remember you and I had that conversation. They said, they're not going to be making them anymore. And when they're gone, they're gone. And then all of a sudden there was one company that was making them, like, this is going to be the last of it. When these are gone, they're gone.
And then somehow they kind of hung out there. Maybe they found a way to make them more efficient than they had been. That's what it says.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Well, the Department of Energy issued requirements for lighting products that went into effect in 2023. So they talked about full on banning incandescent bulbs. But what they did was they just said they made a set of rules that said that if you produce a light, then it has to be this efficient.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: Meet these standards. And most incandescent bulbs didn't make it. Correct.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: That makes sense. And so a bunch of them went away and now there's fewer of them out there and they're more efficient. But any way you look at it, led, for me, because of the longevity and the versatility, for me, it's the way to go.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Well, and that's what we're talking about today, the Led bulb. We're doing this whole line of shows about energy efficiency and how to make your home more green. Right. So today we're going to talk about Led bulbs. And there's a lot to consider when you're talking about Led bulbs, that isn't just energy efficiency. Right. You can say, yeah, switch led bulbs because they're more energy efficient. But there's a lot of things to consider.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: It's interesting to me when you showed me that graphic, you showed me that graphic that showed the spectrum of led bulbs, at least, that are available right now for residential use. And the spectrum kind of was blue.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: On one side and yellow on the other.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yellow on the other side. So you had this mass, yellow on one side, blue on the other side. And in the middle you're calling it white, but on the spectrum it called it daylight.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah, daylight.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: That sort of. Neither yellow or blue was sort of just white white, but they called it daylight. So it's the most like natural light.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yes, in the middle. And that's just one thing to consider because when you're talking about Led bulbs, a lot of people I've heard this from, they say, oh, I don't like, led bulbs are blue or they're white, they're flickery. There's all these things.
And people talk about how much they like incandescent bulbs because of that warm glow that you get from incandescent bulbs. I love that glow.
So the very first thing that I put on my list here is to consider the space that you're putting them in.
In a hospital, for example, do you want the warm glow of an incandescent bulb?
[00:07:39] Speaker A: You want the sharp, bright. I'm not missing anything with my eyeballs light.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: You want to be able to see every single thing all the time. Stark white, dark white.
This is interesting.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: This is interesting.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: I just want to say this one thing because maybe we come back to it later in the conversation, but when did blue blockers come out?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: I remember seeing that. Just think about that.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Think about that and then tell me, is that relatable to this conversation? Well, and then should we talk about that for a few minutes at some point?
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Yes, it is. Because blue leds. Blue leds or what we refer to all of our screens now that we use on our cell phones and our televisions, they all use the blue led to make the light, which is interesting.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Because why can't you just set your phone to be at white?
Well, because there's a blue blocker on your phone.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: There is. There's ways to filter out some of that blue, because what they say is that the blue light messes with your circadian rhythm so you don't get sleepy when you should.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Oh, sure.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Staring at your phone, that's what that's all about. There's a lot of science and studies about it that I'm not going to get into because I don't know about.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Well, I need more sleep. So I'm thinking about putting a blue blocker on.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Do it.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: I watch tv at night with my blue blocker.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: So yeah, I have an iPhone and my iPhone. I can go in there and set a time to switch. So when the light, like say at 07:00 it puts that filter and cuts out a bunch of the blue light.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: But it was funny. It's because my screen goes mostly yellowish.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's sort of a yellowish look. Yeah, I noticed that when I did the same thing.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: So anyway, now that, because you said it, one of the things to consider is in leds, everything is measured on temperature that they use called kelvin.
It's basically the temperatures in different atmospheres. So you have to choose one that suits what you want it to be. So if you want that warm glow, or what some people call soft white, you're looking for a color temperature between 2700 kelvin and 3000 kelvin. So when you go buy an led bulb, sometimes it might say soft white or neutral white or cool white.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And you're like, what does that mean?
[00:10:03] Speaker B: What is all that?
[00:10:04] Speaker A: What does that even mean?
[00:10:05] Speaker B: I look at the Kelvin, I look at the number next to it.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: So what is the bottom number? Is it zero?
[00:10:11] Speaker B: 2702, 700 is the bottom number.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: That's as typically yellow as you're going to get.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's typically going to mimic as closely to incandescent bulbs as you can get.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Got it. 2700.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: 2700. And if you've remodeled in the last few years and you've bought new can lights, inserts that are all led, like the one piece.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: A lot of them are switchable. So they'll have a switch on the back that you can click from, oh, 2700 to five k. Okay.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: I think I've seen that switch on the back and didn't really.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: I'm like, so the further right you go, the more bright white it is. And the further left you go, the more like incandescent bulbs it is.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: So for, personally, for me, for my home, I like 2700k bulbs inside the house. Inside the house, 2700. Even outside.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Well, I mean, we're in a recording studio. It's 2700 in here.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: No, it's not. And I'll tell you why.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: It's because you really want to be.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Able to see my face very clearly when we're filming. You want to have something called white balance filming and you want it as close to natural daylight as possible. Otherwise it'll cast this weird yellow hue all over everything.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: I don't want a weird yellow hue on me. When we're shooting video?
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Heck no. So that's why in the studio here we have these.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Okay, got it.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Five k bulbs.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: But you like it warm in the house. 2700, that's what I like.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: 2700, 3000k, which you'll see a lot in that same range. They'll call that warm white. But in my opinion, three thousand k is too white for me.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: For me personally. Okay, I'll choose the more yellow, warm temperature. Then you get into what's called neutral white. 3500 to. That's even more white. Maybe some people would like that in a bathroom. So actually in our bathrooms, that's what I've chosen for our bathroom light, the vanity lights and all that. I'll use the more 3000 to 4000 range.
And then you get into the cool white. The cool white is going to be your natural. That's what we have in here.
The further you get to five k, the more blue it appears. So between 4000, it's going to be very white.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: But cool white is a lower kelvin than daylight.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Yeah, daylight, which is your whitest? Whitest white is between five and anything over that is more blue. Getting very blue.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Anything over daylight, natural light or anything over five k, anything over five k starts to get blue.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: So there used to be these bulbs before led bulbs really became a thing in automotive. People were buying these. What were they called?
Were they sodium? No, they weren't sodium.
What was the name of those? You know what I'm talking about? We both put them in our trucks.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Oh, halogens.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: No, they weren't halogens. Anyway. They were separate and they used a ballast. You had to install this ballast. I remember turn on and fire and those things were like seven k and they were blue. And I know people out there have seen them.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: I got bright lighted all the time with those in my vehicle because they were super bright.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: But on top of that they were really blue and people just didn't like that. So now most of the leds you see coming out for the automotive industry, a lot of the newer cars are probably closer to daylight that range, but they definitely are brighter and people hate them.
I see posts about it all the time online where some big truck behind them has these led bulbs in it and they're just blinding people.
Yeah, that's a whole nother topic.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: There is an Hid, which is a high intensity discharge.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Yep. Hid light.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: And that requires a ballast. So I remember when we installed those in my pickup and man, oh man, I got bright lighted all the time after that.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Okay, the next one on the list to consider, Tony, is the brightness of the bulb. And leds aren't ranked the same as incandescent bulbs. Incandescent bulbs used watts, and that was literally how much electricity that those things burned. Okay, so 100 watt light bulb in an incandescent light was very, very bright.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Yeah, indeed.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: But it burned 100 watts.
The opposite would be true for led. You can have 100 watt equivalent, but it might only burn ten watts. I don't have that information in front of me. Sure, but it's a lot less. They're much more efficient.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: It's a watt less.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: A watt less.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: It's a lot less.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: It's a JJ watt.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: So much less.
I would say that about the lowest wattage bulb I have ever purchased and used was probably 40 watt. And a 40 watt bulb didn't light up anything very well.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: No, not at all. And that's the thing when you're talking about incandescent bulbs. So like 100, I just found this chart. 100 watt incandescent bulb led equivalent would be 16 to 18 watts. So much more energy efficient.
Now.
That's why you need to consider looking at lumens. You see it more and more now on the packaging when you're buying led bulbs.
Led bulbs. So the lowest would be like a 40 watt bulb. You're going to be around 400 to 450.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Doesn't light up much, folks.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: 100 watt bulb is going to be about 1600.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: We're talking.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: And you can get, like I was telling you about these can lights. You can buy these can lights with 2000 lm, which are great if you need them, extra bright. But what I would recommend is putting.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: In a dimmer 5800 lm.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: That's like a high voltage.
You've seen those commercials for those flashlights that light up the sky?
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Got some crazy.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: We're not living in the dark anymore, are we?
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Heck no. All right. The next thing on the list, Tony, to consider is the compatibility of your fixtures.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: I can tell you that I learned this one the hard way. So have I. I bought an led bulb for a motion detected light switch. And the bulb that I bought was not intended to be used that way. And when the light would try to come on because it detected motion, the light would just blink erratically, like, get me out, get me out. It was unhappy.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: That's the thing in led versus incandescent. Incandescent, you apply power, it heats up that tungsten rod and that's it. Or that filament. Right?
It's like analog versus led.
It's all electronic. There's little chips in there that put the current through these crystals and it emits the light and it has to be paired with, for instance, if you're using a dimmer switch, you have to use the proper dimmer switch compatibility. Right. So you have to get a dimmer switch that's supposed to be used with an led bulb. Yeah, is what I'm trying to say.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
They're not all created equal.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Because they're smart. And you have to pair those devices with those bulbs.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yes, because it's not just about the size of the socket anymore.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: You screw the little thing in candelabra, or was it e nine or whatever, you have to be more conscious about the actual thing that you're putting it into.
In the olden days, you used to buy these lights and install them on your ceiling and it would say 60 watt max or 100 watt max. Well, you can kind of throw that out the window with those things because that had more to do with the heat that was produced by those bulbs.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: So now you could easily throw 1000 lumen or a 1200, 600 lumen bulb up there, the equivalent of a 100 watt light bulb. No problem.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Right? Absolutely.
[00:19:06] Speaker B: If you need more light.
But that brings me to my next thing is dimmability. So you can choose led bulbs that are dimmable or non dimmable. And you need to be conscious about those before you go installing them, because if you use the wrong dimmer switch, when you go to dim it down, what will happen sometimes is it'll flicker, it'll buzz. It will literally, physically buzz. You can hear it.
And the other thing is, sometimes when you turn the switch off, the light bulb doesn't turn off.
And you'll see this a lot. With lesser expensive led bulbs, they don't have circuitry in them that cuts power, it just reduces the power down.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: And some dimmer switches, they have this leak. This power leak draws just the tiniest bit of power, which wouldn't matter for an incandescent bulb. But when you have an led that is so efficient, even the smallest amount of electricity will turn it on. So I had that same thing happen to me where I had all these bulbs and I put them in and I turned the switch off and they stayed on. Not like bright bright, but they just stayed on. You could see them on.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: So I had to go and buy all new dimmer switch that were compatible with the digital led technology.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: That makes sense. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot to think about, but if you're buying the dimmer, like, we've recently bought a couple of dimmers, one for the master bathroom and one for another room. And so since we bought these dimmers, we bought bulbs at the same time that we knew would work with them. So that makes the most sense. If you're buying a dimmer switch that you're going to install or have installed, buy the bulb that works with it at the same time.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: 100% yes. The other thing, next one on the list I have, it's to be consider, is the cri, which stands for the color rendering index. And you would typically only worry about this in a setting where you were potentially lighting up art.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: Or in photography, or in a setting, like, where you want your white balance to be correct.
So the higher the value.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: I mean, this seems like it would be important in the closet, maybe if you don't have the proper color rendering index. I might be pairing a blue sock with a black sock.
I might be pairing a fuchsia top with a, you know, with some aqua.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Do you wear top bottoms? You wear tops?
[00:21:55] Speaker A: I mean, I wear something on my top, yeah.
But I feel like the closet could be an important place for.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Or in a bathroom where color rendering. A makeup artist or something. And they have to get it right.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: But anyway, there is numbers that they assign to these bulbs that the higher the number, the closer it is to its accuracy. The color accuracy. So you want to use that in those areas, because I've had this situation where my father in law and my in laws, my wife's parents, they are art collectors. They have lots of art. And they went through this whole thing where they were buying these different bulbs and these different things, and they were having us help them and install them and all these things. And it was casting the weirdest lights on this artwork that they had, and it was like it would look green.
And it turned out it was all coming from these bulbs.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: So we had to go out and get some fixtures and lighting and all this stuff with the higher cri color rendering index so they could see the.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Beautiful piece of art, the way that it was intended to be seen.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Very interesting.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: What are those bulbs called? The long stick ones?
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Those are halogen bulbs.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: No, not halogen.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Those fluorescent. Fluorescent bulbs.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Fluorescent bulbs notoriously give off green hues.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Very weird.
All right, next one on the list, Tony. Energy efficiency.
Obviously, if you're choosing an led, it's going to be more efficient, but less expensive. The cheaper leds. And I'm not saying don't get them. But there is a difference. You do kind of get what you pay for when you buy a cheap led, they're not going to last as long. Look for something with the actual energy star rating. They will put that on the label, because when you put that energy star label on there, they have to meet those guidelines.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: When was the last time you changed a light bulb.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Man? That's a good question.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: I'm going to be honest with you. I can't remember the last time I changed a light bulb. I mean, I have led bulbs throughout my house at this point.
It took some time to get there because I started when they were expensive. But honestly, they last years. They don't last seasons. They last years.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: And you will forget the last time you changed a light bulb. And you'll think, wow, I burned out a light bulb. I did something. I will have accomplished something.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Here's something.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: When I've burned out an led light.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Bulb, here's something you probably remember as a kid having the light bulbs in the middle of the room and you had an Upstairs, they would always burn out because people running upstairs would jar that tungsten filament and they would shake in there and eventually break. Yeah, I remember we were constantly changing bulbs in the middle of the room where it was upstairs.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: I remember frosted light bulbs. When my dad would say, go get me a light bulb, and I would go and grab a light bulb from the pantry or wherever, the first thing I'd do was pick it up and shake it. And if it rattled, it didn't work.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: I forgot about that.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: There was something loose in there. The filament was.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: Filament was broke.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Then you knew it wasn't going to light up, and I would shake it, and if it rattled, I'd just throw it away and grab another one.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a long time ago. Changed.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Well, you just talked about the next one on the list, Tony. Lifespan warranty.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Well, they last a long time.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Higher value. Light bulbs are going to have a good warranty. And literally, the lifespan on these things is like you said.
When did we remodel our kitchen? 2015?
It was maybe eight or nine years ago. And I have had the same light bulbs up there. The eldo's led can light.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: That I got. And, yeah, I haven't touched a single one.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Plat electric.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: That's where we got those. Yeah, platt electric.
Those guys do a good job.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. Fantastic.
Next one list, Tony, to consider with led bulbs is lighting design. Lighting design, yep. You got to consider the overall light design of your space, mixing different types of lighting, mixing different Kelvin, different balances, dimmed, non dimmed.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: It's also notable, and I don't know if this fits in this spot or not, but they make some designer led bulbs as well. Yes, they make those.
What have been called Edison bulbs. Yeah, referred to as Edison bulbs. Yeah, those are very cool. I have some of those in my house as well.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: I do too.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean that's something that you would consider if you have purchased a light fixture that has glass or see through glass globe covers and you're going to be able to see the light bulb doing its job. A sort of designer bulb would be good there.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Yeah. But the biggest one for me when you're talking about the design is to ensure that at least the lights in all the general vicinity have the same Kelvin. At least if you put a 2700 bulb next to a 3000k bulb, you can clearly see the difference. At least I can, yeah, it's obvious.
Next one list, Tony, is to consider we kind of covered this one. Heat dissipation, old fixtures. You had to really be conscious of the wattage bulb that you put in there. And the other thing is, for instance, Tony and I go to the softball tournament every year and we used to take 100 foot string lights with us. Remember this?
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Oh yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: 100 foot long a bulb probably every 6ft. So we had tons of bulbs in this thing and we started off with what was called work lights. So they were bulbs wrapped in like a rubber coating on the glass in case they got broken and trouble lights. Yes, 60 watts or whatever. And we would just pack those things in there and you fire the generator on and it had a hard time lighting all those babies.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: And I remember the day that I went to Costco and I bought whatever it was, 50 freaking bulbs of led bulbs. Led bulbs that used five watts or something and we replaced it all and zero problems.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Yeah, we've talked on the show before.
I have taken the light cover off of a ceiling light and to change a bulb that has burned out. And not an led bulb, an incandescent bulb. And when I reach up in there to take that bulb down, I see that the foil behind it that's protecting the light fixture itself has burned. Because I had 100 watt bulb in a lamp that was intended for use of a 60 watt bulb and that 100 watt bulb stayed on and got hot and caught fire in there and burned that foil backing and man, oh man, oh man. I'll tell you what, talk about that really setting home with me when I saw that.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Do you remember the big fad in the 90s where those floor lamps, tall and skinny? I had them, and then they had the bowl shape at the top pointed up.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: With a halogen bulb.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: With a halogen bulb. And those halogen bulbs got so hot.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. A little bug would land on it and it would. And you'd see smoke coming from it. Yeah.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: Those were so dangerous.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah. They were really good, though. They were bright.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Super bright. But now you can get the same brightness in the led.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: It's absolutely incredible.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: And it doesn't get hot. It doesn't get hot and it doesn't burn. Insects.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: I have another story about those halogen bulbs. I used to have two or three of the work shop light. The ones you said.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Yes, me too.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Floor. You plug them in and you turn them on and oh, boy, were they bright. So I was working in a crawl space nailing some stuff off.
I had some rot issues. So I was nailing the stuff off and I had the bulbs down there, and I had my air compressor and my nail gun, and I accidentally.
The hose on my air compressor went. Laid over one of those halogen bulbs, and I didn't notice it.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: And it took 10 seconds, burned right through that hose and exploded it.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Bang. Scared the living.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: You got 120 pounds of pressure in that hose. Yeah. Yikes. That would have scared me.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: It scared the daylight out of me.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: It scared the dickens out of you. Yeah. That's good anyway.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: But, yeah, if you still got one of those old school lights with those halogen bulbs in it, I'd consider getting rid of it.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Time to get rid of it. Yeah, for sure.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: All right, next one on the list, Tony, is consider the compatibility of a smart home.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I love that you've got this here because this is something you have done so much within your personal home.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: I know, because I love it. I absolutely love being able to tell Siri to turn on the lights in the living room or to dim the lights to 50%, or you can set these scenes up. I've talked about this on the show many times.
You can play with all the lights. You set it to whatever you like. If you're cooking, for instance, cooking dinner, I can set every light in my kitchen to the right brightness, however I like it. And then I save it as a scene and I call it cooking. And so I can tell Siri I'm cooking, and she will turn that scene on and it'll be exactly the lighting that I want for cooking.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: It sounds so trivial and so weird, but it's amazing. Like I have one set for tv time. Like when we're sitting down to watch tv, it dims the lights in the right mood. I have one for movie time.
You name it. You can come up with a scene for it and then just name it and then you tell your Alexa or your Siri. Boom, it'll do it for you.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: That's very cool. And you don't even have to be at the house, right? You can just do it from your phone, wherever you are. Yeah.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: With Siri I can, I can look at my phone and see if the lights are on, if I left any on, turn them off. So considering that you can get other bulbs, you can do it with incandescent bulbs as well if you get the switches. But they make led bulbs that connect directly to your system. Like I have Philips hue bulbs, I have several of those in my lamps and I just have a bridge that plugs into my router and it connects.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: And these bulbs that you're using in the house, these bulbs can be any color that you want.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Well, so Phillips, some of them can. The Phillips hue bulbs, they make white. That will change any color white from two thousand seven hundred k to five k or six k. So you can get them that uber, uber white or bluish tint all the way down to super warm white and then they make the full color spectrum bulbs. And those are a bit more pricey. But yeah, I've got a few of those in my house and I can, Christmas day, I can make them all.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Green and get the rainbow going.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Valentine's Day, I can make them all red or pink. I love that.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: That is cool.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: They even have a setting on them. The newer ones that use, they call it Zigbee. I think that you can have it emulate a candle.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Flicker. Flicker like a flame?
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: They turn like yellow and reddish hues and then they flicker. That's pretty cool. So it's almost like there's a fire brewing in your room.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: A lot of fun you can have with that kind of stuff. Yeah, I really like that.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: I love it. We'll hook you up one day.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: I would like it.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Last one on the list, Tony, is to consider, when you're shopping for LeD bulbs, check your local jurisdiction because there might be rebates.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: Your county or city.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, sometimes your state, sometimes they offer rebates for buying energy efficient.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Doing energy efficient upgrades.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Good.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: And sometimes, depending on the year or the time of season, or whenever they've.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: You can get a little bit of money back. Sometimes that's a good thing to look for.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Or sometimes even when you buy the bulb, they'll have a tear off mail and rebate.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: So it's something to consider. If you are looking at your situation and saying, man, it's going to be expensive, but in the long run it's.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Going to be worth it.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Your electric bill is going to go. It's going to go down significantly.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Everything you ever wanted to know about LeD bulbs, who'd have known?
[00:35:06] Speaker B: We could have talked about it for a half an hour.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: I'd have not have guessed that it was a possibility. But it happened. It done happened down there, didn't it? It was a good show. I'm really glad that we did this. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you got something useful, something that you appreciate this opportunity.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: If you got anybody struggling in your life with the Led bulb situation, forward this podcast to them and let them listen to it. If they have any questions, they can reach out to us. We are the weekend
[email protected]. That's weekend warriors at par. That's parr.com. And we're pretty quick to reply to our emails.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: So check out our YouTube channel at WW home show and also at Parlumber. Yes, YouTube.com forward slash at par lumber. We got lots of how to videos stuff on there that you might really appreciate.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. If you want to follow us on Instagram, it's also at www.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Homeshow at WW home show. Thanks so much for tuning in.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: We'll see you next time.
