@RyanF40T12: Who cares about the environmental crap? We should all care about the environment, because we all share it. No one wants to get cancer because someone else was putting chemicals in the soil that grew their food or into the air they breathed. But it's hard to point fingers because it's usually impossible to determine causality between an environmental toxin and an illness because the illness shows up many years later, and may be the end result of cumulative damage from multiple causes.

I sometimes wonder where the used CFLs really go - do they get shipped off to Bangladesh to be burned in a landfill by some poor children in exchange for a few pennies? Or are they carefully disassembled and the mercury extracted?

@MikeT1982: I use some CFLs at home, but most of them are older magnetic types or CCFLs under 10 watts. I have a lot of linear fluorescent fixtures & some HID *IN* the house. But I know with many new homes, all lighting is in recessed cans and can't convert to linear fluorescent nicely (but you can replace a can with a LED or 2x13w magnetic PL unit, both of which look pretty good, but expensive).

I generally tend to leave lights on unless I'm leaving the house or don't plan to be back in a room for an hour or more, but I also tend to move from room to room frequently (I don't like sitting still).

The Sylvania mini-twists are pretty decent, but I still don't trust the EOL behaviour of electronically-ballasted CFLs. In my experience, most CFLs just go out cold, but I've had a few that smoked/melted.

As for your garage lights - make sure you use 25w or 40w lamps, never the 34 watt ones. And stock up on some replacement rapid-start magnetic ballasts (i.e. off eBay, or salvaged fixtures). The Utilitech magnetic shoplights use cheap Lights-of-America-style ballasts which are chokes with an electronic starter and capacitor. In cold temperatures, the lamps will pulse wildly on those ballasts for a few minutes until they warm up. True rapid-start & preheat ballasts do much better in the cold, though lamps will shimmer/striate slightly for a while. Changing lamps end-to-end shoudn't make a difference except on a DC circuit, but sometimes in these cheap shoplights the sockets won't make good connection and re-seating a lamp will remedy starting problems.

For the AC some stuff that can help :

Get plastic shadow nets [http://sdjinguan.en.made-in-china.com/custom-detail/xmQExQndGJUQxJQxmEnAMEhQ/sunshine-shade-netting.html]like this[/url] and stretch them above the roof, at few inch above the roof surface (stretch it from the sides with rope to the ends of the roof, trees around the home etc, then prop up with boxes under it etc when needed inbetween). The nets make partial shadow and allow cooling by wind going through them, so will reduce the amount of heat entering through the roof. The same for walls which are exposed to much sunlight

Protect windows from sunlight by making a "roof" of the shadow net above them (just use a piece that is larger than the roof and stretch it out, so that it extends from the roof where windows are)

If you have a window in the attic or can move some tiles etc, make 1 or more such openings and install electric fans to move the air. This will prevent build up of heat in the attic, which leaks into the home too. The fans take way less power than AC. Protect the fans from rain etc by making a tunnel for them when possible, and power them from an extension from inside the home so that you can unplug them if rain is beginning to drip

Cover big concrete and asphalt driveway etc (which are your private) which is next to windows with sheets of white plastic or similar material. The concrete and asphalt absorb sunlight, convert it to heat, and radiate it as infra red, which then goes into the windows

Use swamp coolers instead of AC. They use water and increase the moisture but take way less electricity

If you have a porch which is in shadow, move the fridge out of the home and into there, so it won't emit heat inside the home

Switch off computers etc when not in use




The efficiency difference between magnetic and electronic ballasted fluorescents is marginal - nowhere like the difference between incandescents and other lights. So i think changing between magnetic and electronic fluorescents won't have any noticable effect on heat

As for the garage electrical. Old systems tend to not have earth connection, but this hacve nothing to do with the system being 120 or 240V. Either one can have or have no earthing

To verify, open up the sockets, connection boxes, panel etc and verify that there is intact connected conductor (this may be a wire or the cable's armor in case of metal armored cables), all the way from the big hole in every socket and to the earth bar in the panel, then a connection from it to actual earth rods or other means of earthing. (it may be from the panel, or it may rely on the upstream panel to provide that)

And if you took to open up stuff and check inside it, use this opportunity to verify some other stuff :

Check if you see connections which are bad, loose, show signs of overheating, wire nut fell off the wires, anything that would make you think "its a bad and dangerous hack" etc

The neutral wire (white in modern US code) is important for proper work of the system. In 240V systems (i mean 240V in the US, not 240V around the world, but in 240V countries the same is true for 415V systems instead), when the neutral wire is disconnected, wrong voltages (anything between 0 and 240V) will appear in sockets which are supposed to be 120V. Wrecking anything plugged in and possibly setting it on fire, as expected when giving 240V to 120V devices. Besides, this can cause some shocks in case the bad neutral takes the earthing system with it to floating at unknnown voltages. Check that the white wire is well secured everywhere

Aluminum wiring was common in the 60s and 70s. Such wiring have its own worth of trouble, due to the properties of connections made with aluminum wire. If some of the system is made with such wire (and not with today's pressure terminals etc which are meant to be used with aluminum wire), use those circuits for light loads and not for anything powerfull. Exposing old aluminum connections to high current, even once, can cause them to start failing, and they will continue to decay later even at low loads (bad connections with copper will burn up too, but they dont have the "start reaction" effect as bad as aluminum do)

Swamp coolers do not work well in areas that have high humidity most of the summer such as the Southeastern US....

Powell: I don't know how swamp coolers are ever manufactured in the US. In Israel, they were marketed/manufactured for a brief time near the end of the 90', but were a commercial failure because they simply didn't worked (Not cooled at all).
Local made portable air conditioners, were also made by Electra, Tornado and Tadiran at that time, but they were also a commercial failure, because unlike the american portable air conditioners, where the evaporator, the condenser and the compressor are in the same unit, and only an air hose for exhusting the air of the fan of the condenser is needed to be drew out from the windows, Tadiran, Tornado and Electra local made protable air conditioners were actually split air conditioners in miniature: The entrie condenser, which was seperated from the evaporator, was needed to be drew out from the window, a thing that detracts from their portability. Both air conditioners had heat pump heating capabilities.
Today, a small amount of american style combined portable air conditioners from the chinese company Family Line, with only cooling capabilities are sold.

@ dor Swamp cooler generally are sold in places to match the climate here in USA in the southwestern
area, and mexico used lot of swamp coolers as well. but in south central texas swamp coolers wont work right half time. becase some times the moister already saturated in the air. but you find swamp coolers in automotive shop where doors remain open to the outside in south central texas.

I have a personal experience with two industrial swamp coolers in the restaurant at "Beit Gabriel" at the Sea of Galilee. Despite their LED display stated that they are working OK and have sufficient water inside, their air temperature wasn't different that of a fan.
And the Sea of Galilee is a hot and dry location in the summer.

Pets INC was given a large swamp cooler.  In the humid south, it worked a little in the warehouse of their thrift store where adoptions were being done while the new buildings were being constructed at their shelter location. It was VERY hot and humid in the warehouse part (steel building) and it helped somewhat, and it had a VERY powerful fan.  You had to keep putting water in it, but we cheated with ICE water ....put lots of crushed ice in the water bin.

I cheated with ice water with some broken split A/C (the compressor was broken). I sprayed ice water into the coil of the indoor unit, effectively running it as swamp cooler. It did make a difference