The bulbs are good for the earth -- but look at all that packaging going to the landfill! My bathroom fan broke about a week and a half ago. It was making some funny noises, then one morning I went to flip the switch before hopping in the shower and nothing. Light fine, fan broken. There's not a separate circuit breaker for the fan. The previous owners of my house left the manual for just about everything -- including the screen door -- so I referred to it in hopes of finding a Trouble Shooting section. No such luck, but I did see how it was put together and that the fan was separate. Last week I went to Lowes and stared at the wall of bathroom light/fan combos for a while. They range from $75-200. Am I better off hiring a handyman to diagnose the problem and perhaps replace just a part? Or am I better off just buying a whole new light/fan and replacing it myself? Probably the latter in terms of cost, but not in terms of conservation. Today I got a wild hair and decided to take the fan apart myself and just see if I could 1) find a replacement motor, 2) replace it, and 3) have that actually be the problem. I went back to Lowes. Side note, I've boycotted Home Depot ever since a sales guy said, "why don't you just have your man do it?" when I was in the middle of replacing the bathroom faucet and realized I needed longer supply lines. Not the thing to say, especially when I'm clearly in the middle of a project and having to make another trip to the hardware store. He got an earful. Anyway, Lowes had one bathroom fan motor in stock, and it was exactly the one I needed. I installed it, and as luck would have it, that was indeed the problem. I only spent $14.97 and now I have a fully functional (and quieter) fan!
While I had the step ladder out, I thought about the rest of the light fixtures in my house. They were about 1/3 compact fluorescent lightbulbs, but the other 2/3 were not. Isn't that one of the most basic things someone looking to go lean and green would do? CFLs not only use 75% less energy -- around the tune of saving $32 over the life of each bulb -- but they also last a lot longer at an average of 10 years. Less bulbs in the landfills, less of me on a stepladder changing bulbs, less energy use, and less money in the long run. A win-win-win-win. Granted, the upfront cost is more than a conventional bulb. Replacing seven regular bulbs and three ceiling fan bulbs cost $38.87. I went with the fancy, non-coiled kind which are about $1 more each. And, while I was at it, I went ahead and replaced the filter on my furnace. Now my house is humming with energy efficiency.
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