In 2006, I received a packet of neighborhood watch information from the Office of Neighborhood Involvement (a division of the City of Portland), which included an interesting report on home burglaries and night-time illumination. Essentially, the report indicated that a nationwide survey of police department records showed that in those cases where a break-in was investigated, officers recorded that of the homes that were burglarized in the night, a vast majority (more than 80 percent) failed to have ‘adequate’ exterior illumination.

As to what defines ‘adequate’, the report didn’t define the measurement precisely. Fortunately, it did indicate that there were several portions of a house’s exterior that were especially vulnerable and how to best identify these areas so you could address them accordingly. This essentially provided the basis for my assumption of what constitutes ‘adequate’ exterior illumination. If the areas listed in the report were well illuminated, then it was ‘adequate’. These areas include:

• doorways (basement exterior and ground-0level)
• daylight basement windows
• full-entry basement windows
• out-buildings (garages, sheds, etc.)
• windows located 48″ or less from a stable surface (ground, bench, etc.)
• any window or door obfuscated by shrubbery

In summary, the report indicated that of those cases reported, more than 80 percent of burglarized homes did not have enough exterior light to ward off would-be criminals. To me, the answer was simple: add more light to the exterior of our home, and by using the list (above), ensure that these specific areas were well-addressed.

The only thing the report didn’t seem to address was what type of lights to use and how to keep from running your electricity consumption into the stratosphere. I certainly considered motion-activated lights to help keep electrical use at a minimum, but the report indicated that motion-activated lights invite would-be burglars to your property. Yes, they do help ward off small-time thieves looking for an easy opportunity, but they’re not as effective as lights that are on from dusk to dawn. The reasoning is this: if your property is well-lit, most small-time thieves won’t even approach your house.

Dusk-to-dawn external illumination is a great idea, but Portland gets pretty darned dark for a good six to seven months a year. At the very least, these exterior lights might run for 12 hours a day –and that adds up to some massive kilowatt hours. That’s where CFLs come into play.

Old Concept + New Shape = Smaller Footprint

Compact florescent lamps (CFLs) take the age-old horizontal ballast florescent light tube concept (so familiar to us from schools, hospitals and public buildings) and squish it into a tiny package that fits into any screw socket designed to accommodate a typical incandescent lamp (i.e., light bulb). Compared to typical incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs use less power and last longer, but have a higher purchase price.

In the United States, a CFL can save more than 30 US dollars in electricity costs over the life of the lamp compared to an incandescent lamp, and save 2,000 times its own weight in greenhouse gases. The average rated life of a CFL is between 8 and 15 times that of incandescent lamps. CFLs typically have a rated lifespan of between 6,000 and 15,000 hours, whereas incandescent lamps are usually manufactured to have a lifespan of 750 to 1,000 hours.

Like all fluorescent lamps, CFLs contain mercury, which complicates their disposal. In Portland, you can dispose of CFLs at any Metro station, A-Boy (there may be a fee for disposal at A-Boy), or IKEA.

CFLs seem on the surface to be perfectly suited to the job of long-term, exterior illumination because they provide their greatest savings in situations where lights are on for extended periods. Conversely, if you add a CFL to a space where the light is turned on and off often, but never really stays on long, the ballast portion of the lamp will wear down faster and you won’t see the savings in the long run because the lamp never sees a significant amount of use to begin with. CFLs are designed to save energy when light is needed for long periods.

Unfortunately, before I could deploy a series of CFLs to the exterior of my home, I needed to address two factors that make a big difference in how CFLs are used:

1. Once I add new fixtures and CFLs to the exterior of my house, who is going to turn on the lights, and when? And what happens when I’m not home?
2. CFLs typically are a cold, bright white –but my porch lights are a warm amber color. How do I maintain the warm color of incandescent bulbs?

Perfect Technology – with Caveats

In late 2006, we finished installing new light fixtures to the entire perimeter of our house. In total, we have six exterior light fixtures with seven total lamps. The combination of these six fixtures was burning 495 watts every hour with standard incandescent lamps, and with the high level of use, the light bulbs were burning out faster than anticipated.

While I definitely wanted to make a big reduction in the total wattage required for the exterior lights, I also wanted to have programmable control over when the lights turned on. This was especially important because the two fixtures on the side and rear of my house were simply wired directly into the electrical system, without switches. I literally had to screw the lamps in to turn them on, and un-screw the lamps to turn them off –each and every day.

To deal with the issue of high electrical consumption, I first added two CFLs to the back and side of our house, respectively, and then to the three fixtures on the garage, which sits approximately 30 feet back from the rear of our house. I also elected to add two lower wattage CFLs to my porch fixture. I now have CFLs in use on the entire exterior of our house –five 75 watt output (23 watt usage) and two 60 watt output (19 watt usage). By switching all these lamps to new CFLs, we reduced the total wattage use to 153 watts per hour –a significant drop from 495 watts. Additionally, the lamps are lasting more than 10 times as long while simply demanding less electricity and thereby making a much smaller environmental impact.

While this certainly made a big dent in our electrical reduction, I still needed a reliable, simple means to control the lights. The solution seemed simple: add timers to the fixtures that have switches; add light-detecting sensors to the lights that were direct-wired to the house. Unfortunately, what seemed a simple solution wasn’t quite so easy.

You can definitely swap-in a mechanical or basic electronic timer for a typical light switch and thereby control the on and off schedule for your light fixtures. But before you run off to the hardware store, please be aware that the majority of timers operate by keeping a constant electrical current running through the timer –and subsequently the lamp. While this is fine for typical incandescent light bulbs, it doesn’t work for CFLs. The ballast in a CFL can’t handle the constant electrical current and will quickly burn out. Subsequently, when selecting a timer for CFL use, look specifically for a timer that states that it is designed for (or safe for) use with ballast-based fixtures or CFLs –these are typically digital timers and usually have more features.

For our home, we selected the Intermatic Digital In-Wall Timer ST01C (< $30), which is safe for CFLs and LED lamps. But the best feature of the Intermatic switch isn’t its CFL compatibility, it’s the timer’s unique astronomic feature, which automatically changes sunrise and sunset times by taking in adjustments via satellite. It never needs resetting as the seasons change –you simply wire it up, set the timer and let the astronomic feature calibrate the on and off times.

Once I had the two switch-controlled fixtures properly set with the super-cool Intermatic timers, I then set out to add commercial-grade CFL-safe photo light sensors for the direct-wired fixtures on the side and back of our house. As with the timers, you must ensure that the sensor is CFL or ballast-compatible. If it’s not, it will burn out your lamps very quickly. Converting the hard-wired fixtures to sensor control required a bit more work than installing new timers. For the two fixtures that were going to use the sensors, I had to drill a large hole in a portion of the fixture that didn’t directly face the light-source (you don’t want the lamp’s light to activate the sensor, thereby turning the lamp off); I then installed the sensor so it nested nicely inside the fixture. Once the sensors were wired inline with the electrical connections, I re-installed the fixtures.

I was able to accomplish the conversion of my exterior security lights to CFLs without issue, thereby enabling all six exterior fixtures to not only use dramatically less electricity for the same light output, but also to function without any human interaction, ensuring a constant blanket of night-time security.

OK, But What About that ‘Clinical Glow’?

Prior to purchasing the CFLs for the exterior of my home, I decided to perform more research. I had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that most CFLs I’d encountered gave off a cold, white light. Yes, the light output was great, but the color was very cool, which rendered interior paint colors in a very odd way. Everything just seemed to give off a colder, greener hue when viewed under the light of white CFLs. That is, except for the CFLs that I received from the State of Oregon’s State Home Oil Weatherization (SHOW) program, which distributes CFLs to homeowners who use oil or bio-fuel furnaces. Interestingly enough, the SHOW CFLs gave off a warm amber color. With this conundrum driving me, I set out to learn more about CFLs and color rendering.

The light produced by CFLs is emitted by a mix of phosphors coated on the inside of the tube, which each emit one color. Every extra phosphor added to the coating mix causes a loss of efficiency. Quality consumer-grade CFLs use three or four phosphors to achieve a ‘white’ colored light. The color of a bulb’s light is measured by the temperature of the color, which is indicated in kelvins (K). The CFLs provided to me by Oregon’s SHOW program came from the AM Conservation Group, which offers a series of high-quality CFLs. They generate a warm, amber color and start-up relatively quick. These lamps arrived in detailed packaging, which clearly stated that the lamps’ color temperature was 2700 K. Common sense indicated that 2700 K translated into a nice warm-colored light.

Listed here are the color temperatures that correspond with the typical color names printed on CFL packaging:

• ‘Warm white’ or ‘Soft white’: ≤ 3000 K
• ‘White’ or ‘Bright White’: 3500 K
• ‘Cool white’: 4000 K
• ‘Daylight’: ≥ 5000 K

Color temperature is a quantitative measure. The higher the number in kelvins, the ‘cooler’, i.e., bluer, the shade. Unfortunately, color names associated with a particular color temperature are not standardized for modern CFLs like they were for the older-style fluorescent lamps; the samples above are the most typical labels used, but are by no means standard –variations and inconsistencies exist among manufacturers. Because of this inconsistency, it’s important that you look at the kelvin rating before purchasing a CFL  –color temperatures don’t lie. Some manufacturers don’t include the kelvin value on the package, but this is beginning to change now that the Energy Star criteria for CFLs is requiring that labels include kelvin ratings. Whatever the case, if you like warm, amber-colored light, make sure your CFLs have a kelvin rating of 2700 K.

For the exterior of our home, I chose the spiral-type N:Vision CFLs, which are carried by Home Depot. I do not recommend the N:Vision round bulb-style CFLs (they look like incandescent light bulbs) as their color rendering is not as accurate as the spiral-body CFLs. I’ve used the N:Vision lamps for years now and they perform as expected –and they’re reasonably priced. What’s more, you can order the lamps online, or simply pick them up at most any Home Depot.

N:Vision spiral CFL

N:Vision does a great job of coloring their packages in one of three colors (green, red or blue) to indicate the lamps’ color temperature. If you seek to reproduce the warm amber glow of incandescent light bulbs, make sure to select the green (‘soft white’) packaged N:Vision lamps. We currently also use seven soft white CFLs in our kitchen, as well as nine in our finished basement family room. In both instances (kitchen and family room), we installed the CFLs in recessed canister lights and they work perfectly, producing the same quantity of light as the flood lights they replaced, with a fraction of the electrical consumption. Learn more about N:Vision’s color guide on their website.

Are CFLs a solid investment when greater exterior illumination is your goal? If you care about reducing your electrical consumption and improving your home’s security, then yes. And now that CFLs are easier to identify by their color temperature, they’re even more attractive for people who care about the color of the light and how it renders the color of objects around it. What’s more, now that CFL-friendly timers and light-sensors are available, it’s easier than ever to add hands-free lighting to the exterior of your home, thereby increasing your night-time security while consuming very little electricity. A safer home doesn’t have to dramatically increase your carbon footprint, or leave you wondering if you’ll be left in the dark.