Living under the guidance of Proverbs 3:6
May 28, 2009 Leave a comment
What a neat experience! I just returned from a trip to our new house with Pastor Dave Bruns. He very kindly fulfilled my request to offer a prayer of dedication for our new house. I gave him a quick tour, and then he briefly read out of Exodous 3, explaining that like the ground around the burning bush, the house has been claimed as Holy ground.
It was a quick, simple meeting and prayer … and it really meant a lot to me!
May 6, 2009 6 Comments
I have posted before on my excitement about the Cree LR6 LED light. After lots of research I became about 98% convinced that it was the right choice for beautiful energy efficient light. But I held back on the remaining 2% of excitement until I could actually see it in action in our house.
I’m happy to report I have now experienced it firsthand, and the remaining 2% of excitement that was “up for grabs” is now fulfilled. This truly is a beautiful light and should be a no-brainer for anyone building a new home (as we are) and a near-no-brainer for anyone with the intention of staying in their existing home for 3+ years. (The lights are an easy retrofit in most cases.)
The light truly is beautiful. Forget about the preconceptions you might have about the sterile LED flashlight quality. The light from the LR6 is warm and room-filling. Our electrician and builder were both very impressed. The one thing that caught their attention was the fact that when the lights were fully dimmed they appeared properly dimmed where it mattered, but when you looked at the light source itself it still seemed bright. That’s no big deal … just something different.
Aesthetic beauty is one thing, and certainly very important. But the beautiful part for me is the energy saving! We have 44 recessed lights in our new house, I was able to get a quantity discount (and free shipping) from wamhomecenter.com to bring the unit price down to about $80 each. Each bulb takes just 12 watts of energy (vs. the 65+ watts required for conventional recessed lights) and will last 15+ years. Putting all the math together at the current electric rates, assuming 8 hours of usage each day (my wife stays at home and I can’t trust the kids to turn off the lights!), the total cost of purchase and usage after three years is $4,079 for conventional recessed lights, and $3,867 for the Cree lights. That’s when we break even. Project that out to eight years and the conventional lights (keep in mind we’ve been replacing bulbs all the time!) come in at $7,761 versus the Cree lights at $4,445.
Now that is a beautiful light!
