We just bought a lavalamp. An oldschool-looking one, like at the op's picture.It's a great investment.
As one of the main points, you have a measurable answer on a question "is this movie interesting?": the lamp stands near the tv, so if you fing yourself watching the lamp, not the movie, tou know the answer.
The ultimate "better than Twilight" indicator!
If those are regular old school incandescent bulbs connected to six lava lamps, and that light fixture is connected to a dimmer switch you may want to rethink that. You may want to check what the wattage for your dimmer is and if you don't know I would recommend staying at or below 300 Watts total (more as a personal rule of thumb).
Could certainly be different here because chandelier, but my full size lava lamp uses a little 25w appliance bulb, so six of them shouldn't be more than 150w total.
Wait, seriously? I figured they used a much more power hungry bulb! I've wanted to get one for a while but I'm always so concerned about energy efficiency I've held off buying one because I figured it was like 150W
Old style ones where just a standard light bulb, not sure how the modern ones work. So no more than a regular light fixture, just less light output for the wattage.
Lava lamps function by heating the wax/goop in the glass bottle to the point where it becomes liquid. So you can either use an old style light source that generates that heat (thats how they still work afaik) or you use an LED + a separate heat source.
So total energy usage could only be reduced in the LED version by more efficiently transferring heat directly to the glass. The light bulb doesnt have direct contact so there is a layer of insulating air in between which means lots of heat goes to the room instead of the glass.
A third idea would be a different wax/goop that is just always liquid, but that doesnt work well because the movement of the bubbles comes from the wax getting heated at the bottom, which makes it rise to the top where it cools down and then drops down again.
They're 25W each, so at 150W and ~20¢/kWh in my area, you're talking maybe 35¢ per day if it's on 12hrs a day. Not insane, and probably not running it nearly that often/long.
me too but it looks like a never ending horror. will the bottles fall when you have a party and that one drunk fuck thinks its cool to shake it a little or will it just ruin the oil/wax mix? will i sell my first born to pay for the power bill? does this pollock-esk mix of colors do the idea of a lava lamp justice? and so on...
Lava lamps aren't significantly more expensive to operate than a standard bulb. Depending on the size of the lamp; 25w to 100w bulbs are used. Normally halogen or some other hot running bulb.
From experience, shaking the bottle when hot will make the wax bits smaller (can burn hands), but they will reconstitute over time. Shaking while cold is the same but you don't get as many pieces and you don't burn your hands.