Mine seem to last a longer than incandescent but I've never
kept logs. The light isn't as good as incandescent so I
use a combination in the lamp that I use the most. I would
like to use the flurescent in the ceiling lights but all
warnings say not to use them if recessed.
I have noticed that turning them on sometimes creates a burst of
EMF which causes a loud static if I have the radio on. I do
not know if this is going through the house wiring or the air.
Another odd behavior of the flourescent is the reaction of
my radio's display to it. The radio display brightens or
dims depending on whether it thinks it's daytime.
Incandescent causes the display to brighten; fluerescent does
not.
Mobil ? phones !
The local Big Lots had a sale once: 4-pack of 25W (roughly equivalent
to 100W incandescent) compact fluorescents for $2. I bought about 10
packages (40 bulbs).
They're white lights, too - not the yellow ones that you commonly find.
Only other brand I know of that gives white light is Sylvania (hard to
find - from Lowe's) - and we've tried a bunch.
Not sure if there's a Big Lots in your area, but it's worth a shot.
You're being ridiculous. I think a sea-change may be in progress btw.
I didn't like the yellowish tint of a pack I bought. Then I noticed at
the
store that that particular brand comes in 3 different color
temperatures
(and they had a live side-by-side display so you could evaluate them).
I don't remember the brand, but if anyone cares I can look it up.
And not all "75W" CFLs have the same lumen rating.
I've gotten excellent service from most brands of CFL, which I've
relied on nearly exclusively for the past many (8-9?) years. Mine are
mostly ceiling-mounted, down-facing, without enclosures (thus avoiding
early death by self-heating).
Some brands, frequently cycled, failed very prematurely. Others have
lasted me years and years of daily use even in the bathroom, where the
light's constantly going on and off.
For me, the bulbs are flat out cheaper to buy, even costing 5x,
because they outlast incandescents by a greater factor. On top of
that, using, for example, a 13W CFL in place of a 75W incandescent
saves roughly 62W x 5,000 hours = 310KWh of electricity over the life
of the bulb, which would've cost me 310KWh x 12.8 cents, or about $40.
CFLs are much cheaper to operate.
On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:51:52 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
<trimmed complaint about unreliable CCFL lights>
In 1992 there was an announcement or two about something called the "E
bulb" It was supposed to be an RF excited fluorescent lamp - ala
Tesla style. The idea was to have the electronics in the base with a
glass covered coil extending into the bulb envelope. No electrodes to
wear no filaments to burn out.
Searching on "RF lightbulb" yielded a (very) few hits on it.
Don said:Various color compact fluorescents are available from online sellers
such as bulbs.com.
Also, Home Depot recently started selling N:Vision brand ones that come
in 3 different colors in most wattages:
"Soft White" - the usual 2700K.
"Bright White" - 3500K, a "whiter shade of warm white". That is my
favorite.
"Daylight" - which for these is 5500K, very slightly bluish to sometimes
appearing pure white, not as bluish as 6500K.
- Don Klipstein ([email protected])
In <[email protected]>, CoreyWhite says:
"Last longer and use less energy" v. "cost more". This is what's
called a "trade-off".
They're doing a damn poor job. Not only can I buy them at Home Depot,
Target, Menard's, and my local grocery store, but my parents and
grandparents were able to do so as well.
Okay, so they're not keeping them off the market then. Glad to have
you confirm that.
It sounds as if they're worth more if they'll last longer. (It seems
to me that I've heard that there is a light bulb, made by Edison, that
has been continuously burning since he made it. I can't find a citation
for it, though.)
Americans ! They probably use cellphones while refuelling too.
Graham
Is this a recessed ceiling fixture?
Those build up heat and are hard on compact fluorescents.
For that matter, some compact fluorescents brag
about being specifically rated to use in recessed ceiling fixtures. Such
includes the 15, 20 and non-dimmable 23 watt ones of Philips SLS series.
Philips did say that the 25 and the dimmable 23 are not rated for use in
recessed ceiling fixtures.
I can say where and when compact fluorescents appear to me prone to
short life:
Thanks.
1) When on-time is short. As I hear it, "standard conditions" for life
expectancy include 3 hours per start. So I expect a fair chance of short
life expectancy compared to incandescents in motion sensor lights,
closets, restrooms used mainly for short trips, and refrigerators.
2) Higher wattage CFL in small enclosed fixture, due to heat buildup.
3) If the CFL is a problem-prone one, such as (according to my
experience) 25 watt spirals of GE and LOA brands made around 2001, LOA
45 watt ones, and LOA "Q-Lites" from the early 1990's. Also I have seen
"dollar store" ones have a significant rate of spectacular infant
mortality, as well as never achieving claimed light output (sometimes
low by a factor of 3) and sometimes not achieving stated color.
4) I hear of a few complaints of the Commercial Electric 42 watt spiral
dying young when operated base-up. I suspect the problem here is heat.
Rich Grise wrote: said:Nah - gasoline doesn't ignite by cigarette - not even the vapor. I
saw some guy who was working on a gas tank; he had taken it out of
the car, and dumped all the gasoline into a 5 gal. bucket (it was
only about an inch or so deep.) He was smoking. I asked, "Is it true that
a cigarette won't light gas?" and he kind of sneered at me, and flicked
his stub into the bucket of gasoline. It went "Fsst!" and went out.
I didn't find out if he poured that quart or so of gasoline (with the
butt in it) back into the tank. ;-)
Don said:On the other hand, diesel's vapors do not reach a flammable
concentration in ordinary situations - toss a burning match into a bucket
of diesel and it will go out. (Then again, I prefer to not bet my life
or lack of a hospital visit that the forces of Murphy's Law won't find a
way to make something go wrong.)
Yes, it is. Those 1970's style swivel things with a brass finish. I
use a very long rod to reach up that high, with a suction cup on the
end of the extention that is moistened to grip.
At <20 watts, though? These are 65-watt-equivalent-lumen types, with
the standard shaped bulb outside for gripping correctly.
The coiled glass envelope, phosphor-rare-earth coated, is in the interior
of that outer glass, flatish surfaced bulb that fits my grip. The
incandescents were 65 watts apiece and must have generated a lot more
heat up there in years gone by (and in my comparison incandescent that
I placed there.)
I'll look more closely. This switch I'm using here is a dimmer type,
too. This could be another confounding issue, in my case.
We keep the livingroom lights on, usually with the dimmer set to full
(I don't often dim), for more than 3 hours a day. And usually, most
of it in one sitting (evening.)
These are as described above.
Getting these bulbs from Costco and they are branded as described in
an earlier post.
Could be, but I've cracked two from the living room ceiling lights and
looked at the electronics and used my nose. They seem unburned. But
I could do a better post-mortem than I have. Have to wait another
cycle, though.
I have other situations around the house with a single switch (no
dimmers) and several fixtures, where I can add to the testing process.
Some are one end up, some the opposite. I'll start keeping logs.
What first got me onto this whole thing was that I bought this place
and moved in, early 2002. When we took over, there were two
incandescents in the livingroom ceiling. I replaced it with a new
CFL, fresh bought because I had to look for those funny ones that I
could mount at such a height via this pole contraption. Later, that
very CFL went dead on me. The incandescent was still working. And it
was the one the prior owners had placed there. So I replaced it,
again. The next CFL burned out, too, before the incandescent finally
went. With two CFLs dead in the same socket, an incandescent still
running for some time yet, I began to have my very first questions
about it. (This period of time was, perhaps, a calendar period of two
years.)
Since then, I've found this experience in a few other places around
the house, as well. Not as clear, to me. But definitely where I have
replaced a CFL a 2nd time (meaning that I am _positive_ that the
incandescent nearby is lasting longer) before having to replace the
incandescent. Some of these are older incandescents (from the earlier
owner, some are ones I've had in boxes and used recently.) I don't
think I've purchased _any_ incandescents since moving here, so all of
them are made prior to 2002.
That was my motivation and my experience leading me to begin, for the
first time, to wonder about whether or not these things actually do
last as long as they say or if perhaps the incandescents last a lot
longer than they say.
Thinking backwards on this, I have to say that
the CFLs I've had 'go bad' on me must have failed to meet their hours,
rather than the incandescents lasting so much longer than rated.
The CFLs are, looking at the packaging, rated for 8,000 hours. So that's
almost a full year of _ON_ time. And I _know_ for certain that they
failed in less operational hours than that.
The incandescent in the living room lasted perhaps two years of use after
we moved it and I don't know how long, before that. That _may_ be just
about its rated life, given our use. Or perhaps a little better, though
I'm guessing. But it is way below the CFL's rating.
It is turning out, I think, that perhaps CFLs are more limited in the
areas they can be effectively used, as rated. If you are saying that
some are rated for my ceiling use, and some aren't, this is something
I've never needed to worry about before regarding incandescents -- so
this is new information to me. And it complicates the buying process
for CFLs, while not complicating it for incandescents.
Interesting, though.
Thanks,
Jon
The Ladbroke Grove rail crash showed how diesel burns very well if the
impact is so serious that an aerosol mist results.
Graham
What's an Ott?Please use the correct acronym - we have been talking about CFLs,
compact fluorescent lamps.
CCFL is cold cathode fluorescent lamp, which the usual household use
compacts are not. (One exception - N:Vision's 3-watt candelabra base does
appear to me to be cold cathode. BTW, the nominally 4-watt candelabra
base ones are hot cathode.)
Reread the comment that got me wondering. The implication was
that the phone was used as a dildo. So...either the female
knows when the male is calling and never answers to use it
or ...??? IOW, how does the male know that the female is
using the vibration and keeps ringing long enough until
climax? hmmm...I suppose those cameras are getting used already..
They could be in the same room at the time...
What Gore actually said was that he "took the initiative in creating the
internet".
I say not as bad as an exaggeration as that of his opponents, since he
was the main force in the Senate for expanding it from the Aarpanet back
in the days when it was often called the "Information Superhighway".
