light bulbs

[LCHIEN]

Today I'm frustrated at light bulbs.
One burned out in the closet, a 60W incandescant.
I replaced it from a new box of Sylvania halogens supposed to be 60W equiv light from 43 watts.
First one lit and blew when i turned on the power. Second one was DOA THird one was DOA. Fourth one worked. Made me question my sanity for a while. Bought this some months back so I don't think I can return it - don't remember where or have a receipt altho its probably Lowes. Sad to say too, I've got a box of 4 100W and a box of 4 40W bought the same time I haven't opened yet.

I've had trouble with SYlvanias before.
I have 65W 4" floods (BR40s) in about 13 recessed canister lights in the kitchen and den area. I seem to be replacing a lot of them so I started keeping records a year or two back. I was using a bunch of GEs and they were lasting about 50% of the average life claimed on the box. Then the store started carrying Sylvanias and I started getting about 33% of rated life. SO the SYlvanias are a lot worse than the GE which are way short of claimed life. At almost $6 a bulb this is a pain. THere are some CFL replacements for these but they are expensive and my wife absolutely hates the color.

Since 10/8/2009 I've gone thru 20 bulbs.

[AAJIII]

bulbs

When something like this happens I get on the phone to the manufactures customer service to let them know about the money I wasted on their product.
Most of the time I get lip service, but once in a while they respond with replacements.

I now put the date on the bulbs that I replace to track just how long they do last.

Al

[gerti]

Replace the switch with a good dimmer. Even if you never dim the lights, because of the zero-crossing detection circuitry the filaments have a few milliseconds to heat up and increase resistance. With a regular switch, if the power comes on near the peak of the sine wave combined with the low cold resistance, the in rush current is very high and causes the bulbs to burn out prematurely.

Many years ago in the store of my parents bakery I replaced switches with dimmers. It increased the life of the bulbs by an order of magnitude. Paid for itself in a hurry, because the bulbs (having a specific light temperature to make the food look appetizing) were quite expensive.

[cabinetman]

Maybe it's planned obsolescence. Technology may have gone downhill when there are light bulbs like this one that have been in use for 110 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light

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[LCHIEN]

they make those 100-year light bubs by running them at lower voltage and, of course, much lower output. Light falls off faster than power goes down.

So called extended life bulbs are really 130 volt bulbs run at 120V. Then will last twice as long but put out about 2/3 of the light. As bulbs cost you the most in electricity used, the lower output raises your costs significantly if you need to run a higher wattage bulb to make up for the light fall off. In the end, extended life bulbs are only practical if you can't easily change the bulb, like its in an inaccessible place. or you have to pay a handyman $50 to come out and change it for you. Otherwise its not worth the loss of light output.

[woodturner]

I replaced it from a new box of Sylvania halogens supposed to be 60W equiv light from 43 watts.
First one lit and blew when i turned on the power. Second one was DOA THird one was DOA.

You aren't touching the bulbs, are you? Touching halogen bulbs can cause them to fail, due to the oil on the skin. Headlight bulbs for cars are notorious for this, but I don't know if household halogens have the same issue.

[cabinetman]

The "don't touch" theory has been bandied around, and some manufacturers print the warning on the packaging. There's been many forum discussions and some of the theories brought up:

1: Oil causes hot spots causing bulb overheating and messing up gas mixture

2: Oil causes hot spot thermal cycling stress compromising glass envelope integrity

3: Oil causes soft spots / de-vitrification compromising glass envelope integrity

4: Salt in the oil from your skin reflects too much heat back into the bulb" and causes accelerated bulb burnout.

5: The "shadow" of hydrocarbon residue from the burned oil accelerates the natural progression of bulb shadowing and ultimate overheating failure.

I will say that with lighting I use in my products, I take care not to directly touch the bulbs, and if I do, it gets wiped down with alcohol.

My warning is this...DON'T TOUCH THE BULBS WHEN THEY'RE ON BECAUSE YOU'LL BURN THE KRAP OUTTA YOUR FINGERS.

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[wardprobst]

From past posts you seem to have electronic knowledge so have you considered converting to DC? Lighting is one area where DC has an advantage over AC in longevity. There's some power loss at conversion but not much particularly with today's power supply designs.
Just a thought,
DP

[LCHIEN]

You aren't touching the bulbs, are you? Touching halogen bulbs can cause them to fail, due to the oil on the skin. Headlight bulbs for cars are notorious for this, but I don't know if household halogens have the same issue.

I know high intensity halogens for projector lamps shouldn't be touched - something about the oils on the fingers leading to shorter lives. I didn't think about that on these, but 2 DOAs and one that lasted 20 milliseconds would not be failures due to contaminants on the outside of the bulb. I think fingerprints on the bulb failures take much longer.



Handling precautions

Any surface contamination, notably the oil from human fingertips, can damage the quartz envelope when it is heated. Contaminants will create a hot spot on the bulb surface when the bulb is turned on. This extreme, localized heat causes the quartz to change from its vitreous form into a weaker, crystalline form that leaks gas. This weakening may also cause the bulb to rapidly form a bubble, thereby weakening the bulb and leading to its failure or explosion, and creating a safety hazard.[15] Consequently, manufacturers recommend that quartz lamps should be handled without touching the clear quartz, either by using a clean paper towel or carefully holding the porcelain base. If the quartz is contaminated in any way, it must be thoroughly cleaned with alcohol and dried before use.

The wiki article above talks about contamination of the quartz glass envelope which gets very hot. However, the construction of the residential edison base replacements is shown in the photo above (also from wikipedia) and it appears that the requisite quartz glass enclosure is internal to the bulb and there's an external glass housing to give it handlability and form factor similar to household bulbs - hence I think fingerprints on it would not be an issue.

[cabinetman]

I didn't think about that on these, but 2 DOAs and one that lasted 20 milliseconds would not be failures due to contaminants on the outside of the bulb. I think fingerprints on the bulb failures take much longer.

Whether the failure is sooner or later, the lamps aren't cheap.

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[LCHIEN]

Whether the failure is sooner or later, the lamps aren't cheap.

.

$6.49 for four at Lowes. I got them because the light is similar to incandescants but they are more efficient, about halfway to the CFLs. Too bad they ended up costing me $6.49 for one of the four that worked.

I think i can still buy plain old incandescants, 4-pack for $1.20

[mineengineer]

Whats your ac line voltage?

Did you put a meter on that socket and see what ac voltage is there? I know that some places I have lived in the US 110 could be low as 106 or as high as 130. A long time ago when I used to do some electrical work I found a 110 circuit that had 245 volts on it because a neutral wire in a badly maintained/installed breaker box had become loose and miagrated over a few inches and was in contact with opposite leg hot making a unintentional 220 circuit that was 'killing' all the equipment pluged into it. When I lived in places that had higher voltages I used the 130 volters to increase life. It sounds like you just got bad bulbs because 130 volts wouldn't shoot them that fast.....but 220to 250 would.

[LCHIEN]

Did you put a meter on that socket and see what ac voltage is there? I know that some places I have lived in the US 110 could be low as 106 or as high as 130. A long time ago when I used to do some electrical work I found a 110 circuit that had 245 volts on it because a neutral wire in a badly maintained/installed breaker box had become loose and miagrated over a few inches and was in contact with opposite leg hot making a unintentional 220 circuit that was 'killing' all the equipment pluged into it. When I lived in places that had higher voltages I used the 130 volters to increase life. It sounds like you just got bad bulbs because 130 volts wouldn't shoot them that fast.....but 220to 250 would.

Trust me I"m a lifelong electrical engineer. First one blew upon turnon (flash of light), next two of the bulbs were open (checked with my DMM, one after installing and the other before installing), the fourth was OK by DMM first, then installing. If I had 220V the other bulbs on the circuit would have been blown, besides I'm probably the one engineer geek guy in 10,000 who has a 24-hour AC line voltage monitor meter in his study - usually about 116V in my house. I didn't check it last night but all other stuff was normal. And open bulbs before installation are not line voltage issues!

[cabinetman]

A long time ago when I used to do some electrical work I found a 110 circuit that had 245 volts on it because a neutral wire in a badly maintained/installed breaker box had become loose and miagrated over a few inches and was in contact with opposite leg hot making a unintentional 220 circuit that was 'killing' all the equipment pluged into it.

No doubt. Didn't anyone take a hint?

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[leehljp]

THere are some CFL replacements for these but they are expensive and my wife absolutely hates the color.

Since 10/8/2009 I've gone thru 20 bulbs.

CFLs are available in 3 basic colors at the box stores now. LOML now hates the "Warm" light that is more common on incandescents.

We both hate the heat out-put of incandescents in spring, summer and fall that the air conditioner has to fight in cooling down. The CFLs take a minute to come to full light in winter, but at a savings of $500 a year in electricity, we can put up with that.

I thought about halogens back when I changed over to CFLs but the heat output was what swayed me to CFLs.

The heat reduction and $ in spring, summer, & fall was the greatest gain in going to CFLS, but the constant changing of bulbs was what prompted me to change to CFLs. I know that a couple of people here haven't had great luck with CFL bulbs but we certainly have. We replaced about 16 incandescents with CFLS in 2005, and only 4 of those have been since replaced. Even though we were in Japan from summer '06 to December '10, our middle daughter lived here and used the electricity just as we do now.

CFLs are not great in closets where they are only on for a few minutes at a time and take a minute to "come to full light".