i blew out a CFL!
 

yup, a "100 watt" CFL i had in my laundry room finally gave out. it was a dual socket fixture, but i only put one bulb in it. but this CFL had quite a track record:

new house: 2 years
old apartment 2: 3 years
old apartment 1: 2 years

i bought a 12 pack of these bulbs about 7 years ago i think, on sale at a Sam's Club. this is the first one to go out. maybe i should start looking at the newer style ones, i keep hearing they give off better light.

Way to keep track of your lights! I don't think in 7 years I'll remember squat.

I do have some old CFLs in the basement. They start up real slow. The new ones I've bought recently are to max brightness in 30 seconds I'd say.

Nice! I should start putting stickers on my bulbs to measure their life. I've not had one go out yet though.

the other 11 still fire up immediately. i do have 1 newer, smaller cfl in a desk lamp, and its a lot "whiter" than the old ones, but both styles work just fine for me :cool:


its funny, at the apartments i would take all the regular bulbs out when i moved in and stash them. when i moved back out, i'd swap them all back in. i'd put the cfl's back in the original box, and move them with me.

i've only got about 3 or 4 regular bulbs in the house now. when they go out, i'll buy another "value pack" of cfl's. luckily, my kitchen already has a 4' fluorescent fixture with 2 tubes. just a couple bathroom lights and another desklight are still reg bulbs.

never kept the reg bulbs in long enough (anywhere i lived) to see what i was saving.

I think the shortest life for CFL is 10000h, so 7 years is around 4h per day. I don't remember about the number of switch-on of CFL.

I saw some 15000h CFL last week but they were twice the price of 10000h.

The only broken CFL I saw by now is one which broke while we moved 2 years ago. I don't remember if I had CFL 7 years ago before our previous move, so this broken CFL had between 3 and 5 years. Our older CFL are where we switch on light less often, or in stock as we are changing the old 2700°K by 6500°K where we switch on light more often.

Denis.

Tony that is awesome! I am of course referring to the fact that you were able to recall how long and where you had the CFLs in use.

I like the sticker idea SVOboy!

thanks!

my job requires a lot of maintenance/repair, so i have gotten used to marking new parts with month/year of install. i just used a very fine-point sharpie.

then it just carried over into stuff at home

my mom gave me an extra cfl she had laying around. i guess its the "new" style. it has the same coil shape (looks identical to my old ones), but it gives off a real "white" light that has a bluish tint to it. i put it in my living room. its not as "bright" as the old one and i have mixed feelings on the "color", but i may grow to like it.

that blueish color is what my wife doesn't like about the CFLs. I've got her convinced to using the "natural" looking ones. Now that I have proof (thanks Tony) that they last YEARS, she doesn't have an argument anymore :)

went to sams club and bought an 8-pack of "60 watt" cfl's for $8 and change. decided to step down from "100 watt" bulbs this time around. some of my ceiling fan lights are 60 watt fixtures, and the bigger cfls didn't fit very well in them. oh yeah, they are the "natural" light kind, not the "blue"

i have a 3 bulb ceiling fan set that i'm about to put in my living room, that i got as a hand-me-down (needed new sockets). it has a much bigger fan than the single bulb fan set that was up there. gonna put the "60 watts" in there too. i know more bulbs = more energy, but i only use the overhead light when i need the whole room lit up well. otherwise i have some small endtable lamps.

When I installed my ceiling fans I used three of the fancy 40 watt incandescent type that were shaped like a candle flame in each fixture, I don't think any of them lasted much more than a year. I replaced them all with 13 watt CFL's 7 years ago and haven't replaced one yet. The CFL's were so much brighter I had to rewire the light switch so I could have 1,2,or all 3 bulbs on at once. I have only three regular bulbs left on the property their in the stove, fridge and oven. I even use the CFL's in the garage and my security light's the new ones even come on and work at -25 fahrenheit although it takes a bit longer to get to full brightness.

Welcome to the site poorman.

Do you have any links or info on the CFLs that fire at -25? I haven't done my outside lights in those yet because of extreme temps.

I just buy them at Menard's and they all seem to work great. I have 3 different kinds of security lights and a couple different CFLs. I'll try to get some more info on exactly what brand they are. It was 25 below here in Brainerd Mn. last week and my sec. lights all were working and when I turned on the lights in the garage and shed the lights came right on with no flickering though it took 5 or 10 minutes to get to full brightness. These newer bulbs just keep getting better every day and less expensive. I only by the cheap ones and then only on sale.

I have been using regular cfl flood lights outside for a little over 4 years now. We don't get -25 cold around here, -10 C is about the worst it's gotten over those years. I'd guess maybe 2 out of 8 bulbs are the original ones I installed. Their lives seem to be much shorter when placed in a harsher environment. Inside I think I've lost 2 bulbs in 4 years. They are lasting way longer then the old bulbs but I'm doubting that I'll get 10000 hours out of them.

mine appear to last between 2 and 3 years. My issue is crappy power. We get between 99 and 140 volts in to our pannel depending on external conditions. Anything with a power supply in it last about 1/2 as long as everybody else.

i've been wanting to try those cfl flood lights. i have a motion sensor light in my backyard, with 2 floodlights (one lights up the side of the house, the other, the door to my storage shed 150' away). i wonder if a cfl floodlight would be comparable in brightness, and survive the on/off of a motion light

You should complain to your electric company about this. That is ridiculous.

I do complain. About once per month.

I got a lower power rate for it; I'd rather good power than cheap power but . . . .

Out of a typical month my pool timer looses 24 hours (so I only have 97% Uptime)

I had about a 25% failure rate when I bought like 25 back in 5/2003. The real cheap sylvania ones, as I recall, failed the fastest, some within 6 months.
Most of the GE/Westinghouse ones I got then are still in use, and I've had a few of them burn out in the past 2 years.. at least they lived up to their 5 (or was it 7?) year promise.
I have one bulb now in our living room (CFLs there are on 5+ hours each night) that occasionally turns on in a 2-bulb fixture. Like once a week we're just sitting there and it's like a supernova in our living room! ;)

I'm sure they could do it, but I still doubt their value over incandescents. A 20 second warm up when it's warm outside, a 60 sec warmup when it's cold... on/off cycles... There are some places I don't think CFLs are well suited.

I'm a science teacher and advocate E savings whenever I can - my students all call me the "hippie teacher" but I strongly advocate against replacing incandescants in fixtures used less than 45 minutes a day, and in fixtures not being on for more than 5 minutes at a time. First, it's never going to pay itself off, and second, it's wasteful to put a CFL with more electronics, metals, etc. in a place where it'll likely die faster.

I put some CFLs in at my parents' house. A month later, an electrician doing some work there recommended to put in motion sensors on the light switches and leave them on 'auto' to "save them money". I'm doubtful of the savings - the on/off cycles killed every one of my CFLs - I was MAD.

Oh, and I think the CFL floods are mainly being marketed for recessed can lights for interior locations.

we have similarly bad electrical supply issues at my house (in Costa Rica)... I've got dozens of 55w halogen lamps with m16 bases and each one has its very own transformer. I'm in the process of replacing them w/ 120v lights (instead of 12v), and removing the transformers.... hoping that eventually an inexpensive 120v LED bulb will be available. Dimmable would be the puppies privates...

I use the GE units...no problems yet.

you could just write the date on the plastic with a fine tip marker.

I started the conversion to CFL when they first started to come out... I bought a phillips CFL for $28 back when they first came out (1999/2000 ish?). Longest lasting bulb I have owned to date, ran 24-7 in a hallway fixture for about 4-5 years till it started to "flicker" and was retired to the washroom, finally gave up about a year or so ago. I made the "full" conversion to CFL about 3-4 years ago. All the rest of my bulbs are the "4-pack for $8 at your local home improvement store" CFLs.... I've burned up 3 or 4 of them over the last few years.

What I have learned:
cheap CFLs don't last long
cheap CFL + 24-7 = fast death
cheap CFL + 24-7 + verticle (pointing up) fixture = faster death
cheap CFL + heat (or lack of air flow?) = fastest death.

What I discovered is that using the cheap CFL inside a fixture with a globe kills a CFL in a few months. I on a hunch, did an experiment... after killing 3 cheap CFLs in my hallway fixture (has a globe), instead of completely installing the globe (yes I know I can omit the globe, I chose "fashion" over "form"), I screwed the globe fixing screws in and instead of securing the globe the globe now "sits" on the screws.... its been two years and the CFL hasn't popped yet.