Bulb Life ?

[Bob]

Hi,

For the last few weeks, our overhead kitchen light seems to be eating bulbs. Fixture is the normal typical overhead type with a globe. Uses two 60 W incandescent bulbs.

A bulb, in either socket, seems to last about a week and a half only.

On nearly all the time, but, still, they are rated for 1,000 hours according to the package. Bulbs are either GE or Sylvania.

Can't think of any mechanism that would cause them to burn out early.

Are they being made in China these days, or quality control has taken a nose dive, or... ?

Any thoughts on ?

thanks, Bob

[Frank]

Have seen some cheap bulbs of late, maybe Chinese manufacture.

In my kitchen, I swapped out the 60 watt bulbs for 75 watt equivalent cfl's and get more light at less cost - they use about 20 watts each.

[hrhofmann]

Do you have a volrmeter????

[Jon Danniken]

Check your line voltage, maybe you've got a hot pole tranny in your neighborhood.

As to manufacturing location, I'm still working on my last few boxes of "Proudly made in St. Mary's, Pennsylvania" Sylvanias, but I think the current Syl's are made in Mexico, and GE is, of course, made in China.

Jon

[Tegger]

Bob wrote in news:j8hjhc$nli$ [e-mail]:

Vibration is a /big/ killer. The filament shakes with the vibration and fails very quickly.

Check for something being loose. And that includes the fixture's box inside the ceiling. Is there suddenly a lot of foot-traffic in the room above?

The fixture, its mounting box, the sockets within the fixture, and the bulbs in the sockets, must all be secure and tight.

Incandescents kept free of vibration last for very many years. We have a few that date from before we bought the house 17 years ago.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, If all of sudden this thing began to happens, socket is worn(loose) or connection is loose. And commercial grade long life bulbs(rated at higher voltage) is preferred spcially when it is hard to reach and replace.

[Dimitrios Paskoudniakis]

One possibility is compression of the contact at the base of the socket due to overtightening a previous bulb, leaving a small gap at the contact with the base of the bulb, causing arcing of current which blows the filament.

If this is the issue, turn off power to the socket and carefully (using tweezers or similar) lift the contact tab in the base of the socket to restore its proper contact position. Obviously you don't want to snap the contact.

I had this issue with one socket. Instead of doing this, I replaced the incandescent bulb with a CFL, and it has never failed since.

[Twayne]

Any vibrations will do that. If you try CFLs, get the extra-white ones and one wattage up from what you want to replace. They're famous for not beng as bright as incandescants, regardless of what the package says and in my experience. They have however fixed their "cold-air" brightness starting problems. It's still there, but not very noticeable. Personally I like the install & forget them feature - they do last a lot longer but still not what the packages claim. It's a world full of lies out there. Cavaet emptor.

HTH,

Twayne`

[Higgs Boson]

m,

's a world full of lies out there. Cavaet emptor.

**But if they stay on over 4 hours, call your electrician.

HB