"Compact fluorescent lamps, which will gradually replace traditional incandescent bulbs, are a fire hazard that could burn down your home, experts have warned... when a CFL can no longer produce light, the electronics in its base will still try to function, sometimes leading to overheating, smoke and fire."
CFLs can catch fire. Murder, death, kill. Your dog, too.
Dec 27, 2011
7 Replies
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Rule 1. Anything electrical can catch fire (and will at some point). Rule 2. Anything hot (like the surface of a light bulb) can start fires (and will at some point).
CFLs have a long way to go to catch up with the number of fires started by incandescent bulbs including the super-hot linear halogen lamps that used to be used in torchieres.
Read about this doozy of a fire caused by a halogen lamp -- and which resulted in the UL requirement that all torchiers using halogen lamps were required to have guards over the lamp and that existing torchiers had to be retrofitted.
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See the CU/UL report on the CFL safety subject: http://174.129.132.250/safety/2010/04/cfl-safety-ul-report.html Tomsic
On 12/27/2011 8:59 AM, . wrote: ...
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Neither of those assertions (nor their corollaries are true.
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. wrote the following:
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Still used, in my case anyway, and the bulbs are still available for sale. I have two of the 6' tall jobs bought years ago. One with a variable brightness control knob and the other a 3 stepped brightness knob. Neither came with a screen over the top and I'll admit, I didn't know about the retrofitting. These are very rarely used and are nowhere near any material that could catch fire due to the bulb.
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Ok, so who sells a tin can to cover the base with?
Halogens are inherently more fire-prone due to their extremely high operating temperature which is transferred to the glass envelope. Anything touching the envelope is almost guaranteed to catch fire or at least smoulder. That is not true of any CFL that I have ever seen.
Halogens are inherently more fire-prone due to their extremely high operating temperature which is transferred to the glass envelope. Anything touching the envelope is almost guaranteed to catch fire or at least smoulder. That is not true of any CFL that I have ever seen.
A halogen filament tube enclosed in an outer glass bulb such as the halogen replacements for the standard 100 watt bulbs actually operate cooler than the standard 100 watt bulbs. I was interested in the subject and so asked the manufacturers for bulb temperature profiles.
It makes sense because, for the same size bulb, the halogen only draws 72 watts instead of the 100 watts drawn by the standard bulb. That results in less heat overall and a lowr bulb temperatue.
However, any standard incandescent bulb is going to be more likely to start a fire due to the temperature of the bulb compared to a CFL.
Tomsic
Ive replaced several that had evidence of jets of flame shooting out of them.
Jimmie
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