Incandescent bulbs are used in self cleaning ovens which get up to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit or 500 degrees Celsius in the cleaning cycle.
-- I don't understand why they make gourmet cat foods. I have known many cats in my life and none of them were gourmets. They were all gourmands!
,
Howdy,
I'm the OP...
Your comment, together with others here have really helped:
We live in a rural area, and heat geothermally.
Those two aspects of our situation may seem unrelated, but they are indirectly related.
Our electrical supply is (how to put this delicately...) something less than stable. There are all sorts of voltage fluctuations evident.
On top of that, our well pump is about the size of a locomotive, and when it kicks in, there is a very obvious voltage dip.
My strong suspicion is that these fluctuations are the cause of the bulbs' shortened life...
All the best,
Howdy,
I don't think that in my situation it is either heat, or orientation.
When I started to notice the problem, I spoke with a technical rep from the manufacturer, and he was fine with the installation we had.
He said that were they in a completely enclosed can, we might have heat trouble, but with the open bottom, he did not see a problem.
All the best,
Heck, I keep breaking them. Well, my kids do. Several of our lamps have kind of shade that clamps right on the bulb. This worked fine for the familiar old-fashioned bulb-shaped light bulbs, but with the new-fangled flourescents, the wire occasionally gets tangled in the twists of the bulb and it breaks. Annoying and messy.
Mike
Yeah... I know what you mean. If I look at a CFL long enough, I feel the urge to get a Dairy Queen ice cream cone.
There's mercury in every fluorescent bulb. Instead of repeatedly breaking CFLs, turning your house into a Superfund clean-up site and toying with your families health, you may want to invest in some new lamps/shades so you don't have this problem.
There are now lightbulb-shaped CFLs, with an outer bulb over the tubing.
The main disadvantage of those is that they start dimmer and take longer to warm up, since the mercury amalgam in those is formulated to work best at the higher temperatures that result in the CFLs with outer bulbs.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
The advice in that article sounds to me like a bit of overkill, out of need to be published by those having backsides to cover.
If you break a CFL, picking up the pieces, picking up what's left with masking tape or other sticky tape, and putting them in a sealed bag (much of what the article recommends) should be plenty fine and good. Put the bag of CFL pieces in the trash if that is permitted in your municipality and state.
As for disposal of intact CFLs: In most areas, homeowners and home renters are allowed to dump them in the trash. Meanwhile, check out
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
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