Using 100 watt bulb in 60 watt lamp

[KLS]

[San Francisco]

no harm at all, as long as you don't mind an occasional HOUSE FIRE!

[wjohnston]

a reading lamp for your fine print is 250 watts incandescent. try to use the twist compact flourescents which put out about four times their input wattage of light. reading your computer online version of the local newspaper or favorite magazines is easiest when you change the computer's VIEW - TEXT SIZE to what's comfortable for you, as well as the focal distance from the eye to the monitor. time for LASIK followed by some dollar store reading glasses...

[Don Klipstein]

In my experience, quality of electrical items has largely peaked out in the 1980's and has gone a little downhill since then.

Meanwhile, it was common for many incandescent fixtures to specify maximum of 60 watt bulbs as far back as around 1980, when I first noticed this. This 60 watt limit may have been common even longer.

As for really high temperature rating requirements for supply wires - this is new. I suspect this is mostly CYA from liability concerns, although the increasing availability and affordability of non-contact thermometers could be a reason. If you add a fixture that requires higer temperature wire than your building has, you only need high temperature wire from the next junction box - and you can add a junction box a foot or two away.

If you have a fire starting at an electrical fixture being used other than as directed, you may need a lawyer, even if the fire started from a defect or a design flaw rather than the "misuse".

- Don Klipstein ( [e-mail])

[Don Klipstein]

I recently saw a "banker's light" desk lamp with a tubular 60 watt bulb have its wires char badly enough to produce a burning odor. The fixture was rated for 60 watt bulbs.

I suspect this was a design flaw, maybe caused by the engineer assuming that 60 watt tubular T10 5.25 inch long "showcase" bulbs in the USA not having a disproportionally hotter surface temperature than 40 watt ones. Turns out, the 60 watt USA (120V) version is gas filled while the 40 and

25 watt USA versions have a vacuum. The 60 watt one gets burning hot while the 40 watt one usually stays cool enough to touch. If there are 230V versions of these bulbs, then I would expect even 60 watt ones to have a vacuum and have a cooler surface - and to be safe in this "banker's light".

- Don Klipstein ( [e-mail])

[Don Klipstein]

I would make sure you have good bulbs. Not all 60 watt bulbs produce the same amount of light. Good ones produce 845-890 lumens of light. Dollar store junkers, Polaroid and Sunbeam junkers and superlonglife vibration resistant ones produce 600-700 lumens, and 130V superlonglife vibration resistant ones may produce about 500 lumens at 120V.

Compact fluorescents up to 26 watts (as bright as typical 100 watt incandescents) should not overheat the fixture, although a 42 watt compact fluorescent can make the fixture slightly hotter than a 60 watt incandescent does. (Incandescents produce more infrared than fluorescents

- that's heat in the room but largely not in the fixture.)

However, compact fluorescents of more than about 20 watts (same light as a typical 75 watt incandescent) can overheat themselves in downward facing fixtures and small enclosed fixtures.

- Don Klipstein ( [e-mail])