Why am I still buying light bulbs

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mike
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Over the last 3 or 4 years all the light bulbs i have bought offered me a 7 to 15 year life span, so why have i had to replace them already?
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Marketing and poor mathematics.

Where we live in a village the electricity supply is not steady. We would be replacing halogen bulbs every month and conventional incandescent types would last less than a year. I replaced a bunch of the halogens with some early LED types, and they all failed within a year. Better quality LEDs seem to last 2-3 years, and low energy fluorescents get close to that as well.
 
When we moved into our new house I replaced every bulb with a decent quality LED bulbs. That was October 2017 and haven't had to chance one yet.

Halogens are rubbish and don't last 5 minutes. You can also get some really crap LED bulbs. As they say, buy cheap, buy twice.
 
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When we moved into our new house I replaced every bulb with a decent quality LED bulbs. That was October 2018 and haven't had to chance one yet.

Halogens are rubbish and don't last 5 minutes. You can also get some really crap LED bulbs. As they say, buy cheap, buy twice.
Would expect to have to change any bulbs after just 5 months either
 
I have a 100w bulb in a light outside my back door that I bought in Woolworths Boxing Day sale in 1998.
It was one of three in a box for a quid, been in use ever since and still burns bright.
Bought it when we first moved to the house and reckon when it packs up the time has come for us to move
 
Halogens in kitchen seem to last a year or 2, the ones in lounge around a year. I did think that when I used to put them in by hand they would last a few months, but now use a sock as a glove and they last longer. Something around oils in your skin not being great... probably not true!
 
Halogens in kitchen seem to last a year or 2, the ones in lounge around a year. I did think that when I used to put them in by hand they would last a few months, but now use a sock as a glove and they last longer. Something around oils in your skin not being great... probably not true!

Halogen car bulbs usually come with a foam or paper sleave around the bulb for this reason. I don't know how much truth is in it, but have always been told not to touch the bulb with bar fingers.
 
I've got incandescents that must be more than 15 years old, none of the CFLs and LEDs that I've put in over the last few years have lasted more than 2-3 years. It's a complete scam, the money and environmental savings from reduced energy use* are massively outweighed by the cost and environmental impact of manufacturing and disposal of "energy saving" bulbs

* which isn't really reduced energy use because the "waste" energy is heat and so contributes a little to heating the house.
 
Halogen car bulbs usually come with a foam or paper sleave around the bulb for this reason. I don't know how much truth is in it, but have always been told not to touch the bulb with bar fingers.

We still have a small rubber device with a sucker on one end for this very purpose, plus it also makes it much easier to remove & replace bulbs in a recessed lamp fitting.

* which isn't really reduced energy use because the "waste" energy is heat and so contributes a little to heating the house.

This is a bit valid, but it's heat at ceiling level, which won't make you feel warmer unless you have a fan.
 
I have a 100w bulb in a light outside my back door that I bought in Woolworths Boxing Day sale in 1998.
It was one of three in a box for a quid, been in use ever since and still burns bright.
Bought it when we first moved to the house and reckon when it packs up the time has come for us to move
How the f*** would you remember that?
 
All bulbs in our house are now LED with most of them being LED for years now, even the rear security light/camera system is LED. Only had one LED needing to be changed and surprise, surprise it was a DIALL one - the only bulb I bought from B&Q. Many are from IKEA and seem to be very good. I also love how you can seriously increase the lumens safety using LED because the wattage is much lower such as a 100W equivalent regular bulb only needs a 14W LED to produce 1500 lumens :)
 
Halogens in kitchen seem to last a year or 2, the ones in lounge around a year. I did think that when I used to put them in by hand they would last a few months, but now use a sock as a glove and they last longer. Something around oils in your skin not being great... probably not true!
Whenever I installed halogen floodlights I was always told never to touch the lamp with bare hands as it would cause premature failure. Found this to explain it (you were right about oils on the skin):

A common cause of early failure for quartz halogen bulbs is surface contamination, and the most likely source of contamination comes from touching the glass portion of the bulb with bare skin. Even clean skin will leave behind oils. This contamination causes a hot spot when the bulb is operated, which can result in cracks or bubbles that will allow halogen gas to leak out, resulting in early failure.

https://www.bulbs.com/blogs/light_s...z-Halogens-Handle-With-Care!.aspx?mobile=true

Most Halogen lamps have been banned (Sept 2018) so it will soon be hard getting replacements.
 
Just bought 4 halogen candle bulbs/lamps. The fittings they're for are touch dimmable so LEDs aren't suitable. Not much used (the fittings) so the 4 bulbs should last a fair few years (last bulb is ~10 years old). Better than binning the fitting! Might convert them to simple on/off switched (inline switches) and bypass the dimmers when the bulbs are all gone.
 
Whenever I installed halogen floodlights I was always told never to touch the lamp with bare hands as it would cause premature failure. Found this to explain it (you were right about oils on the skin):


There are 2 broad categories of halogen lamps, naked and enclosed. Naked types (such as G9, floodlight bars and headlights) shouldn't be touched for the reasons above but the enclosed type (candle style and other household types) can be handled like the old tungsten bulbs since you're touching the outer envelope rather than the sensitive one.
 
So replaced a cfl (one of three in fitting) at Xmas with a Tesco branded LED, which has failed already. As a first experience of LED at home that is not a great start.... The cfls last three to four years typically in that fitting.

At £4.50 a bulb not particularly cheap either...

@gman has stated ikea as a brand that are ok further up the thread, any other suggestions?
 
So replaced a cfl (one of three in fitting) at Xmas with a Tesco branded LED, which has failed already. As a first experience of LED at home that is not a great start.... The cfls last three to four years typically in that fitting.

At £4.50 a bulb not particularly cheap either...

@gman has stated ikea as a brand that are ok further up the thread, any other suggestions?


Take it back to Tesco and get a replacement.
 
CFLs and LEDs don’t last anywhere near as long as suggested. As mentioned above, the halogen ‘bulb within a bulb’ are the worst.

We have mainly LED now but the best were the old incandescent bulbs marked Rough Service or Heavy Duty. They lasted for ages!
 
We found G9 halogen bulbs very susceptible to failure due to vibration, especially ceiling mounted. Replaced them with LED. All our lights are LED apart from CFL in the kitchen, the CFL are SGU10 fitting which seriously limits our choice to Aurora replacements at £10 a go.
 
We found G9 halogen bulbs very susceptible to failure due to vibration, especially ceiling mounted. Replaced them with LED. All our lights are LED apart from CFL in the kitchen, the CFL are SGU10 fitting which seriously limits our choice to Aurora replacements at £10 a go.
We had those in bathroom and downstairs loo. Got fed up with them sometimes slow to get to full brightness and the bulb expense. Swapped them all for LEDs which won’t take that long for payback and are full brightness instantly
 
Put GU10 spot fittings in the dining room and kitchen almost 2 years ago, fitted with Meridian lamps from Toolstation. Not had to change any of the (11) lamps yet.
 
I changed all our bulbs to LED when we moved in, about 18 bulbs of various fitments, wattage and brands (Phillips, Dial and Ikea). One of the Phillips has started to take a little longer to turn on than I would like but after ~4 years I don't think it is a bad failure rate.
 
We had those in bathroom and downstairs loo. Got fed up with them sometimes slow to get to full brightness and the bulb expense. Swapped them all for LEDs which won’t take that long for payback and are full brightness instantly
I would like to swap CFL for LED but have had trouble finding SGU10 fitting LED replacements for the Aurora CFL (They are 64mm dia & 81mm long)
 
We changed the fittings to an all in one solution https://www.saxbylighting.com/featured/featured-products/orbitalpro
about £17 each I think.
Interesting alternative, thanks....... Unfortunately we have 7x SGU10 lights in our kitchen so it would work out quite expensive.
I still have a couple of Aurora CFL spares, I will use those first. Meanwhile I have been looking at replacing the SGU10 lamp holders with GU10 holders (£1.22 each) so I can fit GU10 LED bulbs instead.
 
Over the last 3 or 4 years all the light bulbs i have bought offered me a 7 to 15 year life span, so why have i had to replace them already?

In the same way as you're wondering why the camera maker adverted their Model-X can shoot at 10fps, and you're wondering why yours didn't get the full maximum shooting speed.

Manufactures advert their production's technology at maximum or minimum performance under laboratory tests and record the outcome. But you would be using it differently from the laboratory tests set up.

For example, they said the bulbs could last 7 to 15 years, but that's assuming they tested it by switching it on for 3 hours a day, they may assume you switched it on at 7pm (spring/autumn hours) and off at 10pm when going to bed. But in real life, someone could easily have switched it on at 4pm (assuming during winter hours) and left it on until 2am, then switched it back on at 6am until 8am (assuming that same someone had to get up in morning to go to work). So could have had it on for 12 hours! Thus burning it out a lot sooner.

Just like camera maker recorded the shooting speed assuming using 1/8000 shutter speed and batteries at 100%, but you could have been getting a lower rate of shooting speed, only because you were shooting at something like 1/250 with batteries at something like 25% and you're wondering if the advert is misleading.

Maybe during the very bright summer hours, you left them on, considering you wouldn't notice they're on if the room was really bright from the sunshine? :)
 
All bulbs in our house are now LED with most of them being LED for years now, even the rear security light/camera system is LED. Only had one LED needing to be changed and surprise, surprise it was a DIALL one - the only bulb I bought from B&Q. Many are from IKEA and seem to be very good. I also love how you can seriously increase the lumens safety using LED because the wattage is much lower such as a 100W equivalent regular bulb only needs a 14W LED to produce 1500 lumens :)


My neighbour gave me a B&POO Diall 5W GU10 LED bulb as a "like for like" replacement for one of my wet room down lights. The light output from the Diall was abysmal (the lumens figure was not printed on the Diall).
I prefer my lighting colour to be Cool White and use 6000K bulbs. However, it is very apparent that one manufacturer's 6000K is not the same as anothers since there is often a wide variance in colour temperature on lamps with the same stated value.
 
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