More on LED bulbs...

[67drake (WavyGlass)]

A few years back I was reading a thread on a different site I belong to. One of the members there used to be an engineer at GE. He told the story about how when they designed new/different bulbs they were instructed to design a failure date into them. How long these bulbs last is calculated into the design,and could easily/cheaply be made to last longer,but that would cut into company profits,correct? No surprise there.
About 20 years ago my local power company sent a promotional ad with my monthly bill. For about $1 I could get one of those cutting edge CFL bulbs to try. I figure OK I'll try one. When it came in the mail and I screwed it in I hated the color of light it gave off,so I stuck it in my laundry room where the light is on often,but not a room we spend a lot of time in. That bulb finally burned out about 2 years ago. Not bad-18 years out of 1 bulb. NOW for the garbage CFL bulbs I've bought over the last few years,they don't last near as long as the old incandescent bulbs. In the beginning everybody raved about how long the CFL last in comparison to the old style...how is that working out for us now?
Anybody who thinks that these new LED bulbs are going to save money because they will outlast other bulbs,just give it a few years,they'll be burning out constantly because it will be designed to do so. Don't drink the Cool Aid

[lisascenic]

That's quite a lamp. I think your wife is spot-on.

[Texas_Ranger]

I once tried running CFLs 24/7 in our house number/front entrance light. I think the two I tried (renowned brands) lasted less than a year each. A year has 8760 hours so if the bulbs burned out after maybe 9 months that's closer to 5000 hours instead of the 15000 printed on the box. Not to mention that the official definition of failure is "emitting less than 80% of its original lumens" rather than "completely dark"! In a German test only few (if any) bulbs still emitted more than 80% after 5000 hours of use and two candidates were utterly dead. And that was expensive CFLs, not cheap ones. From that test and a few rough calculations I concluded that any possible power savings of a CFL would be more than eaten up by the purchase price. And even if you could break even the monetary savings would be negligible, a handfull of dollars per lamp and year at best. I also dislike the light of even the best and most expensive warm white CFLs so for me it was a no-brainer to stick with incandescent bulbs. The only exception is our hallway where the light is on for the better part of the day and you don't spend much time. We had CFLs there since the late 80s and switched to LED last year. What a difference! The light is a bit pinkish for my taste (my pet peeve with LEDs, the light is either greenish or pinkish, rarely ever yellow like an incandescent bulb) but much better than the CFL and it's immediately at full brightness! No more stumbling around in semi-darkness! The old IKEA CFL I replaced also smelled something vile (burnt electronics) even though it was still working.

[Jo_S]

CFL's don't seem to like outdoor applications, in my experience.

[Texas_Ranger]

CFL's don't seem to like outdoor applications, in my experience.

Could be... but I don't have any good indoor test location. The house number light has the big advantage that it's on unmetered city power, a leftover from some oooooold regulations that required every entrance and house number to be lit at night. I replaced the broken CFL with a no-name LED bulb last Tuesday, we'll see how long that lasts running 24/7. It's shielded from any rain, snow and direct sunlight but it does get cold in the winter and hot on summer days.

[Sara]

The house number light has the big advantage that it's on unmetered city power, a leftover from some oooooold regulations that required every entrance and house number to be lit at night.

That's so interesting. I've never heard about anything like that before. When and where was this? So you have an electrical line that's not included in your panel? How does it work?

[Texas_Ranger]

The house number light has the big advantage that it's on unmetered city power, a leftover from some oooooold regulations that required every entrance and house number to be lit at night.

That's so interesting. I've never heard about anything like that before. When and where was this? So you have an electrical line that's not included in your panel? How does it work?

That was in Vienna, Austria and probably back in the 1970s or so. The main cable from under the street goes to a box on the front of our house with the 100 amp main fuses and in addition to that a 6 amp fuse just for the light. There's also a switch inside and originally the light was on a dusk-to-dawn sensor but that broke and now it's always on unless switched manually. Back when this was done we still had a real municipial power company so if the city requested something, the power company complied. Nowadays at least the administrative structures are a lot more complex as the old power company has been split up into three different companies (power generation, operation of the distribution grid and selling electricity to consumers), all of which are owned by the city.