Search Results for: CFL

Found 22 search results for CFL (this is page 1 of 3).

Make: Online | Circuitry, Anatomy, and Repair Tips for Common CFL Lamps

Here’s a nice guide to repairing CFL bulbs yourself!

I don’t know about you, but I’m so used to the paradigm established by old-style incandescent bulbs that when one of my CFL’s “blows out,” it doesn’t even occur to me that I might be able to repair it in the garage. Or at least, it didn’t until I saw this page from Pavel Ruzicka, which does a good job of explaining the general principles of operation of CFL lamps and gives great details about their most common failure modes. Apparently, replacing a single capacitor will often do the trick. [via Hack a Day]

via Make: Online | Circuitry, Anatomy, and Repair Tips for Common CFL Lamps.

Another CFL bulb bites the dust

I was not happy Thursday when I learned another CFL bulb in our home had met an untimely demise. We’ve gone through a spate of them dying far too early. It had gotten to the point where I began to write the date of purchase on each bulb so that I could track how long they were lasting.

The one that died Thursday made it 12 months. Pathetic! That’s the worst-performing bulb in the house. It would be a short life for even an incandescent bulb!
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Another CFL bulb stops working

Yesterday we lost yet another of our supposedly long-lasting CFL bulbs. This one was an interior floodlight made by Bright Effects and sold by Lowes. It apparently got hot enough to crack the bulb’s base. Yes, bulbs that hang upside-down do get hotter at the base but bulbs designed to hang upside-down should be designed with this in mind, and CFLs operate cooler than incandescent bulbs, anyway.

These bulbs are supposed to last seven years but this one made it just 15 months. I’m going back to Lowes again to complain. This is the third bulb from that batch that’s died early.

Replacable CFL parts

I had another CFL lightbulb burn out tonight. Once it went dark I was immediately treated to the unpleasant but all-too-familiar smell of a fried capacitor.

It got me thinking that there has to be a better way to design these bulbs. If the cheap electronics could be replaced without throwing the whole bulb away it would keep a huge amount of mercury out of our landfills (and air, and water supply, etc).

When an incandescent bulb dies there’s no choice but to throw it away, as the filament is gone and the bulb’s vacuum makes it almost impossible to replace it. There’s no reason a dead CFL bulb has to be tossed, however, as the electronics could be separated from the bulb while leaving the bulb intact. And the electronics are always the first to go on a CFL bulb.

Home Depot recycles CFL bulbs

Remember my post about the dangers of not recycling CFL bulbs? I just got word from the City of Raleigh’s recycling program that Home Depot will accept CFL bulbs for recycling. Says Linda Leighton, Raleigh’s Waste Reduction Specialist:

Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are lighting more homes than ever before, and Raleigh Recycling encourages our residents to use and recycle them safely. Carefully recycling CFLs prevents the release of mercury into the environment and allows for the reuse of glass, metals and other materials that make up fluorescent lights. Until now CFLs had to be taken to one of Wake County’s Household Hazardous Waste Facilities, the North Wake facility open the first Saturday of each month and the South Wake facility open the third Saturday of each month.
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The problem with CFLs

I had a spirited discussion with my sister (as discussions with my sister frequently are) about compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). She told me how one of hers recently quit on her so she tossed it in the trash. I pointed out how she needed to recycle it instead, as its mercury would seep into the ground once it reached the landfill.

“People aren’t that smart,” she argued. “No one’s going to go to the trouble.”

For once I couldn’t argue with her. Most people are totally clueless on the dangers of mercury poisoning and the need to properly dispose of these bulbs.
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9/11 revisited

'Dissent is Patriotic" sign overlooking the World Trade Center site.

‘Dissent is Patriotic” sign overlooking the World Trade Center.

I took an eye-opening cab ride on a business trip to New York several years ago. It wasn’t the driving that raised my hair as much as the topic of conversation. My cabbie, a native English speaker, had a tale to tell about the 1996 attack on the World Trade Center. It was his opinion that someone higher up had allowed that bombing to happen, since a gigantic security rule was broken when the van that was detonated was allowed to enter the parking deck.

“I drive my cab there all the time,” he told me. “I know where we people are allowed to park and where they’re not allowed to park.”

I challenged the cabbie on this but he was insistent. “No way. That couldn’t have happened in a million years without someone higher up approving it,” he said.

At the time I chalked it up as a tale from an overly imaginative cab driver, but it wasn’t long before news broke that the FBI was deeply involved in a supposedly botched sting operation in which fake explosives were to be switched in at the last moment. Whoops!

Here’s Dan Rather’s report on CBS the night of October 28, 1993:

I don’t recall hearing that any FBI agents lost their jobs after fucking up a sting operation, bombing a building, and killing six people. Do you?

Fast forward to today. Another 9/11 anniversary has come and gone and even 13 years after the event I can’t help but feel awkward pausing for a moment of silence. It isn’t that I’m not saddened by the loss of lives on that terrible day, it is the way that event is continues to be described as a terrorist attack. There has never been any doubt in my mind that the official narrative of 9/11 is complete bunk, and I must admit that every year my certainty grows.

We lost a lot more than 3,000 lives that day, in my opinion we lost the republic. That truly deserves a moment of silence.
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LED bulbs are the best, hands down

The best lightbulb ever?

The best lightbulb ever?

Last week we had one of our CFL bulbs burn out in our recessed ceiling fixtures over the stairwell. It was less than five years old and due to its location is the hardest bulb in the whole house to replace. I managed to dislodge the bulb from its socket using a long light-bulb-changing pole (catching it in mid-air before it crashed to the ground), but the whole process made me determined to replace it with a longer-lasting LED bulb.

I’ve been thrilled to find LED bulbs at Costco lately. I purchased a fleet of them, with a couple of them being focused-light bulbs for my recessed fixtures rather than the diffused bulbs we’ve been using. Bad move! The spotlight-like light reminded Kelly of a sterile hotel room’s light. She would break out into show tunes while standing below them to make a point. It didn’t take more than a few songs before I realized this was not the kind of lighting we needed. Back to Costco it went.
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LED lights

LED bulb. Excuse the white balance as my phone camera has no setting for LED.

LED bulb. Excuse the white balance as my phone camera has no setting for LED.

I was once an enthusiastic supporter of CFL bulbs, with their promise of long life. It didn’t take long before I determined those claims were bunk, leaving me with a pile of hazardous waste. I can’t say I pined for the says of incandescent bulbs but I was anxious to find something better than CFLs.

Then a few months ago I saw that Costco was selling deeply discounted LED bulbs. Normally $12, they were on sale for $6. Now that would normally be a lot of money for a light bulb but the promise of going 22 years before replacing it seemed to make it worthwhile. I bought one bulb for our den as a test and then bought a half-dozen of them for our bathroom. Why the bathroom? Because when hung upside-down, CFL bulbs burn out about 5 times as fast in my experience.
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LED bulbs: a bright idea

The three or four regular MT.Net readers know of my long history of griping about CFL bulbs. I’m a greenie, don’t get me wrong, but aside from the handful of CFL bulbs I bought when they were first introduced in the market the CFLs I’ve had have fizzled depressingly quickly. The culprit? Cheap electronics.

Imagine my surprise today when I was wandering through Costco and saw an end-cap stacked with LED bulbs on sale. These bulbs are normally $15 apiece but a manufacturer’s instant rebate knocks them down to under $5! What’s more, this rebate runs through the rest of 2013!
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