I hate CFL 'long' life light bulbs

[growerVon]

I switched my house over to LEDs this summer over the course of several paychecks. Really enjoy them, but some words of caution since they're relatively expensive: research color warmth (the "daylight" white is almost xray material) and models that have an audible hummmmm... DW made me get rid of 4 in the master bath because she could faintly hear them. Buy in small batches until you have confidence in the strength, color and noise. Ive had good luck with Phillips, but they are more expensive than Cree.

 

[Brett_Cameron]

I like the Cree LED bulbs, hate those CFLs.

Me too.

 

[cooch96]

I have never bought these horrible things, their light gives me headaches and I don't care to introduce Mercury vapor into my home. I filled a pantry shelf with "illegal" bulbs a couple years ago and waited for LED lights to drop in price.

 

[Hermit]

I ordered 10 LED car light bulbs from Amazon for 20 bucks. Installed two last night to see how they looked in my RV. After about 3 minutes, one blew the LEDs off the socket and the other was literally smoking. These were supposed to be 12 volt bulbs. They looked OK while they worked, but 3 minutes was a pretty short life span!

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

I got an answer back through Amazon from the distributor: "hi,it depend on 12v,can we make a full refund. is it ok?thank you."

At the risk of being called insane, I think I will try a couple more of these before I send them back.

 

[harley]

I have never bought these horrible things, their light gives me headaches and I don't care to introduce Mercury vapor into my home. I filled a pantry shelf with "illegal" bulbs a couple years ago and waited for LED lights to drop in price.

Yep, I'm pretty happy with my decision to stock up on 40 and 60 watt incandescents. I have had horrible results with the few CFLs I experimented with. And I tried a couple early LEDs and didn't like the light quality.

I don't mind paying the extra few dollars/month to have light that I'm happy with, especially since so many of ours are on dimmers. By the time I'm running low I'm hoping that they'll have all the cost inefficiencies and bugs worked out of the LEDs.

 

[Beldar]

We've converted most of the lighting in our home to LED over the past 2 yrs and are completely satisfied. The price continues to fall and I have noticed an impact to our electric bill each month. Some of the lights we just leave on all of the time since the electrical consumption is so small.

I did try the CFL route but the color was hit or miss. They did fail periodically but not as frequently as Edison bulbs.

If you're sticking to incandescents you might try either severe service or 130v bulbs. Severe service are more expensive, but I have found 130v bulbs from easterm Europe packaged in some of the bargain store brands. They both seemed to have longer life. But, the energy (and associated $$) savings isn't there, except for the replacement costs.

_B

 

[lonnie]

I have to second the idea that LED bulbs do last a long time, but the CFL ones I installed have to be replaced a lot more often than what I was led to believe.

 

[jim584672]

I tried the CFLs and they blew out much more quickly than I expected. Also the light color was an icky yellow/green, and they took a long time to get to full brightness, especially when cold.

LEDs are so much better.

 

[RE2Boys]

I've had pretty good luck with CFLs, got some that are in use for over 7 years. Except with the BR30's floods in recessed fixtures. Lucky to get 18 months out of these. As the kitchen lighting is mostly recessed, went back to 75w halogens. We have a side counter where the recessed lights are on typically 10 hours a day. As soon as I use up my supply of BR30 CFLs, It'll be the first place converted to LEDs, hopefully as LED pricing drops.
The curly ones have a good life, the spots/flood not worthwhile.

 

[TromboneAl]

I find that either they blow out within a year or they last "forever."

I got one of these and it's quite nice. I'm going to get some more--it will be nice to have dimming available again.

 

[HFWR]

Have had three CFLs fail in seven years, all flood lights in a bathroom, where they get cycled more often, and are subjected to more temperature and humidity changes.

 

[Walt34]

You remember when you had to buy CFLs at a premium price compared to the resistance bulbs that worked predictably? You remember how the CFLs were to outlast the old style bulbs by months and months? You remember how they didn't? Well, CFLs are passe and icky - nobody with any couth uses them anymore. You need to pay a bunch extra for LEDs - they'll last for twenty years or more! Really! ....

Yup. This time it's different....

 

[harley]

I find that either they blow out within a year or they last "forever."

I got one of these and it's quite nice. I'm going to get some more--it will be nice to have dimming available again.

Al, do those dim properly with a normal (old fashioned) dimmer? I know some LEDs are supposedly dimmable, but require a new dimmer to work properly. Also, I was reading through the specs and noticed you can't use them in an enclosed fixture, like a ceiling globe. Too bad for that.

I noticed a couple of the reviews said the bulbs aren't really the same size as a standard A19, being a little bit wider. That might impact their use a bit too. I ran into a similar problem with the CFLs I tried. They were a little longer than the incandescents they replaced, and didn't fit one of my fixtures properly.

 

[JoeWras]

Temperature, humidity, orientation. CFLs are very sensitive to all, more so than incandescents.

My theory is that when they rate the CFLs, they test them like this:
- low humidity
- orientation with base at the bottom (so heat rises up)
- moderate temperature
- airflow over the device

It is all a cheat. If you have a CFL with the base at the top (bulb pointing down) in a fixture, outside, the thing will not last long at all.

 

[NW-Bound]

Recently, I bought the Philips flat LED that T-Al shows in the earlier post. It was at home when I read the instruction that the bulb could not be used in an enclosure, so I returned it. As JoeWras said, the toughest part of designing an LED bulb is arranging for heat dissipation. The 100W-equivalent bulb costs a lot more the 60W one for that reason, I believe.

 

[Sunset]

My CFL's have been in use for 8-10 years, so long that I still have some from a purchase at IKEA.
Sure a few burned out, about 10 in the entire house in the whole time, so I'm happy.
I recently replaced a few with LED's as I got those for $3 each.
I don't buy any of the 88 cent packs anymore, as I have about 20 bulbs left to use up, will probably move first.

I have a CFL inside a closet fixture, upside down, turned on/off 2-4 times per day for the entire 8 yrs, it's still going fine, but will probably replace it with a LED for the instant light feature.

The outdoor lights that are on from dusk to dawn are CFL's, they get dim in cold winters, but bad people are not out as its too cold I'll probably replace those with LED's as they will stay bright in winter.
The outside ones that are on about 12 hrs per night are the ones that have burned out the most and they are upside down as well, probably have 1 or 2 per year burn out.

I'm happy with the CFL's, but will use them up and switch to LED's when they are cheap ($3 or less).

 

[timo2]

LED bulbs do not last 20 years. Well, at least the electronics are not going to last 20 years.

I won't last 20 more years either!!

 

[jimnjana]

Bought a couple of boxes (20-30) old fashioned bulbs at yard sales for a buck last year, they went to the rentals. Had switched out primary home to mostly all cfl bulbs. We do have some ceiling fans, outdoor lights and chandliers that have the smaller old fashion bulbs still. Don't use the light enough to bother replacing in mass, will just replace as bulbs die off. Will likely switch out several of the CFL bulbs to LED on the lights we use all the time for reading and in the kitchen. Don't mind the CFLs generally, but am impressed with the better quality light from the LEDs.

 

[braumeister]

Temperature, humidity, orientation. CFLs are very sensitive to all, more so than incandescents.

My theory is that when they rate the CFLs, they test them like this:
- low humidity
- orientation with base at the bottom (so heat rises up)
- moderate temperature
- airflow over the device

It is all a cheat. If you have a CFL with the base at the top (bulb pointing down) in a fixture, outside, the thing will not last long at all.

No different from the standardized testing procedure used to get those advertised gas mileage numbers they put on new cars.

And I have some base-up CFL bulbs that have been on an average of 10-12 hours a day for over ten years.

As I see it, the only significant factor is that there was an extraordinarily large variability factor in CFL manufacture, especially in the early years.

 

[travelover]

One data point - I have hemispherical globe lights in my kitchen and the incandescent bulbs used to last a matter of months. I can hardly recall replacing a bulb since I switched to CFLs quite a few years ago. This, in spite of the bulbs being mounted horizontally in a closed glass globe, these lights being turned on an off often and running hours a day.

 

[rodi]

We had some early failures in CFLs when we first started using them a decade ago... till we found out that they weren't rated for dimmable lights - and that's where we were using them. We then paid the ticket for "dimmable" CFLs for these fixtures and never had a problem again. These were high use fixtures (my lamp next to my chair where I read, and the dining room light). We've switched both to LED in the past year... we switched all of our high use lights to LEDs. The rest we'll switch to LED when the CFL dies.... our stash of LED bulbs is just sitting there because the CFLs aren't dying.

 

[ERD50]

Temperature, humidity, orientation. CFLs are very sensitive to all, more so than incandescents.

My theory is that when they rate the CFLs, they test them like this:
- low humidity
- orientation with base at the bottom (so heat rises up)
- moderate temperature
- airflow over the device

It is all a cheat. If you have a CFL with the base at the top (bulb pointing down) in a fixture, outside, the thing will not last long at all.

No different from the standardized testing procedure used to get those advertised gas mileage numbers they put on new cars.
...

Actually, the published lifetime ratings of these things has nothing to do with those conditions. It isn't really a lifetime rating at all, it is a measure of when the 'bulb' is expected to dim to 70% of its starting brightness. So if the curve of degradation can be extrapolated (since they can't test them for 20 years) to show it will make it to 20 years and still be at 70.1% brightness, it gets a 20 year rating. Regardless of whether the electronics will only last 2 years.

Its false advertising in my book, but that is the government standard (at least I think the govt (Dept of Energy, FTC?) regulates that, I could be wrong).

edit/add: You are right though, keeping the heat build up minimized will help the electronics (electrolytic caps mainly) last longer.

-ERD50

 

[Mulligan]

Al, do those dim properly with a normal (old fashioned) dimmer? I know some LEDs are supposedly dimmable, but require a new dimmer to work properly. Also, I was reading through the specs and noticed you can't use them in an enclosed fixture, like a ceiling globe. Too bad for that.

I noticed a couple of the reviews said the bulbs aren't really the same size as a standard A19, being a little bit wider. That might impact their use a bit too. I ran into a similar problem with the CFLs I tried. They were a little longer than the incandescents they replaced, and didn't fit one of my fixtures properly.

That is why I have loaded up on enough incandescents to last a lifetime for the key fixtures in home that are dimmable. I do not want to mess with changing out the dimmer switch. Besides electricity is cheap here.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[liveanon]

We switched to CFLs and ultimately did not like them, especially the can lights in the kitchen. Switched back to incandescent and gave all the CFLs away. Lately, we've started to switch to LED for our out door lighting.

 

[Gumby]

After several years of piecemeal efforts, we switched to 100% CFLs about 7 years ago. We saw a substantial drop in electricity bills (around here, the price of electricity is very high). We have recently been replacing any CFL that burns out with an LED. I would estimate that we are about 15% LED and 85% CFL now. I much prefer the LEDs.