Do you still use incandescent light bulbs?

Brothel?

CFLs can be quite harmful as they leak UV rays.

I see no good reason to believe in such a mangled way, my dear.

The other day I needed to install a cheap bathroom exhaust fan in a small enclosed area with a bildge pump. I was having a problem with an odor leaking into the rest of the building. The fan will run 24/7 and to extend its lifetime and lower the speed and noise, I used a 75W incandescent wired in series with it to drop the voltage across it slightly. The bulb screws into a porcelain fixture and to change speeds I tried a 60W, a 75W and a 100W before settling on a 75.
I keep those other 2 bulbs nearby in case I ever change my mind and want to increase or decrease the speed further. The fan uses a simple shaded pole motor so I don’t expect any problems with my setup.
An added bonus is that the bulb glows ever so slightly and provides enough light for inspection. :slight_smile:

Nope, not regularly anyway. The only spots in my living space where I know for a fact there are incan bulbs are on the back of my house, and in the ultra-rare occasions I have to go out there during the night, well I have my torches :smiley: Though I love the tint, and have a warm white LED (4000K or so) lightbulb in my bedroom alongside several of my NW lights, the bite in the electric bill is not worth it.

Now THAT is what I call thinking outside the box :laughing:

I’ve had bad luck (?) with the lifetimes of LED bulbs. I bought a 12-pack of Globe LED bulbs to try out in areas that are lit for long periods of time. 3 have failed so far, with less than 1000 hours run-time on them. I think they were about $4 per bulb. Not impressed. I get way longer lifetimes from CFL bulbs, and their operating cost isn’t much more than LED.

The industry really needs to get its act together, and stop manufacturing junk. Likely there are some reputable brands, but that’s not what’s being sold in hardware stores. I think I’ll wait a few more years before trying LED bulbs again.

I’m very careful about brands, i typically buy Sylvania and Phillips and have not had any fail. I took a chance on Feit, no failures but a few buzzing but replaced under warranty by customer service @ Canadian Tire (they have a deal to do warranty exchanges with Feit to prevent the need to ship them).
I tried some Bazz bulbs being $1 each a few years back, one failed, they shipped me a new one.

I can’t remember where I bought these duds. I think it might have been Canadian Tire, but I’m not sure. In any case, I’d need the receipt (probably thrown out long ago), and for a few bucks it’s not really worth the bother of returning them and getting a refund.

2 of the failures were in light fixtures outdoors. I don’t think they’re meant for that, which could be part of my problem. Though, they were under eaves and well protected from rain and the elements in a fixture. They only started failing when the weather got hot, so I suspect it’s poor heat-sinking in the bulb and the driver failed. They were on all night, so plenty of time to heat up the electronics, and only lasted about 3-4 months from when I installed them. Others are still going, but I expect some of them will die well before 25,000 hours too.

A better brand would probably help. They can be pricey, though. If they last the promised length of time, it’s well worth the price. But when they fail early, even incandescents start looking like a better deal.

I converted mine to all LED now.
i usually stays with known brand like Osram or Philips, and they also tend to have more consistent white than cheaper bulbs usefull when you just need to change one light in a single room with many other still working LED bulbs so the color will stay consistent the cheaper one seems to varied in white depends on when you bought them. some cheaper one sometime too blue or rather green. :confounded:

these bulbs seems to be making a come back as decoration lights the tint is cozy and beautiful but really hot and not so bright.

I always keep receipts for everything, from bulbs to appliances. Perhaps groceries and the dollar store i don’t. You never know what may fail, no matter how low cost. Also i shop sales, and i have bought many clearance bulbs, until the last couple years all my bulbs were clearance purchased, most for $1 a bulb or less.
One thing is that LED bulbs don’t like enclosed fixtures, very few are rated for this. I don’t know if your outdoor were enclosed or not, but i’ve had no outdoor failures so far. In fact the only ones i know of that are enclosed rated are some Feit bulbs, i saw a tear down and they had higher temperature capacitors and stated on the package you could use them in enclosed fixtures. Even outdoors unless its rated for enclosed i would not try it in an enclosed fixture (people say the wind will keep the housing cool, i don’t trust it).

Yeah, mine were in fixtures outdoors. That probably contributed, along with the warmer summer temps. But really… what outdoor lights aren’t in fixtures! They pretty-much have to be enclosed in something, unless they’re inside a building.

It seems the ideal location for LED lights is in outdoor fixtures:

  1. They’re on for many hours every night.
  2. Any heat that is produced from lighting is completely wasted outdoors.
  3. High CRI and tint is not very important outdoors.

Even most indoor lighting is inside fixtures. Everything in our house has a fixture, with the exception of basement lights and a couple of lamps.

I agree that many bulbs are in fully enclosed fixtures, but its well known (to LED enthusiasts) that heat shedding is required or they burn out. Many bulbs do say on the package or on the bulb to not use in enclosed futures but this problem is not well publicized and the layman would only know if they read all the fine print carefully. Some bulbs don’t even state this at all which grinds my gears.
I’ve been careful and stuck with a CFL for my hallway enclosed fixture till the Feit bulb came along, but i do hope all bulbs will be fixed enclosure rated in the future. In the meantime i have been careful and had some luck to be able to avoid the problem, though one enclosed fixture outside i used a Bazz bulb even though its not rated but only use it a few minutes at a time.

I bet they're manufactured with more reliability in mind, it is clear they have more substance.

I bet they glow warmer, and if they really can tolerate more whoomp, boosting their power output is as easy as feeding them from rectified AC plus some capacitance to boost the average voltage hitting the filaments. P = V² / R, you may want to check a tool like this to see how much capacitance you need for a given average voltage increase: LINEAR POWER SUPPLY DESIGN ASSISTANT #1 @ changpuak.ch

Just made some quick numbers: for a 60W 230VAC bulb, a 1A bridge rectifier plus a 100μF capacitor would raise 230VAC mains to an average of 270V (sawtooth), putting out ≈38% more power and probably close to 50% additional output lumens due to the increased bulb efficiency caused by the higher filament temperature. Of course, the bridge and capacitor shouldn't be installed close to the bulb, preferably.

actually one new thing is LED bulbs in this kind of filament/clear glass decorative style

the LEDs are in strings somehow that look yellow when off

i just got 6 for my bathroom, they use 4 or 6w and put out a TON of nice warm light, not really yellow at all

i like them a lot

wle

Bort, I use LED’s that are not rated for enclosed fixtures in my bathroom’s enclosed fixtures. That said, they are only on for maybe 30 minutes at most. So far I haven’t had any problems.

I can understand, light fixtures can still shed heat, but each would be at different rates and some might be enough and some may not, and some may only reduce LED lifetime

I get it. The fixtures are recessed sealed hi-hat’s made for shower and bath enclosures. There’s plenty of room for heat dissipation since the housings are made out of aluminum. Since I’m using them for a short period of time, I’m sure it won’t have any effect on the LED’s life expectancy.

I would love to see some testing on the heat shedding capabilities of enclosed fixtures, though there are millions of designs on the market so the list could never become exhaustive but it would make for very interesting data.

I don’t think they are. Also, they are believed to leak less UV rays than the spiral bulbs.