Evening all

I'm going out tomorrow to look at a property where their low energy lamps are blowing every couple of weeks.

These lamps are good for 50,000 hours so am only guessing what could be the cause.

They have no dimmers on the circuit.

I'm not sure what the problem could be other than a low voltage? I'm a bit stumped as to what tests to perform. I'll be looking at the manufacturer of the lamps too.

Any thoughts

Spikes on the grid?

Yep thats my thoughts too I'll take some readings then phone rec and tell them their supply is sh*te.

I'll never know the problem but some how by some miracle it will be sorted.

Ok, last week I went to a immersion heater and the reset overheat button had popped, instead of resetting it I fitted a brand new Heatrae Sadia thermostat and guess what the overheat button has popped. The original one was ok for a year, any ideas?

Andy

The CFLs that get sent out for free from the energy supply companies are notorious for this.

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Regards
Carl

Cheap lamps and elderly people are two sig factors in my opinion.

The`s lots of cheapo stuff in the market place.

People over a certain age - some of who have a manic tendency to switch lights off, you barely walk to the door and before you step thru they switch the light off. CFLs (and filament lamps) don`t like loads of on and off cycles, lamp manufactures statements of operating hours are for long periods of illumination and short cycles reduce life drastically. I think if we train people to leave lamps lit for a min of 20 mins it might have a sig effect on lamp life

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Regards,
Ebee (M I S P N)

Knotted cables cause Lumpy Lektrik

LoL - and the irony is we have the CFL in a move to reduce CO2 and save the planet

OMS

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Failure is always an option

If only!

My experience (with decent quality lamps) is that they generally last a much shorter time than GLS lamps... and, of course, don't actually light things up particularly well.

I don't think this is an isolated problem. (But who would want greater efficiency/efficacy to stand in the way of progress, eh?)

I always advice customers that they last for ever if never used.
Then (perhaps ) for their quoted life if left on for long periods but not for long if they keep switching `em on and off

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Regards,
Ebee (M I S P N)

Knotted cables cause Lumpy Lektrik

We recently have had a large percentage of failures of 2D 28w lamps in maintained emergency fittings. We have just been told the manufacturer of the fittings claims only certain makes of lamps will last !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Luckily for us the wholesaler who supplied the fittings also supplied the original lamps and they have given us plenty of spares of GE lamps as compo

Andy

Your immersion heater problem could be similar to a problem I had. It transpired that at weekends the customer lit their rayburn for comfort & the water cylinder got so hot, the immersion stat tripped out, even though it was not turned on.

Not quite sure how to get around this, but I showed them how to re-set it themselves.

Bob.

certainly true of switch-start fluorescents, but I've got the idea in my head from somewhere that the electronic ballasted ones don't suffer significantly from that particular problem.


I've come across a couple of situations over the years where minor changes to a lighting circuit (e.g. rewiring a switch drop) appear to have solved a long standing problem with GLS lamps dying young. I never got to the bottom of it but suspect a loose connection or bad switch contact might be a contributory factor.

- Andy.