100 watt bulbs

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Brian Roth

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 20, 2005
Messages
3,184
Location
Salina Kansas
On another topic....

Walmart still stocks 100 W bulbs.

My house, built in 1970....has more than a few (!!!) enclosed light fixtures which were designed for incandescent light bulbs.

The "piggly-wiggly"  flourescent lamps catch on fire in the fixtures.

The LED "so-called" "subs" cost a fortune.

So.................  I've buying huge piles of 100w incandescent bulbs...

Get them while you can!!


Bri

 
what's piggly wiggly mean?  seriously catch on fire?  I've changed almost all my bulbs to screw in fluorescents. No LED yet, they're very expensive, but I'm tempted to buy direct from China, one of those free shipping sites that pop up every day.

What kind of fluorescent catches on fire?  Kinda worried if I should remove the flueorescents I'm using?
 
He's probably talking about CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps or something like that). They are more efficient but have some circuitry inside and have heat issues when placed inside sealed light fixtures.

I like the improved light color of the one LED lamp I bought, but not the price... I have been using CFLs since they first came out and had another one fail just the other day... I may look for more LED lamps to replace my CFLs as they slowly drop dead. 

I don't think they literally catch on fire, but they can give off the tell tale burnt electronics smell we all recognize from DIY adventures.

JR
 
wow, didn't know that. I haven't used them in sealed enclosures, but mine do get hot, so thanks for the heads up.  So far, Ive had one drop dead, well, a giganto 45W one, but I had that for over 2 years when it went, and it saw pretty constant use.
 
i've already had 3 CFL's opt out on me in less than a year's time.  5 year lifespan my ass... with the eventual mercurial waste issues that these poorly manufactured things are going to create, I'm really considering fabbing some LED jobs and calling it a decade.
 
grantlack said:
I'm really considering fabbing some LED jobs and calling it a decade.
Now that's a project I'd be intrested in!! I want some PCBs! lol!
 
I've been changing out each bulb in my house with CFLs as they die (happens more often than I'd like) and I haven't had a singe one go out yet... Plus I think most manufacturers have a 5 year warranty... granted they do require you mail it to them and stuff... I had to change my incandescent porch light every  couple of months, damn cheap things kept popping due to temperature shifts. Popped a CLF in there just to see what would happen and it's been going strong (constant) for a few years now. Well worth the money.

I've thought about fabbing some LED bulbs as well... I'm guessing there are already driver ICs on the market for this, I just don't know where to start looking? Can we organize a group buy on little baby PCBs?
 
I had a faulty CFL in the studio that shot a jet of flame out of the side of it.  Thankfully nothing else caught on fire when it happened, but still scary as hell.  I work with our county fire marshals office and gave it to them to use as an example.  A lot of bulbs people were buying on LI (ny) from home depot were having this issue.
 

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gemini86 said:
I've been changing out each bulb in my house with CFLs as they die (happens more often than I'd like) and I haven't had a singe one go out yet... Plus I think most manufacturers have a 5 year warranty... granted they do require you mail it to them and stuff... I had to change my incandescent porch light every  couple of months, damn cheap things kept popping due to temperature shifts. Popped a CLF in there just to see what would happen and it's been going strong (constant) for a few years now. Well worth the money.

I've thought about fabbing some LED bulbs as well... I'm guessing there are already driver ICs on the market for this, I just don't know where to start looking? Can we organize a group buy on little baby PCBs?

I appreciate that CFLs last longer than the old incandescents, but I had several infant failures with some crap first generation lamps. The second generation (spiral tube) seems more robust but now apparently a few years have gone by and they are not going to exceed their projected lifetimes.

I don't know why LED lamps are so expensive, but it seems they have a serious heat sink built into their base and probably a bunch of design effort into getting light spectrum pleasant, and light pattern useful.

I'm too cheap to take my working one apart to see what would be involved in rolling my own DIY, but I suspect if it was that easy to make they wouldn't be that expensive to buy in the first place.

JR
 
I think a lot of the LED cost is 1) r&d recoup... 2) trying to get the light to feel "natural" (if you can call incandescent lamps a natural light, more like, just what we were raised around)

 
JohnRoberts said:
... but I suspect if it was that easy to make they wouldn't be that expensive to buy in the first place.

My first thought:  They cost that much because they aren't going to have all the REPEAT business (income) in them that the other bulbs give.  So you buy one LED for THIS price or buy several of the other that equal THIS price ... pay now or pay later ... just pay!

I'm sure there's R&D recoupment and the such, but I'm still leaning to money over the life of a product.

Michael
 
I started doing R&D for Hewlett Packard San Jose on the yellow YAG phosphor that goes into blue to white LED's in 96.  Being an invention company they sold it to Philips Lumileds in the end.  Now most white LED's are made in the far east, not all in China though.

The LED's themselves are work in progress and there are many issues with the geometry and colour of the devices to perfect.  The reason they are so expensive is that they are made of expensive elements.  Gallium Oxide for the blue GaN chip is $1.50/gm before you start and the rare earths for the phosphor are expensive too.  The YAG phosphor is fired at temperatures hot enough to melt steel so you can imagine the cost of maintaining the equipment.

The LED's are constantly being changed and improved because of the competition, so the R&D costs are sky high and they need to recoup those, hence the high prices.  When they have a mature production process like incandescent light bulbs the price will come down.  Only trouble is, Gallium is rarer than silver and the deposits won't last very long, I can't imagine recycling ever getting off the ground until its too late.

Compact fluorescents run hotter than large dia tubes in order to get the maximum light out of a small space, this puts a strain on the electronics which have to fit into a less than ideal space.  They work a lot longer facing upwards.

I once had a fruitless email conversation with a woman from the southern states who was convinced that the phosphor inside was toxic phosphorus, ( for the record it means light bearing!) and that she had dropped one on her floor and contaminated her house!  Paranoia runs deep in some parts.

best
DaveP
 
I've been using CFL lamps for more than a decade, I think. The first generation ones sometimes exploded, showering the room with glass and toxic waste. Even the latest ones don't last much more than a couple years or so, and they loose luminance over time.

As far as LED lamps are concerned, you really need a lot of the ultra high power (1w, 3w, 10w) LEDs inside the 'bulb' to get the performance of a 100W incandescent, and they requiure adequate cooling or get dim and have their lifespan drastically shortened. Efficiency is still increasing with R&D, so eventually they will be better in every way than CFLs and incandescents. Some of the cheap ones you can get from China are already pretty good for many applications. The quoted luminance is often exagerated far beyond actual performance though.
 
Add another to the list of faulty CFLs.  I came home one day and caught a whiff of what seemed to be the smell of burning resistors.  I ran into the studio room half in panic hoping not to see smoke coming out of the back of the rack.  Took me an hour to figure out where the smell was coming from.  I just happened to walk past the small lamp in the hallway and glance down at the bulb.  The base of the bulb where the light stem starts was literally melting itself, and still working.  There was a huge brownish black spot around the stem base.  I saved the bulb and was going to send a pic of it to Sylvania but never did - should have.  Fire hazard.
 
Just checked the CFL hangning over my workbench atm... What used to be a white base is now a dark butterscotch, but not the good fender kind.

Well, off to double check my insurance coverage...
 
Being the "cheap bastard' that I am....

(and for a moment, IGNORING the electric company costs...)

I can buy a "4 pack" of 100 Watt incandescents for around one dollar.  Rated life for the 4-pack is approx. 1000 hrs/bulb.

4-Pack thus is approx. 4000 hours total for $1.00

So, for a CFL (or whatever) to be "a wash" for me means the CFL for $1.00 has to have at least 4000 hours of life.

They don't, and they often, literally start smoking...even in an 'open' light fixture.

I've looked at LED replacements, and they seem to cost $25 or $50 apiece for a "100 Watt incandescent equivalent".

Based upon my "4000 hours per dollar", then the LED lamp will have to last for 100,000 to 200,000 hours to be "a wash".

100,000 hours is...hmmmmm....100,000 divided by 24 hours divided by 365....11.4 YEARS running 24/7.

Of course, I'm ignoring the cost of the electricity....which means I'll have to DIG deeper into the math.

But, based upon my experiences with the "piggly wiggly" CFL's OVERSTATED "life"spans, I don't believe the lies about lifetimes, not to mention having to run the lamps inside of an enclosed fixture.

Now I'll have to crank through the numbers that I have to pay OG+E for the electricity....

OTOH, here at "Camp Chaos", the fridge, freezer and (especially!) the central A/C in summertime are the Main Power Suckers!  Year  'round here, I'm also constantly switching OFF unused lighting fixtures....

Looks like the Govt. is trying to "look good" to the tree huggers.....

<G>

Bri

 
Brian,

I'm no tree hugger but there are additional benefits rather than the 4 for a $1 test.  The incandescents are only 17% efficient so switching to an equivalent CFL gives about 3x that, so across the US you could in fact turn off several power stations saving costs on foreign oil imports.  I think that becoming less reliant on external oil supplies and saving money means more to governments than enviromental principles if the truth be known.

The life of LED lamps is ~50,000 hours they say, so I must admit they don't make economic sense at current prices, this is the same with all new technologies, pc's were $1500 when they first came out.  I too have a family that leaves lights on so having CFL gives me some peace on that score.
best
DaveP
 

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