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We moved into a 17 year old townhouse several months ago, and
seem to be constantly replacing light bulbs throughout the
place. (porch, hallway, and closet fixtures) We're using
standard light bulbs, (75w and 100w) not fluorescent. I don't
remember having to do this with any of the newer homes we've
owned in the past. Any idea what could be causing this??
Jerome W.
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A couple of things could be going on with your lights.
Vibrations, such as
children jumping and running, can make incandescent bulbs burn
out quickly. Some people install "rough service"
bulbs when they know this is the problem, but those bulbs are
expensive, around $2 versus 25 cents for normal bulbs.
Voltage spikes: I'll
bet you've noticed that bulbs most often blow when you flip a
switch, rather than dying when they've been on for a while.
It's the sudden surge of power that does this, I guess. I've
always figured it was the sudden change in temperature of the
filament that made it break. I've noticed that bulbs
controlled by toggle dimmer switches (not the rotary/push-on
type) seem to last much longer than bulbs controlled by
ordinary switches. My guess is that the power ramps up
smoothly in a fraction of a second, which is less stressful to
the filament. Of course, at about $6 or more for a dimmer, it
will take a lot of bulbs to make up for the extra expense. But
dimmers also let you turn down the lights and save energy
while still being able to see where you're walking.
Somebody used to market a
little device that fit inside the bulb socket and was supposed
to make the bulbs last longer. I'd bet that this device, if it
worked at all, had some sort of "buffering" ability
and smoothed out the voltage spike. But I've never used the
product and I haven't seen it advertised in years.
Statistics: It's
possible that what you are seeing is not really anything
unusual. It may seem odd when 5 different bulbs blow within a
few days, but I'm pretty sure that if someone figured out the
probabilities of it all, it's not that rare. Also, I've
installed light fixtures with multiple bulb sockets, put in
the new bulbs, and then a year later all the bulbs blew within
a few days of each other. They all had the same life span. If
what you've experienced keeps happening every day and every
week, then I'd start to wonder.
Bruce W. Maki, Editor.
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