CF BULBS….A year ago Marian and I replaced about 20 bulbs around the house with CF bulbs. Hooray for saving energy! But one of them just burned out, and it occurred to me as I was replacing it that this is the fourth or fifth one I’ve had to replace. The first one I figured was just bad luck. Nobody has a perfect manufacturing record. The second one seemed like more bad luck. The third one made me think something was going on. Now I’m up to four. Maybe five, if I’ve forgotten one.
Now, maybe this has nothing to do with the bulbs. Maybe the wiring in my house sucks — though ordinary incandescent bulbs have never given out on me like this. And the CF bulbs are supposed to last practically forever. It’s one of their selling points.
A 20% failure rate over the course of a year sure seems excessive, no? Anybody else have the same problem?
UPDATE: We don’t turn the CF bulbs on and off a lot, so I don’t think that’s the issue. And we’ve used several different brands, so I don’t think that’s it either. (Though I haven’t kept track of what brands we’ve purchased and which ones have failed, so who knows?)
However, I’m pretty sure that the failues have almost all been in recessed ceiling fixtures, not in table lamps. I wonder if that has something to do with it?
