Wednesday, April 14, 2010

CFL Bulbs

Good Morning!  I hope you all are having a good week and welcome to the middle of it!!!  Today I am posing a question more than posting a blog.  I need a little feedback from you, my dedicated readers.  I have the strangest problem going on and I can't figure it out.  Since the birth of the CFL bulb craze, I have purchased a couple of varieties of them, and I must say we have been sorely disappointed.
Granted, I never have the big bucks to pay for the top brands I'm sure, but I know that the last two boxes I have purchased have been name brand, because they have been from Costco (GE).  As a matter of fact, the first box that I bought from Costco, I had so many go bad in such a short amount of time, less than a year, I took them back thinking that they were defective.  I am currently on the replacement box now, and just walked into my office and blew one of the new bulbs, which is what has prompted me to pose this question to all of you.
As crazy as it sounds, I am honestly thinking it has something to do with this being an old house.  I am wondering if any of you have older wiring and have had issues with these very expensive and then hard to dispose of bulbs lasting even shorter than regular light bulbs would in your home?  I am all for helping the environment (as you have probably gathered by now), but The Royal Ranch consuming these CFL's like they are going out of style doesn't really seem right to me, what do you think?

4 comments:

Mishaun Search said...

Judy, we have had problems with these too! We returned a box too and have replaced many in the amount of time a regular bulb would last. It's possible that it could be your wiring too. But all our wiring is new and spent a fortune replacing all bulbs. Not only did we waste several hundred dollars doing this, we never even saw a dent in our bill. Personally, I think they are a hoax. We are always replacing them also! Going back to regular bulbs and just being more conservative on using the lights.

Mishaun Search said...

Judy, we have had problems with these too! We returned a box too and have replaced many in the amount of time a regular bulb would last. It's possible that it could be your wiring too. But all our wiring is new and spent a fortune replacing all bulbs. Not only did we waste several hundred dollars doing this, we never even saw a dent in our bill. Personally, I think they are a hoax. We are always replacing them also! Going back to regular bulbs and just being more conservative on using the lights.

lfhpueblo said...

Ours only blow if we get a power surge and the surge goes to that particular area of least resistance. We get lots of surges because of the electrical carrier we have who has to borrow electricity or buy electricity from time to time from other electrical companies. When they do the switching during the buying times they don't always get it just in sync and therefore we end up with a very momentary surge.
We finally put surge protectors on anything that gets plugged in, but there is no way to do that on ceiling lights.
We use the GE CFL's too, and I have never noticed a problem except when we've had a couple of bad and longer surges.

Daisy said...

1. Ask an electrician to give your house a once-over just in case.
2. Consider the newer alternative: halogen light bulbs. I reviewed a set recently, and we liked them enough to buy more. These work well in my old (1890) home.