While I'm being grumbly

[emperor]

I thought that one of the points of energy-saving bulbs was that they lasted longer than normal bulbs? We put one in the spod room at Weathertop a matter of months ago, and it's died already :(

Thanks for offers of VDUs, BTW, much appreciated. I'll shout if/when it actually goes pop...

ETA: the bulb that went is an energy-saving bulb...

Comments

[rmc28]

We find that the energy-saving bulbs last much longer than normal ones, but at least some of this is because they seem more resilient to wobbles in the power supply. Standard bulbs tend to pop quickly in this house.

[emperor]

Which is why it's so annoying this energy-saving one has lasted such a short period of time - it lasted less long than the "normal" bulb we had in before it!

[james-r.livejournal.com]

For the most part, standard energy saving light bulbs tend to last almost forever. I do have some extremely low wattage ones (4W) for the stairway, and those ones only seem to last for about a year or two :/ (they do get left on a lot more of the night than the bright ones however)

[emperor]

..so a few months is really very short for an energy-saving bulb. How annoying :(

[edith-the-hutt.livejournal.com]

*sympathies* Energy savers should last longer than that...

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

When that happened to me, I posted the offending bulb back to the manufacturer and they sent me a new one for free.

[gerald_duck]

Ah, but they're cheating.

Incandescent bulbs have got smaller in the last year and don't seem to last as long as they used to, subjectively by quite a large factor.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

AIUI, each time you switch an energy-saving bulb on or off reduces it's lifespan.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Same is true of any bulb, isn't it?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Yes; but much more so for energy saving bulbs, I think.

[velvetpurrs.livejournal.com]

Energy-savers are best used when left on/off for long periods, rather than on/off frequently. They can last as little as a few weeks/months if the latter rather than the former. It was a very expensive learning curve when I discovered that energy-saver in a PIR-activated outside light was a bad thing (cats and wind in a tree set it off repeatedly each night).

But as someone else suggested, worth posting back to the manufacturer, because they really should last longer than that.

I have several here that are now well into several years old.