light bulb question

As long as your electricity supply is 120v AC you can use the bulb safely.

A 6W 'energy saving' bulb gives roughly the same light as an old-fashioned 60 w bulb. You may choose to fit a higher power 'energy saving' bulb if you need more light (I think the max available on the market is about 23 watts).

The 100w limit for your lamp indicates the maximum safe power useable in that lamp from a fire hazard consideration (temperature).

Thank you so much Rhymer. That means my 13W bulb gives roughly the same light as an old-fashioned 130W bulb. Why wouldn't that be fire hazardous since it exceeds the 100W limit?

Dont confuse power with amount of light.

A 13/15W 'conserv energy' bulb produces the same amount of light as a 75W standard bulb. But it still uses the 13W of power. So you are very far from your 100W power limits.

When a lamp says"Use 60W max bulb" on it, it's because incandescent bulbs (the usual globe-shaped ones), get very hot, and the higher the wattage the hotter. Since they all have the same base size, you can put a higher-wattage bulb in a lamp with a lower rating. What happens then is that the too-high-wattage bulb basically cooks the socket, which wasn't designed to handle that much power. Lots of its parts are plastic, they get fried, and the socket fails, usually harmlessly, but sometimes shorting out or in worst case catching fire. Seems like a lot of lamp makers have been downsizing their capacities lately to 60W, and that's just not enought anymore for my aging eyes.

The energy-saving fluoro bulbs operate on lower wattages. Their equivalents used to be wildly optimistic. When they said "equivalent to a 100W incandescent bulb", it used to actually be more like a 60W bulb. With the new generation that seemed to come out a couple of years ago, the ratings seemed much more accurate. A 25W energy bulb does in fact look about like a 100W one, but it uses only the stated 25W (or even less according to the inverter I use), and runs much cooler than incandescent bulbs (in fact, probably cooler than a 25W incandescent. A 13W fluoro is probably about equivalent to a 60W incandescent in light output. Even a 25W fluoro should be no problem in a 60W socket. But if the bulb in your garage has been there for a cuple years, you might want to get a new one, since in my experience they've really improved the technology (and they're now instant start, they're full brightness from turn on and don't gradually get brighter over a couple minutes, and they're flicker-free, which some of the earlier ones definitely were not).

As a matter of fact, we built this simulation case, to show a comparison between a 15W conserve energy bulb and a 75 W standard one.

As you can see, the amount of light is the same.

But the power consumption and the costs are very different.

The simulation goes throught a period of 720 hours condensed in 2 minutes.

How may A2kers does it take to change a light bulb?

count 'em folks

As a matter of fact, the bulb I digged up from my gararge was indeed several years old- and I still have half a dozen of them. Per past experience I'll have to wait a couple more years for them to be all used up so I can try the new technology ones **sigh**

Conserv-Energy bulb burns up!
Hi, does anyone know why a Conserv-Enery bulb, 23W 120VAC 60Hz 360mA would all of a sudden start burning in my lamp. Very scary! Smoke poured out, base started turning to charcoal. I know it has mercury in it. Any suggestions as to what I should do?
Thanks,
BudOne

Turn it off budOne that would be a good start.
get a sparky to look at it for safety reasons

Another Conserv-Energy Bulb catches on fire.
As "BudOne" reported several months ago, I'm starting to think that "Conserv-Energy" brand compact flourescents have a serious problem. A bulb that I would estimate to be 2-3 years old started smoking and the base of the bulb began to melt. As Budone reported, this was a 23w bulb. It appears to me that the connection in the base to the tube became resistive and heateted up. Where the tube connected to the bulb base got hot enough to glow. There is a good chance that this would have caused a fire had we not noticed it and unplugged it (many thanks to the cat who called our attention to it!). The bulb is UL listed. Is there a place to report such failures? I thought this might be an isolated incident, but BodOnes'e experience would suggest otherwise. I fear that this could be a serious fire hazard.

BudOne,
the same thing happened to me. damn near started a fire, that's how I found this post!! There is NOTHING on the InterWeb about the dangers of these flourescent bulbs burning up by the sockets!! DANGER WILL ROBINSON

Francis, have you heard of this kind of problem?

I have, indeed, Roger.

Some of the problems reported originated from bad contacts on the bulb support.

Bad contacts lead to heating the bulb base, which in turn provokes the melting of the solder's electrical connection, worsening the heat.

Ultimately, it will burn the bulb and the support.

But these are not the only reasons that lead to these incidents.

We have observed lately that the quality of the solder is far too low to stand the current necessary to the bulb.

A solder is usually composed of 60Sn/40Pb. But many of these bulbs are made in China, where the components do not have the required accuracy levels to stand safety.

I could explain it in detail but it would probably be boring.

Suffice to say, I've many other examples in safety issues about China products, sorry the Chinese...

Thanks. The next, and kind of rhetorical question would be, how do you find bulbs and other items not made in China. Since even established brands seem to be popping up with the Made in China label, no answer is expected.

Hey, that was gonna be my line

First, you must find out if the light bulb is ready to change.

Then you check yo see if you have one to replace it with.

Aren't these bulbs supposed to last longer than standards?
The main problem I'm having is these bulbs are burning out faster than my standard bulbs. Anyone else noticed that?

Also, who is this "Conserv-Energy" company? I was trying to contact them but can't find any information?