2 ms·
I don't know, this may be anecdotal, much like your experience. But I have three fluorescent bulbs that have been running for at least the past five years. One
by overcast 10y ago
I don't know, this may be anecdotal, much like your experience. But I have three fluorescent bulbs that have been running for at least the past five years. One of them runs all night from dusk till dawn, even through New York winters. The other is in the garage, and the other is above a stove, that runs all night as well.
- throwaway84284 10y agoThere you go, the reason yours last is because you're not switching them on and off 10 times a day everyday, like one would their bedroom light.
- Grishnakh 10y agoI wonder how much is also because they might be comparing apples to oranges: the guy with long-lived fluorescents sounds like he's using the traditional long tube kind, which are indeed known for very long lifespans, which is why they've been used in offices for many decades. The other guy complaining probably used CFLs, which are notorious for the cheap ones having very short lifespans, not because of the fluorescent bulb itself, but because of the cheap, crappy electronic ballast packaged inside. These bulbs almost always fail because of the electronics. On a traditional fluorescent system, the bulbs are just bulbs, with no electronics at all, and the ballast is a separate part that's built to last decades (the life of the fixture). Only the bulb is routinely replaced. When they went to CFLs, this changed, since they were trying to retrofit CFLs into sockets meant for incandescent bulbs, so they packaged a small electronic ballast into the base of the bulb assembly. And of course, to keep costs down, they massively cheaped out on the ballast electronics. With high voltages (needed to ionize the gas), it's easy for marginal components to fail early.