Saturday, September 12, 2009

Installing compact fluorecent lamps - A year later

Last November i decided to remove all incandescent lamps from the house and replace them with low power compact fluorescent one's.
I replaced 35 100 Watt lamps with the Osram EL Dulux 20W.
http://www.osram.com/osram_com/News/General_Interest_Press/2007/Press616042.jsp

I chose those because mainly i liked the type of light they produced and decided to pay the extra cost to save some CO2 from the planet and go "green" on lighting.

A compact fluorescent lamp is much more expensive to buy than a standard incandescent one, but you save on the long run from the lower electricity consumption and the *longer* working life its supposed to have.

The Osram El Dulux 20W was rated at 10.000h which would replace 10 normal lamps, according to what is printed on the box.
Assuming an average of 6h of working time for the lamp per day , it should last for approx 1666 days or 4.5 years before it fails.

Well i can report that in less than a year, 8 from the 35 lamps have failed and need it to be replaced.
That's almost 1 in 4 (or close to 25%) loss and sure is not what i had hoped for.

I am not sure why the lamps failed, as they failed in random intervals and random places in the house, with the first staring 3-4 months after it was installed.

I don't believe that anyone from Osram will read this blog post but in the case it does, i have kept most of the failed lamps,as i was looking for a place that would accept them for recycling (yes lamps get recycled and need to be recycled as they contain some "serious" metals and not so good chemicals) and if you want i can send them back for you to test with all expenses paid.

In any case, Osram, you should check your quality as you have a really dissatisfied customer.