Does anyone else have constant problems with light bulbs and lighting in their homes? I am at my wits end with mine. Whoever built our house filled it with all kinds of strip lighting which is designed to only take expensive halogen flood lights. The lighting fixtures are a circular base with a socket that only stays in place when a flood light is perfectly inserted face first into the circular base. When they're all working, it is brighter than a sunny day in here.
The problem is that they never seem to all be working! Although they are rated for 1,000 hours they seem to only last about 200 hours. 4-6 weeks after I put them in, they blow out. They never seem to blow out when they are on, but rather right when I flip the switch. It's at a point where I am spending about $30 a month on light bulbs which just seems silly.
Does anyone know of a bulb that might last longer than this one?
http://www.lowes.com/pd_462082-29420-TH-60562FL3_4294801203__?productId=4573350&Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1&pl=1¤tURL=%3FNs%3Dp_product_qty_sales_dollar%7C1&facetInfo=
The only catch is that it has to be
exactly the same circumference otherwise it would just hang from a cord pointed down at the ground rather than fitting into the light fixture.
First, let's decode what the lamp is (technically, the word bulb only refers to the glass shell)
PAR = Parabolic (more or less) Aluminized Reflector. It is a fancy way of saying that depending on where the filament in the lamp is placed, the lamp can create a spot, narrow beam, or flood light.
30 - this is funky but consistent in lamps. It is the width of the bulb in eighths of an inch. ANY PAR30 meets your width requirement.
E means Edison base
26 is 26 millimeters, the width of the Edison base. That is a completely standard U.S. base (Yeah, I know - millimeters instead of inches. GO figure)
1000 hours life. That is NOT designed as a long life lamp. It is halogen, which gives excellent color rendition and is commonly used in lighting displayed artwork.
Halogen is unusual in that it MUST have high temperatures to heat the bulb envelope. The halogen cycle boils off atoms, which redeposit on the filament. If the temperature of the bulb is too low, the deposit occurs on the inside of the bulb, which shortens the lamp life and reduces the output because of the schmutz on the glass. Yeah, you
can dim them - don't.
Skip the CFL's entirely. 95% of them are junk. Incandescents add heat, so skip them as well. Heat in can fixtures is not generally a good thing, although many are designed to tolerate it.
Halogen color temperature is a little towards the daylight blue, similar to sunlight on a clear day. For some purposes that is fine. For interior home lighting a slightly warmer color temp is often preferred. With CFLs and LEDs you generally want to go one step up the wattage equivalents to negate the marketing hype and give a more accurate lumen output once the lamp has had time to burn in. Therefore I would go with a 75 watt equiv.
I would consider this lamp to be a contender:
https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/91033/LED-423442.html
Philips is a reliable brand with much better quality control that many manufacturers, and they have a decent warranty.
Your burnouts sound like common thermal shock. There are ways to reduce it a little, but it won't extend lamp life terribly much. If you have a lot of lamp burnouts everywhere, verify that your incoming power is not too high a voltage. If it is anything above about 124 volts, you might contact the power company and see if they can use a different tap on the mains transformer. The other issue with power can be transients, where the voltage spikes momentarily. A whole house surge protector is the best insurance against that.
