[aprssig] TAPR Dayton Solar Talk

[Rich Mulvey]

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Brian B. Riley <brianbr at mac.com> wrote:
>  I keep hearing both these complaints and in 22 years off grid, and I haven't seen it.
>
> I have CFLs that are 20 years old (back then they cost $30-35 a piece!) that still work. The newer ones that you can now buy for $1-2 each seem to last me 5+ years. I have 57 CFL bulbs in active use and in the last 5 years I have had exactly 2 fail and both were over 2 years old.
>
> If yours are going in a month then you need to ask yourself "why?"
>

   Unfortunately, it's not like you can just swap out your local
electrical grid and house wiring to isolate an issue.

   In our case, we have no issues with any other electronics in the
house.  In fact, since I telecommute, we have several UPS's all over
the house that set up a racket during the extraordinarily rare
occasions when we have power issues like under/overvoltage.  We have a
ton of electronics that are sensitive to power conditions.  But it's
the bulbs that die prematurely.

  Our CFL's, purchased at a variety of local hardware, department,
etc. stores, and compromising a variety of brands, don't outlast
incandenscents, and they DEFINITELY  don't last anywhere remotely near
5 years.  Discussions with other people in the same neighborhood, as
well as on the net, indicate that this is pretty common.

 So when the ONLY devices having problems are the CFL's, and they're
sourced from multiple places, where exactly does one go from there?
It's all well and fine to assert that they're supposed to be reliable
and long-lasting, but, well, in my and many other's experience, they
aren't.

> Think about it ..... could they really keep selling these bulbs if they had that little life expectancy. They'd be out of business in a year or less.
>

   I disagree.  I can think of a whole lot of electronics
manufacturers that have sold crap for years but are still in business,
especially ones that rely on frequent replacements.  :-)


- Rich

-- 
rich at mulveyfamily.com