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CFL bulbs means Can FLame ?

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I've encountered a couple CFLs that suffered catastrophic failures. I'm not sure but I suspect the electronics caught fire inside the base. The PCBs had some pretty nasty charring. The smell was absolutely horrendous. Both were Lights of America floodlights. After the second one burned up we decided to recycle the rest of that batch rather than take any more chances. I definitely won't buy another Lights of America product. Their quality is just garbage. The sad thing is those bulbs weren't at all cheap either.
 
MWink said:
I've encountered a couple CFLs that suffered catastrophic failures. I'm not sure but I suspect the electronics caught fire inside the base. The PCBs had some pretty nasty charring. The smell was absolutely horrendous. Both were Lights of America floodlights.
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Lights of America is one of the worst brands, whether CFL, tube fluorescent, or incandescent. Fortunately all CFLs are made of highly fire resistant plastic, so failures aren't particularly hazardous, just very foul smelling.
 
I buy the cheap utilitech LEDs from Lowe's. I really hope I won't regret that decision in a couple of years.
 
Mark R said:
That depends. I've had some fantastic LEDs, and some truly craptastic LEDs.

I bought a set of 8 LED bulbsonce - the edge of the beam was yellow, and the center was deep blue; the bulbs were "live" to the touch, and 4 out of 8 burned out within 1 week, with 1 of them bursting into flames, melting the lamp holder and scorching the ceiling.
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Stop buying cheap Chinese garbage and you won't have any of those problems, buy the Cree bulbs. I have about a dozen of them in my house, color is great and not a single burn out.

We have one that is on a timer that runs for 6 hours a night every night and it's always been trouble free, can put your hand on the bulb without burning it no matter how long it's been running. I'm a stickler for having 2700K color in the living areas and their colors are right on.

Just baffles me that people talk about "German Engineering" and how it's the best in the world, but then when it comes to Chinese Engineering they don't equate it to the bottom 5 in the world, they can't build anything worth a damn in that dump, not even a compass and they invented that bitch thousands of years ago... hell our Chinese food is better here even.
 
Speaking of CFLs, anyone know where they can generally be turned in to be recycled? (instead of throwing them in the trash)
 
ThinClient said:
Yes, your one singular experience dictates that all products act this way.
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Of course not, his might have been built incorrectly or had incorrectly spec'ed parts in it but nonetheless it can happen, even if it is very rare. Ive seen a lot of regular bulbs go "Supernova" for 1-2 seconds when they burn out the filament, kinda neat when it's accompanied with the loud pop as well but I've never had the glass break one one, ever.
 
CFLs are crap and have always been crap. Once you get the LEDs, you'll never go back. That said, I've never had any catch fire. Must have got a bad one, or the OP is buying some knockoff brand.

Tester88 said:
Speaking of CFLs, anyone know where they can generally be turned in to be recycled? (instead of throwing them in the trash)
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IIRC, I think places like Home Depot have a recycling service for CFLs. You just drop them off in a box at the store.
 
Pulsar said:
Snort.

I was sitting in my living room with my wife two years ago, when we heard a 'pop'. An incandescent - just the bulb - went flying over our head into the wall. I thought that a bit odd. It had broken free from our light on the cathedral ceiling, and instead of just falling it actually fired it nearly sideways. The bulbs are at a 45 degree angle in the ceiling fixture. The base of the bulb was still screwed in to the light fixture. So I shut it off and replaced it.

Over the next 3 weeks, we would periodically hear a 'pop', and one of those bulbs would go flying.

I suspect we just got a bad batch of bulbs where the glass wasn't bonded to the base, and the thermal stress as they heated was enough to launch them....... but we still wonder.
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So after this happened a couple of times you just thought fuck it i'm just going to leave the rest to randomly fire a glass projectile across the room?
 
Red Squirrel said:
I wonder how that tech works, they don't really explain it. Guessing it's probably patented though so nobody else can do it anyway. They mention induction, sounds interesting.
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Acandescence™ is a new lighting technology that utilizes induction to initiate and sustain a non-thermodynamic equilibrium plasma, coupled with state-of-the-art phosphors, to produce white light with the warm color of a typical incandescent light bulb. Ok . . . what’s induction? Induction is about creating magnetic fields. Let me explain. Most common lighting technologies use filaments or electrodes to bring an electric current into the interior of a light bulb. Induction lighting starts with an insulated copper coil wrapped around a ferrite core. High frequency power from an electronic ballast is sent through the coil to produce a magnetic field which initiates and sustains a steady-state plasma. The plasma generates UV light which is converted to visible light when it hits a phosphor coating on the inside of the bulb.
 
Pretty much... they need to come up with a lightning standard that uses either DC voltage to drive LEDs directly, or high voltage AC to drive neon tubes directly. Get rid of all the mini ballasts/controllers and have those sit in a central higher quality box somewhere along with the electrical panel. Would take a while to adopt that standard but they could sell retro fit sockets/light fixtures in the meantime.
 
ThinClient said:
Yes, your one singular experience dictates that all products act this way.
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Schfifty Five said:
You're making some pretty generalizations based off of your one incident.
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l2r


Elixer said:
Looking on google, it seems this isn't uncommon at all, and it can happen with both CFLs & LED based bulbs.
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I've had a couple of CFLs get very very hot when they went bad. I immediately turned them off, but I worry about what could have happened. This has never happened to me with an incandescent. I never buy CFLs anymore.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I wonder how that tech works, they don't really explain it. Guessing it's probably patented though so nobody else can do it anyway. They mention induction, sounds interesting.
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Yup. RF induction to ionize a gas plasma. Link

This has been used in industrial lighting for over 20 years. It's more expensive than fluorescent, because of the need for the RF coil, but it is super reliable, with bulb life in the 80k-100k hour range. It's commonly used for stuff like tunnel lighting, exhibition halls, parking garages - or anywhere where it is lights are used for long periods, and where replacement is extremely inconvenient and expensive.
 
That smell when they burn out at the base... my god...

Probably one of the reasons I turned anti-CFL was adopting them early and then experiencing one burning out right over my head. It was smoking and smelled horrible and took me a good 15 minutes of panic to figure out what it was since it smelled like an electrical fire.
 
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