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Nov 24, 2015
8:47:44am
charles All-American
Heat is the problem. CFL and LED do not tolerate heat like incandescents do.
If you use CFL or LED make sure you have good ventilation. I first observed this with the first CFL I used 25 yrs ago. The physics confirms the observations.

LED are more efficient but the heat the do generate is not
radiated (as infrared light) along with the visible light like an incandescent.

CFL and LED actually retain more heat in the base than incandescent lights and they have electronics in the base that is sensitive to heat. That is why they burn out quickly if they are placed in a fixture with poor ventilation.

An incandescent filament is ~3000 degrees C. A 100 degree C base won't bother it. On the other hand, the electronics in the base of a CFL/LED hates anything over 70 degree C and will last a lot longer if the base is only 50 degrees C.

Example:

Incandescent ~2% efficiency thus a 60 watt bulb emits ~2 watts as visible light and ~58 watts of heat. The heat is in the filament (not the base) and most of it is radiated as infrared light.

A CFL/LED bulb is 8% efficient thus it takes ~15 watts to produce the same visible light. However, 92% of the 15 watts (~14 watts) is retained in the base as heat where the sensitive electronics is, not radiated as in-fared.
This message has been modified
Originally posted on Nov 24, 2015 at 8:47:44am
Message modified by charles on Nov 24, 2015 at 10:00:36am
Message modified by charles on Nov 24, 2015 at 10:14:51am
Message modified by charles on Nov 24, 2015 at 10:25:23am
Message modified by charles on Nov 24, 2015 at 2:29:20pm
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Message modified by charles on Nov 24, 2015 at 2:32:08pm
charles
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charles
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