Compact fluorescent bulbs -- Greening NYC but perhaps smoking up your home.



Compact fluorescent bulbs can come to an end by charring around the base and smoking up.

Compact fluorescent bulbs are great, they save energy and last forever but after a few years they can fail -- not just stop working but really FAIL and smoke up.

This shocked me -- I still use them but not in fixtures that are inside and left on when we are not home.

This is meant just as a heads up.

Here is info taken from the web:
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From the CBC:
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Advisory aims to allay fluorescent bulb fears

March 21, 2007
CBC News

Ontario's Electrical Safety Authority will issue a warning later this week to notify users of the unexpected way compact fluorescent light bulbs expire at the end of their long lifespan.

Ted Olechna, a provincial code engineer with the Mississauga-based authority, said he plans to post the warning on its website. The bulbs come to an end by charring around the base, producing smoke and emitting a bad smell.

That has scared some homeowners into calling fire departments, he said. But there have been no reports of fires resulting from fluorescent bulbs in Ontario, Olechna said.

The upcoming advisory will explain that this is the normal way for these energy-efficient bulbs, which can last up to 10,000 hours, to die.

It will also explain dos and don'ts for using the bulbs. For example, they need to be used in an open-light fixture rather than a closed-light fixture since they generate heat, the authority said.

The authority said the warning will be handy for homeowners, particularly since several provinces are considering banning incandescent bulbs in favour of fluorescent ones to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Excerpt from this site: http://savagehamsters.com/?p=9
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...what happens when they ?burn out?? The failure mode of regular incandescent lightbulbs is to stop working because the filament becomes heat-brittled and finally breaks; the bulbs burn-out harmlessly. Worst-case they might shatter and make a glassy mess, but who can remember when this last happened (unless water contacted the lit bulb). When a compact fluorescent bulb ?burns out? there are NO guarantees about what will happen. I?ve had two compact fluorescent bulbs burn out this week. The first was a 14-watt bulb and the second was a 23-watt bulb (each from different manufacturers).

The 14-watt bulb made the lights on the same circuit cut-out several times within a few seconds and then started spewing a stream of smoke and making popping sounds. I turned the wall switch off and went to remove the bulb. It was still smoking and too hot to handle. The nice thing is that the smoke was acrid enough to spawn an asthma attack.

The 23-watt bulb (a couple days later) made the lights cut-out three times and then started vigorously spewing a column of smoke and some small sparks (reminiscent of a Roman candle firework). I turned off the wall switch and waited for it to cool off.

The failure of each light required me to open all the windows and break out a fan to get rid of the acrid smoke. I checked with an electrician afterwards and was told that compact fluorescent bulbs don?t just ?burn out? and then stop working ? their failure mode is not predictable and can include smoke and flames. I showed him my 23-watt bulb and told him it wasn?t in failure mode for more than a few seconds before I was able to turn it off. I was informed that this is pretty much the norm.

Clearly the electrician is being a bit over-dramatic here, but two bulbs in one week bears some consideration. I know that the majority of my compact fluorescent bulbs have been replaced when they grew too dim to be useful. These are the first in my house (in over six years) to actually ?burn out,? so, some perspective is necessary, but I believe that some precautions are in order as well.

Had I not been home in either instance, the chances that a fire could have started were too high to be acceptable to me. From now on, lights that are on timers (either normally, or for a vacation) are going to have standard incandescent bulbs in them.