Excessive??? Compact fluorescents failing.

[GBDamo]

Would like to tap into the hive mind a bit.

A customer has approximately seventy suspended ceiling modular lights with TL5C circular fluorescents in and is calling us out roughly every six weeks to change lamps, five or six at a time.

Averaging out gives a lamp life of about 18 months which I don’t think is too bad. No one fitting is constantly blowing lamps.

The fittings are five years old and already a few ballasts have failed.

They have asked me to “test” them to see why the lamps are blowing so frequently.

I have noticed singe marks around the lamp holder and some of the internals are showing signs of heat damage.

Other than ballast output/input and general tightness of connections and lampholder what else would you be looking for?

Or are they just reaching their age and are due replacement?

 

[gnuuser]

The leds are going to be a difficult sell on energy saving grounds alone, because the tl5cs are fairly efficient at 3300 lumens/40W but that said none of them apart from the new ones will be producing anything like that. Leds would however maintain their output for longer and be instant on compared to the relatively slow warm-up times of the cfls.

correct and most cfl are not designed to work below a certain ambient temperature.

ha ha! had one customer put cfl lamps in his outside lights and called me when the weather got cold thinking something was wrong with the electric (he didn't read the label on the lamp)
anyhow replaced them with led lamps and alls good.