CFL's and Fire Hazard

jak1

14 years ago

Check out my post on the Perennials Forum....

Cheers,

Julie

Comments (6)

jak1
Original Author
14 years ago
Never mind - it got yanked already.

Our smoke alarms have been going off at odd hours and we have been unable to find the cause.

Recently the light in TCS's room burned out. When DH went to change the bulb today, he found that the "twisty" CFL that we had installed was yellow around the base of the bulb and the base itself was burned and black with a hole melted in it.

Researching this on the net indicates that this is not uncommon and is generally not a fire hazard. Nonetheless, we are uncomfortable with this and we will be contacting our local fire department and are removing all of the CFL's that we have installed in the house. Note that this was not a dimmer switch installation (CFL's are usually not to be used with dimmer switches).

If you have CFL's in your house (and most people do by now) be sure to check them regularly for signs of yellowing, melting, or overheating and replace them at once if there are any such indications.

I will try to post a photo of the burned out bulb tomorrow.

Cheers,

Julie
gardenbug
14 years ago
Hey, I answered over there!
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dodgerdudette
14 years ago
I hate CFLs and have been stockpiling incandescants . I'm a light bulb survivalist , lol.

Kathy in Napa
saucydog
14 years ago
I didn't see this until now.

I have been diligently replacing all my incandescents - and I'm not terribly excited about the result. The light is okay, but my biggest complaint is that they don't last as many "years" as advertised.

Thank you for the heads up on this....I will keep an eye out for this!
deanneart
14 years ago
Thanks for the heads up about the problems Julie. Like Saucy, we've been replacing all the bulbs in the house.
But I've also found that they don't last anywhere near as long as they should.

Deanne
Jerri_OKC
14 years ago
I'm late finding this. I'm with Kathy on this one. We are out in the country and have frequent very short power flickers. The CFLs burn out very quickly, sometimes in a couple of days. ARGH! Maybe they will 'improve' them but in the mean time we are stocking up on incandescents.

Jerri

P.S. I can't begin to count the number of people I've heard that are just throwing these in the landfill. :(