My bathrooms - both upstairs and downstairs - burn out fluorescent tubes at an
incredible rate. Although fluorescent tubes are rated for about 20,000 hours
plus, I have to replace my upstairs and downstairs tubes every 10 months or so
- maybe more frequently. In other places around the house I've had tubes in
for 15 years or more and never changed them.
Weirder still, they all seem to go out around the same time. There's no
correlation with brownouts, and it can happen in the winter or summer.
Actually, with some of the highest electrical rates in the nation, we don't
really have too much of a brownout problem here anyway. When they start to
go, I always replace all of them - most of the ends are blackened enough that
they look bad, and I usually procrastinate a week or more by which time we're
lucky if any of them light anyway. And the upstairs ones often seem to burn
out within a few weeks of the downstairs ones.
All the fixtures are separate, single-tube 48" with plain 40-watt rapid-start
ballasts - no electronic ballasts, no starters, no energy saver fixtures, etc.
4 fixtures upstairs and 2 downstairs. The upstairs fixtures are probably 1068
or so, the downstairs ones might be 1975 if I recall correctly. I've checked
the wall switches in both bathrooms for excessive resistance and verified the
voltage at the fixtures. I buy quality 40-watt tubes - Phillips, Sylvania,
etc., the better-color grades and not the work-light or home-shop ones, and
not 34-watt energy-saver tubes.
I've considered the number of on/off cycles they see (maybe 15-20 times per
day), but I can't believe that's it. In our last house I put fluorescents in
the kitchen and we turned them were on and off quite a few times a day. They
were up there for 13 years without any replacements ever.
Is there something else I'm missing?
Thanks!
Karl Vacek
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