Incandescent light bulbs are officially banned in the U.S.::America’s ban on incandescent light bulbs, 16 years in the making, is finally a reality. Well, mostly.
Nobody’s talking about the real casualty of this shift. What’s going to happen to all the jokes about “how many (insert category of person here) does it take to change a light bulb?” now that people don’t have to regularly change light bulbs anymore?
Or the old riddle of having to match 3 lights to 3 switches with only one guess, since the solution relied on the bulb getting hot and LEDs barely get warm.
It’s an old riddle where a room has three lights and outside the room is the panel with three switches. They’re not labeled and you don’t know which switch controls which bulb. You’re allowed to switch any two, then you get to open the door and you have to determine which switches control which lights.
The solution is, that you flip switch #1, wait five minutes and then flip switch #2. Then you immediately go into the room.
Two lights will be on, meaning the bulb that’s off is the third switch. Then you feel the bulbs that are on: the one that’s warm already is the #1 and the other that’s on but still cool is #2.
LEDs don’t heat up like that so this technique is broken.
I think it’s along the lines of “you’re in a room with three lightswitches. They control three lightbulbs in a different room (so you can’t see them from the room with the switches). You get some time to use the switches, and then you go to the other room and have to guess what switch controls what lightbulb. You aren’t allowed to go back and flip the switches again once you leave.” The solution generally is to flip one switch, leave one off, and flip the last one on for awhile but then turn it off just before you leave to go to the other room. The lightbulb that’s lit obviously goes with the switch you flipped on, and the other two are off. One of these two will be warm though, because it was recently turned on, and that one goes to the switch you flipped on and then off.
“A windowless room contains three identical light fixtures, each containing an identical light bulb or light globe. Each light is connected to one of three switches outside of the room. Each bulb is switched off at present. You are outside the room, and the door is closed. Before opening the door you may play around with the light switches as many times as you like. But once you’ve opened the door, you may no longer touch a switch. After this, you go into the room and examine the lights. How can you tell which switch goes to which light?”
The solution is:
- Turn two switches on, leave one off
- Wait a few minutes
- Turn one of the “on” switches off
Now, when you enter the room, you’ll have one lit bulb, one warm unlit bulb, and one cold unlit bulb, letting you solve the riddle.
No single LED lightbulb I’ve ever purchased lasts as long as they claim. infact, many have been outlasted by existing incandescent bulbs in my house. your joke fodder is safe.
That’s really dependent on local regulation, and wether or not you bought products licensed to be sold where you live or random imports from AliExpress.
My smart LED lights were bought in 2017, they are still working perfectly and have zero signs of issues - same brightness, same connection strength, same white point. The only exception was precisely the cheapo desk lamp one I bought from an online reseller, that one lasted a year and the control board fried itself.
I buy all my stuff at Target, Walmart, or Home Depot. I have to replace my LED bulbs just as much if not more than I ever had to with Incandescents. In my last house I had incandescents that lasted the entire 8 years I was there, while I replaced other leds multiple times.
I don’t know what kind of shit LEDs you’ve been buying but I’ve yet to ever have to replace one. Been using them for many years already.
LED’s produce a lot of heat at higher “wattages”. IE: the 75w+ equivalents can throw out some heat. And if its recessed in a can or upside down on a chandelier but with a decorative covering, they will often go out due to heat. Hell I have seen some with giant heatsinks on them to try and compensate.
I had a series of 150w LED’s i was burning through. Eventually I moved to just replace the bulb and fixture with a ceiling light like this
LED’s are also sensitive to dirty power, probably more-so than Incandescents. I have run through some because of surges and brownouts as well.
I generally use Phillips brand LED bulbs if it helps, but do have some others.
Finally, the lower wattage bulbs (ie: 10-15w equivalent) will sometimes have a “pulse” to it. Dimmer LED’s also tend to do this, and you often have to tune the dimmer switch to a higher brightness for “low” to compensate.
All that said, they are still leaps and bounds better.
Same experience here. Every single LED lightbulb i’ve bought, since the time I started using them, has outlasted basically everything else I’ve purchased before. It draws less energy and doesn’t produce basically any heat too, which is excellent
I’ve been using LED bulbs for a good number of years, I’ve only had one or two die on me. The longevity alone makes them much better than incandescent, but then they use a tenth the power.
My favorite is the A15 Edison style. That’s the appliance size, smaller than the standard A19. The A15 fits in everything so I only need to stock one size.
Don’t just buy cheap shit. And get your wire/vakuum/kitchen appliance checked for spikes.
My LED bulbs have hilariously short lives. I suspect the wiring in my apartment is just not that great because lights do flicker from time to time. But that didn’t seem to hurt incandescent bulbs. I’m lucky if my LEDs last even one year, never mind the 10 or 20 some of them claim.
What am I supposed to do, but my overhead light fixtures on a UPS?!
You are right that local electricity might be in play. I’ve lived in the same house for 6 years and I’ve not had a single light fail. We replaced most bulbs when we moved in because they were mostly CFLs. It’s been great. But I wouldn’t put it past LED manufacturers, even name brand ones, from cheaping out on the bad power protections.
My mom buys these cheap LED bulbs from Amazon and about half burn out quickly (probably 10% are DOA).
We have 100% LEDs throughout our fifth wheel (about 30 of them), and they are all still going strong (all installed in 2015, and used daily since then).
I think there’s a serious difference in quality available and it certainly shows.
I’ve also had very different results, depending on brand. Definitely avoid the cheap stuff
Now I have the opposite problem: brands and styles change too much. What do you do when one bulb of a multi-bulb fixture burns out, but they’ve all outlasted the brand or style? I do already have a drawer full of LED bulbs that I replaced so the fixture would match, and can’t always find a fixture with fewer bulbs
There’s a tradeoff with CFL bulbs between longevity and instant action. The normal expectation for a light bulb is to have it at full brightness the moment you flip the switch, but the first CFL bulbs to market often took minutes to reach peak output. Longer if they were cold.
So to meet consumer expectations, manufacturers began designing bulbs that would, on ignition, damage themselves in order to reach peak output faster.
It’s no wonder the CFL bulb failed as a product, you would either get a bulb that would never be bright enough when you needed it, or you got a bulb that would burn itself out just as quickly as any incandescent for twice the price.
As someone living in the EU where incandescent bulbs have been banned for over a decade, I can assure you that changing lightbulbs is still a thing. Not as frequently, but it happens, especially if you buy cheaper brands LED bulbs. They definitely does not have the longevity that they advertise.
