Why do cfls glow

Homepage Header Search box Search. Do the twist. Choose 3 for 3. Only use bulbs labeled as three-way on three-way sockets. Only use bulbs labeled as dimmable on dimmer switches. Check your controls. Give them air. Protect them outside. Because it is inside the cover, there is nowhere for the hot air to escape.

The extra heat puts some stress on the bulb, causing it to have a slightly shorter life than if it were a bare spiral CFL. Search Litetronics Blog. Back to article list. Light bulb warm-up time Amalgam is a substance composed of mercury and other metals that increases the temperature at which mercury vaporizes inside the fluorescent tube and prevents the CFL from overheating.

And there is plenty of reason for its popularity: the bulbs use as little as a fifth of the energy of an incandescent to generate equivalent lighting and have longer lives than incandescents--many CFLs promise up to seven or even nine years of service assuming 3 hours or so of use per day , adding up to many thousands of hours of lighting. These energy savings help reduce greenhouse gas all temissions from power plants while simultaneously lowering electric bills.

That's not to say this quality light source doesn't come without its own problems. These pricey bulbs occasionally go out with a smoky, smelly bang and, like any other product, they can fail well before their promised lifetime is up. Unlike incandescent bulbs, which generate light by running a current through a metal filament, CFLs have hundreds of electrical components.

The more parts in a system, the greater the opportunities for of one of them to fail, says Conan O'Rourke, technical director at the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In a bulb that burns out early, the electronic components may have been inferior in quality or poorly installed, or the bulbs might have been physically damaged in some way during transport from China, where most are manufactured.

The electrical components also complicate the end of life for the CFL. When dying a timely or untimely death, a CFL's components may not get the message that the bulb is no longer working, and it continues to let electricity flow through the plastic base to the nonworking bulb.

This creates a puff of smoke and an acrid smell as well as a charred blackening that appears at the bulb's base. This pyrotechnic display may also be spurred by a dried-out electrolytic capacitor--the "weakest link" in a CFL, according to O'Rourke. Still, for a large number of situations, the CFL is the best, brightest, most efficient bulb for the job.