Marginalized Action Dinosaur » Can you even Use CFL’s in your house?

Marginalized Action Dinosaur » Can you even Use CFL’s in your house?: "This is a perfect example of what happens. The photo was sent to me from the US, and the lamp failed after about 200 hours - somewhat shy of the typical claimed life (to put it mildly). You can see that the electrolytic capacitor is bulging at the end, and it had ruptured its safety seal and leaked electrolyte. The heatshrink tubing around the inductor got so hot that it split, and the “Greencap” capacitors are all seriously discoloured.So, what would cause this? Simple. Most existing home light fittings are designed for conventional incandescent lamps, and have little or no ventilation. Many of the popular fittings typically have no ventilation at all - especially the “oyster’ style, which has a glass dome clipped over a metal ceiling mount unit. There are many other styles of light fittings (luminaires) that are either fully enclosed, or are open only at the bottom.The heat will build up quite quickly, and because it has nowhere to go, will remain in the fitting. Since the maximum ambient temperature for an operating CFL is 50°C, it will only take a few minutes to reach this temperature. Test results for this are shown below. The result is quite clear"


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