Light bulbs burning out too often and too soon is a common headache for homeowners. You had light fixtures installed in your home for safety and convenience, yet the bulbs just don’t seem to last.
The first thing to check is the wattage limitations of the fixture itself. Installing a 200 watt bulb in a fixture rated for 60 watts not only will cause the 200 watt bulb to burn out too quickly, but it also becomes a fire hazard. This is due to the excessive heat that will build up in the fixture and surrounding area.
If you’ve made sure you’ve got the correct wattage of quality bulbs installed and you still are replacing them too often, it may be due to excessive vibration. Some bulbs are subject to shaking simply due to their location. Fixtures near a door are a prime example. Another source of vibration may be the occupants of the building, such as a childs bedroom, or equipment such as an exercise room. The constant movement of these items shakes the walls, floors & cielings, and that vibration is transferred to the bulb's filament. If the fixture can be outfitted with 'rough-service' bulbs, that would be one option to try. Rough service bulbs may also be called garage-door operator bulbs, appliance bulbs, or ceiling fan bulbs. They are designed with additional support for the filament than a standard bulb. Another option to look at is Compact Fluorescent (CF) bulbs, which have no filament. And with todays' advancing technology, you may want to look into Light-Emitting-Diode (LED) lights as well.
If none of the above suggestions seem to help, there’s one more thing to try.
And it comes as a surprise to many that there actually are right and wrong ways to proverbially, ‘screw in a light bulb'. You may be twisting them into the socket too tightly.
By ‘cranking down’ on a bulb during installation you may be causing the most damage to the bulb and socket. Premature bulb failure is often caused by bulbs that have been installed too tightly into light fixtures.
Look into the base of a light fixture socket and you will see a brass tab. This tab is bent at an angle when the fixtures are new and will spring back and forth if depressed slightly. Now take several new light bulbs and inspect the base of each one. You will quickly notice that the bottom of most light bulbs has a small dot of solder in the center of the base. More importantly the size of this drop of solder is not exactly consistent. It is close in size, but not always the same size or height.
If the brass tab at the base of the socket does not make firm contact with the bottom of the light bulb, two things may happen. If there is a poor connection between the brass tab and the base of the bulb, the connection may heat up, and this heat cause the filament to burn out too soon.
If the connection is extremely poor, a small electrical arc can occur that starts to melt the solder and eventually burn a tiny hole through the bottom of the base.
To prevent this arcing you must be sure the brass tab is always at about a 30 degree angle inside the bottom of the socket. People who twist bulbs in tightly will depress and flatten the tab so it does not spring back when a bulb is replaced.
If you discover the tab is flattened, then you must turn off the power to the lights at the switch. As an additional safety measure, turn off the circuit breaker to the lights. Use a needle-nose pliers and carefully grasp the sides of the brass tab and slowly pull it up so the end of the tab is about one quarter inch off the base of the socket.
When you install a bulb always do so with the power on and the light switch on. Screw the bulb in enough for the thread to hold the bulb in place. Turn on the power, and continue turning the bulb. As soon as the bulb comes on, turn the bulb one-eighth of a turn. If you screw the bulb in too tightly, you will once again flatten the brass tab.
