my light bulbs keep burning out!


general electric 100 watt burned out in 20 days

general electric 60  watt burned out in 45 seconds

sylvania        100 watt burned  out in  5 days

phillips        150  watt burned out in 8 days

Hey form109 do you have a voltage meter? You may want to check your household power to see if it is much more than 120V.

@lite_lover no i dont have a volt-meter,but that could be it,or just spotty quality of chinese made lamps.

Those lamps you just said are not Chinese made! You have more then likely a voltage problem! Get a voltmeter and check it!

Ask around the neighborhood if they are having rotten luck with their lamps. If they are then it's the utility transformer is set at the wrong tap and sending a too high a voltage on the secondary.

The primary side have many terminals called taps. That's to adjust the windings since the primary voltage varies a little bit. The lineman find one that will get 120v on the secondary and use that tap.

Sort of adjusting the primary lines on a ballast to get 55v (for HPS). The taps are 120v, 208v, 240v, or 277v. Choose the wrong line for primary and you will change the secondary voltage.

If that the case then you gotta call the utility company and get them to fix the transformer soon because it's not just the lamps that are suffering. Anything that uses 120v or 240v will be damaged. It's thousands of dollars of equipment destroyed.

When they do come over, you can talk to them about streetlights you could have if they aren't too busy to talk. If they're working on the transformer, keep away from them untill they close it and walk away from it to their truck. If they're near the truck and the cherry picker is stowed away you can approach them to chat, if the picker is up in the air with someone inside, best stay away from the truck as well. It's because the primary voltage is in the kilovolts range and if you distract them they could get hurt or killed by a arc-flash which is deadly. It can kill you if you stand too close and it arcs over.

i got a volt meter and measured voltage varying between 115 and 130 volts,so i doubt that its the transformer.
btw local utilities here only use 120 and 240 volts for residental use.
 larger buisness facilities use taps for 208,240,477,480 volts,i checked with the electric company.

anyway you can check the voltage at the socket itself? Could the lamps be overheating, I'm not sure! 

@mr.big i doubt that the lamps are overheating.

@fgs the overhead lines in an average neighborhood range in voltage from 7,200v-16,000v

It's possible your lamps didn't like it when the voltage approached 130V.

Most lamps are rated for 120V,rough service 6000hr lamps are rated at 130V.

I was thinking the same, 130v is prolly killing your lamps. Lamp life is drastically affected when you go up 10 volts, like by roughly a third of life or less. My USA made incandescents are all working fine.

this seems to only happen with my regular incandescent lamps,i have several phillips halogena lamps and they dont seem to be affected.

The regular lamps didn't like the extra 10 volts,the halogena lamps may be a little more tolerant.

it may also be a factor that he aformentioned lamps were opperated in a fixture run close to 24 hours a day,the fixture was also reflective in nature which may have been concentrating heat generated by the lamps.

The heat shouldn't be too much of a problem,especially after only 45 seconds.If these lamps were on almost all the time they would have been exposed to the 130V more often,and then run hotter,mainly late at night when there is less power demand.How long did the previous lamps last in this fixture before this bunch? 

the voltage at the socket varies through the day,the voltage is highest at night(130v)when other appliences on that circuit are off,during the day when the circuit is loaded down the voltage dips to 120 volts.
as for previous bulbs they lasted an average of 60 days each.