Rev. Stewart Marshall, You mentioned a high failure rate in your church for floodlights... It has been stated here, and long known that running a light bulb at a higher than rated voltage will shorten it's life significantly. I have (twice) had transformers providing excessive voltage (129v & 131v) to my homes causing high light bulb failure. The problem went away when the transformers were replaced. It's easy to test for this with a voltmeter. Your power company will fix it for free.
Experiment with this formula for lightbulb life: RL = The rated life of a bulb in hours (750) RV= The rated operating voltage of the light bulb (120) AV= Actual voltage applied to the bulb (120) EL= Expected life of lightbulb in hours EL= RL * ( RV / AV )^13.1 The test result should be 750 hours indicating you have set up the formula correctly. Now plug in 130 volts for AV. The life of the bulb drops to 262 hours, nearly 1/3 of it's rated life. Now plug in 100 volts for AV. The life of the bulb soars to 8172 hours. The numbers are so astounding that I question the formula and Googled it. I found a similar formula at http://www.harison-toshiba.com/lampinfo.htm using an exponent of 12. Please note: a light bulb is most efficient (the most light for the least electricity) when run at rated voltage. Using a higher rated bulb, long life bulb, or a dimmer will greatly extend your bulb life. ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
