Light Bulbs Burning Out

[Don Coombs <dcoombs@uidaho.edu>]

I would like to thank those of you who responded to my initial request to
share experience. Apparently I am not the only one who has a lot of light
bulbs burning out. The bottom line on this situation is yet to be written;
as some of you know, Vera White of the Daily News picked up on the
situation and wrote about it and queried Avista. And -- this certainly
impresses me -- even got a response from Avista, promising a substantive
response later.

My summary of the situation is that the Daily News has one reporter with
some sense of news values.

My summary of some of her sources: She quoted some electrician (anonymous,
unfortunately, because some of us might foolishly employ him or her in the
future) as saying lightbulbs burned out because "the wires were flaky."
That explanation is a non-starter. If the wires were flaky enough, bulbs
would NEVER burn out. To blame excessive bulb burn-out on flaky wires is
like saying that you have put crummy gasoline with water in it in your
car, and that is why your car is speeding.

Other basics which we should understand: light bulbs always burn out when
the switch is first flipped because cold filaments have less resistance
and current surges through when they are first lighted. The bulbs that
have burned for 50 years in somebody's basement are always those which
have been always left on.

So I hope Vera White gets meaningful information from the Avista
spokesperson (such as max voltage supplied each month for the past year)
and that perhaps my strange initial posting a couple weeks ago might have
good long-term results.

As for your home having flakey wiring, I once had somebody install a new
electric range in my home and -- when I called back to say there was 220
volts on the stove-top, not on a burner -- suggest that my home was wired
incorrectly. He was wrong, but the next craftsman to show up did the
installation correctly.

Our present question is whether properly wired outlets are being supplied
with 246/123 volts or more, which would lead naturally to all of us buying
a lot of replacement bulbs.

Don H. Coombs