New Bulbs in the Kitchen
Feb. 10th, 2026 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kayla_allenA couple of days ago, the box with the 30 T12/48 long-tube florescent bulbs arrived. Yesterday, Lisa came and (with me holding things as directed) replaced all of the bulbs in the fixture.
The box containing the thirty long tubes was carefully packaged. The inner box (at right) had the bulbs in egg-carton-light packaging that kept the bulbs from shifting around inside the box. That box was in turn packed into a larger box with spacers to keep it from shifting. Lisa carefully cut the box open.
She then pulled four bulbs from the box. You can see some of the packing material near her hands in the box in this shot.
In the kitchen, removing the cover was much easier since we'd done it a few days ago. Lisa did the work while I held things at her direction. She then took all four old bulbs (which as you may recall were two pairs of mismatched K values or "color") out of the fixture and we set them aside.
Incidentally, these replacement bulbs were made in the USA by Phillips, not imported.
The bulbs work in pairs: the inner two and the outer two are paired. The first two were fine, but when she put the other two in place, they didn't want to work. She moved them a little bit to see if they were properly seated, and one bulb came on barely, like what happens when one bulb burns out. Upon experimentation with one of the bulbs that had been there before, we decided that one of the new bulbs was defective. That's okay; with this many spares, and with their expected service life, we do not expect to need to worry about this. Pulling another new bulb from the box, Lisa installed it and everything worked.
Lisa re-installed the cover and now we have consistent light in the kitchen, which in retrospect we have not had for a while, as the old bulbs appear to have been mismatched as well even before they started failing. Also, as the fixture itself probably had not been cleaned since before we moved here in 2011, it's much cleaner and doesn't obscure the light.
We put the four older bulbs into the box and stored it away in a closet. The burned-out bulbs are waiting for me to have an opportunity to take them to Lowe's, where they have accepted such bulbs for safe disposal in the past. That is of course another problem with these things: you shouldn't just put them in the dumpster, and they are too long to fit anyway.
The box containing the thirty long tubes was carefully packaged. The inner box (at right) had the bulbs in egg-carton-light packaging that kept the bulbs from shifting around inside the box. That box was in turn packed into a larger box with spacers to keep it from shifting. Lisa carefully cut the box open.
She then pulled four bulbs from the box. You can see some of the packing material near her hands in the box in this shot.
In the kitchen, removing the cover was much easier since we'd done it a few days ago. Lisa did the work while I held things at her direction. She then took all four old bulbs (which as you may recall were two pairs of mismatched K values or "color") out of the fixture and we set them aside.
Incidentally, these replacement bulbs were made in the USA by Phillips, not imported.
The bulbs work in pairs: the inner two and the outer two are paired. The first two were fine, but when she put the other two in place, they didn't want to work. She moved them a little bit to see if they were properly seated, and one bulb came on barely, like what happens when one bulb burns out. Upon experimentation with one of the bulbs that had been there before, we decided that one of the new bulbs was defective. That's okay; with this many spares, and with their expected service life, we do not expect to need to worry about this. Pulling another new bulb from the box, Lisa installed it and everything worked.
Lisa re-installed the cover and now we have consistent light in the kitchen, which in retrospect we have not had for a while, as the old bulbs appear to have been mismatched as well even before they started failing. Also, as the fixture itself probably had not been cleaned since before we moved here in 2011, it's much cleaner and doesn't obscure the light.
We put the four older bulbs into the box and stored it away in a closet. The burned-out bulbs are waiting for me to have an opportunity to take them to Lowe's, where they have accepted such bulbs for safe disposal in the past. That is of course another problem with these things: you shouldn't just put them in the dumpster, and they are too long to fit anyway.
