How Many Retailers Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb?

There's more money in replacing these lights than maintaining them...This is a good thing...As a contractor you are reducing costs to your customer, and increasing revenue for your own business....The same thing is happening with a/c in the south, and insulation everywhere, and windows, and autos, and etc...

Yup, time is money.
Del

This is not bad news for electrical maintenance contractors.

Irregardless of "novel" lamps it will still require 4 electricians to replace that light bulb:

1 electrician to transport and hold the ladder.

1 electrician to hold the light bulb for the electrician going up the ladder to replace the light bulb.

1 electrician to go up the ladder after being handed the light bulb to replace it.

and because this crew is larger than two electricians

1 electrician to act as foreman to ensure the three other electricians properly execute the light bulb replacement procedure.

with a bulb life of 100,000 hours, why do they make sockets? 10 hours a day for a car is ~28 years. Same for houses. I anticipate the new LED lamps will give rise to permanent built in lights, since remodelling is usually more frequent than every 28 year.

And that bulb life is now. In 5 years it will be 250,000 hours - and you can derate them by 20% and get 5 times the life.

Except many of these "100,000 hour" light bulbs tend to die in their infancy...

I'm with you on that score.

I bought a few dud CF lights, with a warranty for 5 years. To use the warranty I had to post the dud back with $5 postage and handling fee and they would send me another (Dud??). Since new CF lights were less than $5 the warranty = a mugs game

Was this with induction or LED lighting? What percentage would you say died young?

LED lamps (on the order of $20 each), 50% failure in less than 6 months. CFD's- on the order of 40% less than 1 year (various prices, from cheap to $8.00 each)...

Of course, the sample size for the LED's is a bit small...

JerMo-

The capacitor is the biggest problem. Every LED failure I have experienced has been a failed capacitor- usually an explosive failure, precluding any possibility of salvaging the rest of the assembly...

Your comment should not be off topic!

This question is so perplexing I've converted back to whale oil lamps.

My monthly electrical bill went down $20 a month after I replaced all the incandescent and halogen bulbs in my entire house a year ago with the 'daylight' spiral type flourescent screw in bulbs in 60 watt size.

Haven't had one burn out yet so can't tell you how long they will last...