Low Quality  Compact Fluorescent Bulbs: FEIT Electric

Bottom Line: POS CFL bulb lasts about 25% of the expected life.  Boy that paid for itself in energy savings!

FEIT Electric company produces shitty CFL lights. Several lights failed early by my estimation, so I figured I would start writing the installation dates on the lights so I could track how many days they last. My first documented failure just occurred. The installation date was 10/31/2010. The failure date was 3/5/2012. That means they were installed 491 days. At an estimate of 5 hours of use per day, that’s 2455 hours. Hmmm, they are supposed to last “up to 10,000 hours”. Give me a break. These lights suck. I would have to leave them on 20 hours per day to hit 10,000 hours in 491 days! Furthermore I have to go recycle them at Home Depot so I don’t pollute the environment. And, I wonder how much pollution is created and energy is wasted in the manufacturing process. They are way more complicated than a standard incandescent light bulb. Remember the pay back or financial justification published on the box is based upon a 10,000 hour life. Hmmm, my first documented POS almost made it 25% of the expected life. 

In all fairness, MAYBE they all don’t suck, but this FEIT brand from Costco sucks. I have had many fail in less than two years, this is just the first one with dates documented on the bulb. I have switched to a Home Depot product, but I will continue to monitor these closely too.

After several had failed, I contacted FEIT, and they were to send me a replacement, it never came. After the next one failed, I sent them the following email with no response.

Maria,

1) I never received the first replacement CFL for the first low quality bulb.

2) I am beginning to wonder just how "Green" the CFL lights you produce really are.

Let's do some basic math. The lights are supposed to last "up to 10,000 hours". Ok, the lights in my kitchen are maybe on an average of 5 hours per day. So, 10,000 hours of usage equates to 2,000 days. 2,000 days equates to 5.47 years. I started to replace my incandescent bulbs with CFLs maybe 2 years ago. So, why did another just fail in the kitchen?

So, here's what I'm going to do. From now on, I will write the installation date on the CFL when it is installed and start tracking the substandard life performance.

Also, why is the warranty only good for 2*365*3=2190 hours when the advertising hype claims up to 10,000 hours. I would think your company would be confident that the light should clearly last up to 5,000 hours.

I am beginning to believe your manufacturing plant in China is producing parts with low quality. I am also wondering how much I am reducing greenhouse gases since these bulbs aren't lasting very long, and require a lot more energy and resources to make versus a simple incandescent bulb. 

By my estimation I'm seeing some bulbs last about the same length of time as a regular incandescent , and costing a lot more.

Unsatisfied customer with three failed CFLs that I need to properly recycle.


UPDATE:


Interesting Link

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/why-efficient-light-bulbs-fail-to-thrive/

19th post from the link above

The most erratic ones I bought were the Feit vanity bulbs from Costco. I bought 12 using six in two bath rooms. Of the 12 two failed within a couple of months, and one was so slow in warming up that it was a failure – and particularly after I dropped it. I took the best six and placed them in one bathroom where they work nicely, and the remaining three are in the other with the ordinary vanity bulbs. These bulbs take one minute to warm up, but afterwards have about 50 watt equivalent light so they are slightly brighter than the ordinary vanity bulb. This has to be a quality control issue, and I still intend to talk to Costco about this.

T-Fal Beer Tender Failed, Fixed, Low Quality: Model VB2158 (Krups too)

OK, here we go. This beer tender has a thermo-electric cooling system. One morning when it was very quiet, I heard the fan cycling on and off repeatedly. I looked over and the Power LED would fully illuminate, flicker to a dim state, the fan would slow down, then the Power LED would illuminate to full brightness, the fan speed up, flicker to a dim state, etc. The cycle was less than 10 seconds. The green thermometer LED was not glowing meaning the beer was no longer cold.

I decided that I might as well take it apart to see if it was something simple. Yes, I defied what most would do and did not just throw it in the trash.

I disassembled it by removing four screws on the back. I found a black box that snapped open to reveal two circuit boards. One of medium complexity with an IC, three large heat sinks, several transformers, diodes, resistors, and capacitors. The other board was relatively simple.

I noticed, that the thermo-electric chip, fan, and both LED’s were wired to this small board. The only connection between the small board, and the “big” board was one connector labeled 12V.

I figured that the larger board was a fairly complex power supply.  I unplugged the power supply and checked the voltage with a voltmeter. It read a steady 12 volts and change. Next, I plugged it in and again monitored the output voltage. Now the voltage would start at 12V then quickly drop to less than 2V, then fluctuate back to 12V, then to 2V repeatedly.

My guess was that the power supply board was bad, so I got a car battery charger and powered the small board. The beer tender worked great. So, I was right, the power supply had failed.

With only a voltmeter at hand, I started checking resistors, and diodes. I found that one capacitor did not show open, but had a resistance of 190 ohms. This looked wrong. I also noticed that the top was bulging. The top end usually blows, when they fail catastrophically, so this looked like a bad part.

I de-soldered the capacitor, then checked the resistance. It should be open or infinity, but it read 3.4 ohms, so I knew it was shorted. I found a 1000 microfarad capacitor at Radio Shack for $1.79, Same capacitance, but with a higher voltage capacity (35V versus 16V). I installed the new capacitor, and the beer tender now works like a charm.

So here’s what gets me disturbed, many household electronic goods are total pieces of shit. Everything I buy fails prematurely. And the expected repair is so expensive, that the logical course of repair is to 1) throw in garbage, and 2) buy new widget.

In my opinion, this is because everything we buy is from China. Why, because they make things for very low cost.  You read the paper, how many times do people substitute cheap stuff in the process to save a penny? Cardboard in rolls you eat, cement in fake Tylenol, baby formula with no nutritional value.

Capacitors that SUCK! Dishwashers, washing machine, refrigerators, coffee makers, toys, etc. They all suck.  Valve stems for tires that blow off causing instant deflation. My instant shade, the FIRST time I unzipped the zipper for the cover/case, it fell off. 

Made in China, made to fail.

However, we design this stuff, and source it to China, then we buy it. It’s not really a Chinese problem, we are buying the Low Quality Goods perpetuating the problem.

BTW, I think the Krups Beer Tender is the same.  From what I can tell, T-Fal doesn’t sell this replacement part. You can get the part from Krups for the low low price of $54. What a deal-o-rama!

For further information, the company that made the power supply is www.hanny.com.cn. Yeah baby, let’s buy some more crap from them.

Good thing I have en engineering degree and actually know what to do with it.

Board before repair:

After Repair:

Three Months Later: October 2011

FAILED AGAIN.

So this time, I removed the power supply and two different capacitors failed. These are larger 150 microfarad, 200V caps, so Radio Shack does not stock them. I found a pair on DigiKey for around $5 including shipping. In a few days, I'll remove those installed in China and we'll see if it works again. My eleven year old knows how to visually spot a blow capacitor from this project. At least I am raising his technical competence!

November 14, 2011

Here are the capacitors that failed in late October.

Notice the tops are sort of bulging or domed.  Also, take note of the black device that looks like a resistor standing somewhat vertical at the nearest corner.

I received the DigiKey caps, and soldered them in. I then connected the 120 VAC connector, and the 12VDC connector to the sister cooling board to see if everything worked. To my dismay, nothing worked. I thought that this time maybe something more serious failed. I decided to waste a few more minutes. I verified that the board was getting 120VAC. I also verified that 12VDC was not being delivered. I decided to start at the 120VAC end of the board and look around.  I thought that the next device just to the left of the nearest corner in this photo was a transformer, so I checked the voltage. Nothing.  Since this is right next to the 120 VAC source, I noticed that the little black disc capacitor and the black device that looked like a resistor were in the path. The device looked open, so I took a utility blade to cut the rubber sheathing. It was shrink tube covering a fuse that had blown. I was going to fix this correctly and maybe install a fuse holder, but I was impatient. I found a similar 2.5A 250V automotive fuse in the garage. I soldered leads on it to mimic the fuse on the board. I soldered that in, and I now have cold beer and have thwarted the design that was intended to make me send another few bucks to China by buying a new Beer Tender to replace this POS.

Don’t buy one of these, just keep some cold ones in the fridge!

Update November 29, 2013

Today, I attempted to extract the last little bit of beer out of a mini-keg and got not warm, but HOT beer. Since I had two previous power supply failures, I figured it had failed again.

However, the power supply was happily out putting 12.7 VDC. I noticed that the fan did not spin freely, and was not running. With a little pushing the shaft in and out, it would run, but not reliably. I Googled the part number, and found that these fans cost $20+. Even used fans on eBay were $10 with shipping. I decided to see if the fan could be fixed. Under the decal, there is a rubber plug that can be removed. Below that was a tiny split washer which I pried up with a small screw driver. This required some fiddling around, but I got it out. I then pushed out the fan and shaft. After adding something called Lock-Ease (lubricant with graphite), the fan works like new.

When removing the fan, I had to break the rubber retainers. I drilled some holes in the housing just above the fan and used wire tires to hold it in place. Then I used wire ties in the bottom holes to secure the bottom to the external vent grates on each side of the tender.

Cold beer is flowing again. I will publish this on a You Tube Video and place the title here, if you are interested.

Meet the GE Monogram ZBD5900 Dishwasher

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What a POS. Supposedly this model was actually manufactured by Bosch, but I can not verify this for sure. The first failure occurred very early after the purchase. I was able to take the door apart, and find the control board which was faulty. I called GE and they sent a new control board to my house, with a “trained” technician to arrive in a couple of days. I wasn’t sure if the tech knew the board was in my possession, and I thought he might bring another leaving me with an extra. I thought I might scam one out of GE. I wish I had just replaced the board myself since the technician did not have a spare board, and he apparently had never worked on this model. I had to watch over him and explain where all the hidden screws were. He ended up stripping one screw in the end with his power driver.

Since then, the door springs have had to be replaced twice because they take a set and barely keep the door from dropping like a rock. 

I also had the microswitch in the latch handle fail. This $2 switch costs me $35 at the appliance store. I later found the same item at Digi-Key for $2.

The cutlery basket wore out, that was another $50.

Then all of the plastic wheels on the baskets started to age and crack. Since the upper basket could be set at two levels, it had two sets of wheels. I started scavenging the extra set one by one since it had something like 8 wheels at $20 per wheel. Another $0.50 item marked up to ridiculous prices.

Luckily when I first got the dishwasher, I complained about the efforts to slide the upper basket in and out, so they gave me another. I had another set of “spare’ wheels that saved me big bucks. The design of the basket stinks, so there was nothing wrong with it other than the basic design. The wheels cracked because of a poor design and poor material choice.

Now comes the other failures. Circuit board connections started to corrode and would melt the wire insulation due to the high resistance. I tried to solder one one loose/burned terminal back on the board, and due to foil or trace lamination I did a poor job I must admit. After about 1 year, the wire actually burned in half. So, I did a better job of rigging the connection and soldered the wire right to the board and installed an intermediate connection.

Every so often I get a blinking light and a fault. Sometimes a restart will ‘fix” the problem. It seems I often pull the dishwasher out, unplug some wires on the control board to inspect everything, put it back together and it runs. I have no clue what I “fixed”, it must be poor connections.

if I actually paid a service tech, I would be broke since they don’t do board repair. The control boards are $350-527 depending on where you buy them, and $200 used on eBay!

It would be great if I could find a good repair manual, and the logic diagram of the control board from the engineers that designed it, but I can’t. If I wasn’t dumb enough to pay $1,000 for this thing years ago, I would have thrown it on the curb long ago.

To make matters worse, this thing has all electronic controls (no simple timer), and a pressure switch instead of a float, so basically none of the typical online repair advice applies.

After I purchased this machine, I also discovered that it does a poor job of drying dishes. A drying agent helps. GE explained to me that this was a non-vented European design, so opening the door right after the rinse cycle (prior to heating) and/or right after the heater runs lets out a huge cloud of steam which will help also. However, this requires baby sitting. In fact, twice for reasons unknown, it will just run the pump forever (as in hours until it fails) so you can’t leave the house. The first time it would actually pump out water, then continue to run. The second time it happened, it would run, but not pump out water. I never replaced a part, just took it apart, put it back together and it mysteriously “fixed” itself.

This thing is an embarrassment to GE.

With all that said,  the baskets are designed well for loading the dishes and cutlery. I think the pump and “guts” so to speak are of descent quality, the root of all evil is the shitty control board design.


Update: October 8, 2011


I ran the dishwasher one night, got up in the morning only to find that the drain pump was running all night. No LEDs, no response to any button presses. I figured the logic board was dead. I turned off the circuit breaker.


I unplugged and plugged back in all 9 wires on the logic board to see if a connection was bad. I heard the board beep, so I thought a poor connection might have been the issue. However, the drain pump was still running. Now that I have a real repair manual I found on eBay I took a quick look at the wiring diagram. 


It turns out that there is an overflow reservoir underneath that is accessible only after a panel removal. A small overflow hole exists near the bottom edge of the front door. If the water level gets too high (let's say the logic board fails and holds a water valve open) a small chute that looks like a sliding board channels the water into this reservoir. Then a float switch turns on the drain pump. The same voltage is detected by the logic board, and the logic board shuts itself down. This is called a watch dog. Not a bad idea, accept the normal customer would not know what just happened, and would require an $80 service call. Who knows if the tech would know what to do since they never see this low volume machine.


I decided to read how to lower the water level, thinking maybe it was just a little high all these years. So when I went through the procedure to set it lower, I found that it was one step higher than factory default. Since this is hard to get into this mode, someone had to do this. Probably the tech that came out years ago and stripped a screw and needed my direction on how to find the hidden screws!


I set the water level timer back to factory default, and it seems to be working. I'll keep my fingers crossed.


Update on the water level:


 I had the same failure two days later, so I figured something else was wrong and allowing water to leak into the overflow reservoir. I checked the lower housings, they were all dry. After pondering for a bit, I checked the bottom door seal. I discovered that food crud had built up, and got under the seal not allowing it to do its job. I took a few paper towels and cleaned all the crud  from under the seal. That was it, the dishwasher has been working for months. It is now January 16, 2012.




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Saeco “Easy” Super Automatic Espresso Machine

Another high cost piece of junk. First of all, I have looked at several Saeco machines, they all use the same brew group, so don’t think the more expensive models are really any better.

Again, if I didn’t have some mechanical sense, I would be broke from repair bills.

The first major issue occurred with the brew group. It’s hard to explain in words, but a a moving part of the mechanism jammed, and was forced into w weird position. To this day i can not understand how this happened. At the same time a small torsion spring fell out, and for years I never could figure out where it came from. It works without it. The other day, I was inspecting a Saeco machine at a store and saw where the torsion spring was once installed. So luckily, I took a portion of the brew group apart, and corrected the issue.

On several occasions it has clogged. I am careful to use “dry” coffee beans since these will really make the machine clogged quickly. To unclog the machine, it needs to be partially disassembled (most people could not take this on), and cleaned with a shop vac and something like a piece of wire from a coat hanger.

There is also a little drain near one of the shafts that drives the brew group. This often clogs and makes a mess. I have learned how to clean this area too. Mind you this is not something described in the operating manual.

The other issue I have had was more major. A portion of a plastic feature that holds the “grind packing” solenoid internally broke off. I have this cleverly repaired with a couple of wire ties. The “fix” has been in place for well over a year. It will eventually fail. 

Last, but no least, the coffee is not quite hot enough, and I could not find any apparent adjustment when I have had the thing disassembled. The “experts” on the phone will have no clue if something can be tweaked in the controls to fix this problem.

Now, for the good part. I have made thousands of cups of coffee now, so at least the per cup cost keeps going down We probably make 50 cups per week, and I have been limping this thing along since 2006!So despite it’s shit design,it has been worth the $400 I paid for it.

However, if you are not a mechanical engineer with electrical experience, beware this is not for you.