My kitchen light goes through light bulbs at an alarming rate – a new light bulb will barely last a week. Long life bulbs are no improvement. Can anything be done short of tearing out walls? All my other electrical devices operate normally.
Thanks for the help.
Dude, that’s weird! Why would your bulbs burn out that quickly? 
What kind of bulbs are you using (flourescent or incandescent)? Have you tried a different brand? Are you sure that no one is playing a joke on you?
I had a similar problem in my kitchen. I just replaced the bulbs becuase I was renting, now that I bought the place I decided to fix things. It seems as if there was just some loose wiring, I replaced the fixture altogether and havent had a problem since. I believe the ground wire was not connected properly.
Light bulbs have hot and neutral, is there even a ground?
Perhaps (re OP) you have surges, a dirty appliance that fluctuates electricity a lot can cause surges, drops, etc… Have you tried dropping one of those “energy saver” physical discs in the socket? They buffer a lot of electric (intent: save energy)… they also could function as a buffer for spikes…
I’m betting on this as an answer. Is your refrigerator or dishwasher on the same circuit? Also, have you noticed exactly when the bulb goes “pop”? Is it usually when you turn it on, or can the failure be associated with, say, the refrigerator’s compressor kicking in?
I think the safest thing to do would be to buy all new appliances. Top-of-the-line, of course.
In my experience, loose wires in the ceiling rose or the light fitting cause an incandescent bulb to burn out quickly (or, in one case, to explode dramatically all over the floor). Easily fixed.
I fail to see how loose wiring could make an incandescent light bulb burn out quicker. A bad connection will increase circuit resistance, resulting in reduced current through the bulb.
But after thinking about it a while, I suppose a loose connection could cause an arc at the connection, resulting in a current spike to the light bulb. I dunno. Does anyone know?
Most bulbs blow early due to persistent high voltage, or lots of vibration (often coupled with loose wiring). Kitchen appliances on the same circuit are not likely to affect light bulbs. If you’ve got a high line voltage in your house (say 128 or 130 volts instead of the nominal 120), other bulbs would be going early, too.
That leaves vibration and loose wiring. Is there a light of vibration when you walk in the kitchen, or on the next floor above it? Do you have kids that run amok in the kitchen? Things like that vibrate the filament, weakening it. This weakening be aggravated by a bad connection or bad wiring. A bad connection is most likely at the light fixture, where the fixture wires connect with the circuit, or in the socket itself.
To check, turn off the breaker feeding the circuit (actually turn the light on and make sure it goes off with the breaker, then turn the light switch off). Remove the bulb and look into the socket. There should be a little tab of metal that bends down to touch the tip of the bulb. If it’s smashed flat into the socket, it may not be making good contact with the bulb. You can put your finger in the socket, or use needle-nose pliers to pull it out to about a 45 degree angle, so it makes good contact when you screw in the bulb. MAKE SURE THE POWER’S DEAD BEFORE YOU DO THIS!! This is the most common cause of intermittent bulb connections.
If that doesn’t help, remove the light fixture and check the connections to the circuit.
Also, switch to industrial bulbs designed for work lights, etc. They’re made to take much more vibration.
If none of that works, switch to a fluorescent light 
Arjuna34
Loose or bad connections in the circuit. This can be the wire to wire connections in the box or the wire to fixture connection on the light fixture itself (applies mostly to the older porcelain fixtures). Another culprit can be if you have aluminum wiring. If the aluminum is directly connected to the fixture, you can see a lot of bulbs burn out. One way to help reduce this is to add copper pigtails between all aluminum wiring and all outlets, switches, and fixtures. If you do have aluminum, you really should put the copper pigtails on no matter what. There is definitely a danger due to the expansive properties of aluminum wire that gets heated by current passing through it. It will expand, but does not contract in the same manner. This loosens connections, which can cause additional heat and possible a fire.
We had the same problem with our outdoor lights, only it was every month or so, not a week. An electrician we asked about it was baffled. Last October I installed a dimmer switch on the theory that the sudden blast of electricity was too much at once (they always seemed to blow on switch-on…temperature change?)and our front porch still has a working bulb now, in January. We’ve never had one last this long.
Spouse laughed at me, but it seems to have worked.
I’d definitely have the wiring checked out. It sounds very sketchy. You might want to do it just for fire prevention. How many times have you heard of house fires that are blamed on faulty wiring?
Jman
I’d look for a source of vibration near the bulb. Is it
near the dishwasher or fridge? The filament in a lightbulb
is fragile when it’s hot and a very minor vibration from
a motor can shorten lifetimes dramatically. Changing the
socket could help, especially if you use one that damps
out damaging frequencies. Another option is to look for
something like the old socket switches. These were adapter
like thingies that went between a bulb and its socket to
add either a pull chain or a pair of outlets. They will
make the bulb hang out more and change the resonances.
It doesn’t take much movement if the resonance is right.
- jam
The connections between the wires and the outlet are dirty. Power down, unscrew the wires from the connectors on the outlet and clean the wires and the connectors on the outlet.*** I had this problem on several of our old home’s lights; all were fixed by cleaning up the connections to the house wiring.
The resistance is dissipated as heat. The connections are thermally insulated from the rest of the outlet by the ceramic insulator that goes around the bulb, but the connectors are in direct contact with the soldered base of the bulb. The bulb is heated above its operating temperature, reducing its life. I don’t think the solder melts. it seems like the heat is just passed along to the filament.
I’m not sure if this would happen with a loose connector, but a dirty connection would be resistive and shouldn’t have a current spike with AC. In any case, any surge should be less than the “inrush current” (reference at the bottom of this page) that happens when the light is switched on.
I doubt that vibration is causing the problem. I’ve used regular bulbs in shop lights all my life, and the bulbs only blow when the light is dropped (admittedly, it doesn’t have to be dropped very far.)
(C. M., sorry for singling this out. It just seemed like a good place to start.)
***Of course, get an electrician if you aren’t confident in your abilities or if your local codes prohibit your doing this.
If it is incandescent, then the vibrations or loose wires, or dirt causing bad connections could be it. High voltage would affect all the incandescent bulbs in the house, so it is unlikely to be that.
If it is fluorescent, which is likely in a newer kitchen in California (mandatory actually), then it is likely to be the ballast going bad. If you are comfortable working on your home electrical system, then it is an easy replacement. The ballast might also be fine, but incompatible with the bulbs you are using. If the ballast is sized for a specific number of 34 Watt bulbs, and you use 40 Watt bulbs instead, you will blow them out quick. If it is an older fixture (10 yrs+), you probably need 40 Watt bulbs, if it is newer, you probably need 34 Watt bulbs.
Heat can shorten the life of a lamp considerably.
Tarnished connections are one source, the holder gets hotter than it should.
Another culprit is the shade, some are just not suitable in a kitchen where the ceiling area can have a relatively high ambient temperature, especially during cooking, or if you have a tumble dryer in there.
I agree that a bad wiring connection directly on the socket could cause the base of the bulb to get too hot. But as far as any other connections go (wire-to-wire using wire nuts, at the switch, etc.), I fail to see how a bad connection will decrease a bulb’s life. If anything, a bad connection should increase its life.
Crafter, one thing that a poor connection can do is cause a variable level of current. With a slightly loose connection, even minor vibrations will cause flickering as parts of the connection make and break. The current fluctuations cause temperature fluctuations in the filament; thermal expansion flexes the filament slightly, fatiguing it. I wouldn’t expect current fluctuations caused by other appliances to happen often enough to do this. This may have nothing to do with Baraqiyal’s problem, but it’s worth checking the connections at the base of the fixture at least.
Resistive connections, rather than loose ones, have different effects, of course.
If the house was built around 1970 ± there is a chance of aluminum wiring being used (about a 10 year period, do not know when it started). Aluminum has a couple of problems. These problems come into play when aluminum comes into contact with other metals. Here is where I get shaky and may need some correcting. I think that any moisture, even normal humidity can cause aluminum hydroxide (an electrolyte) to occur between the two different metals. Add electricity and you have further corrosion. This corrosion is a bad/dirty connection. This can cause heat. My earlier post mentions expansion problems. Aluminum can expand, get more brittle over time and not return to its original shape. This process can actually loosen the connection and arcing can occur. This can also cause heat. I have rewired the outlets and light fixtures to have copper pigtails on two houses. There are special wire nuts that contain an anti-oxidation paste, or you can buy the past and use regular wire nuts.
Anyway, between the corrosion and the loosening of connection due to heat expansion, you wind up with bad or loose connections. These can contribute to or be the cause of flickering and burned out bulbs. Worth the couple of minutes to check.
A couple of comments;
First
I have had occasion to discuss vibration and bulb life with a couple of bulb manufacturers - because of a gyro design I was involved in that used a bulb as a triggering device.
They both said that the bulb would withstand much more shock and vibration in the lit mode than in the unlit.
The tungsten filament is quite brittle when cold but not when hot. Vibration is a factor in bulb life.
Second
While flickering caused by dirty or loose connections might shorten the life of the bulb because of increased thermal stress (as Balance said), any heat generated by the higher resistance will be so much lower than the operating temperature of the bulb that it won’t shorten the bulb life. Unless of course it gets hot enough to start a fire, burn the house down and melt the bulb in the process.
If vibration is the problem, heavy duty bulbs are available (at Home Depot for example) that have much stronger filaments. I use them in my trouble lights and in one porch light. The porch light gets a shock load each time the front door is closed and ordinary bulbs will fail in a few weeks while the heavy duty ones last over a year.
Hmmm. I really doubt that. Your typical $10.00 light dimmer doesn’t seem to shorten a bulb’s life, and they can create major current spikes 120 times a second (it’s a phase-fired proportional controller). Particularly when they’re set at 50% brightness.
So here’s my opinion so far, unless someone can convince me otherwise: loose connections, dirty connections, intermittent connections, etc. will not cause an incandescent bulb to burn-out early unless the connection is part of the screw socket itself. Thus there are only four connections that are of any concern: 1) Hot wire to tab, 2) neutral wire to screw socket, 3) connection between bulb’s tip and tab, 4) connection between bulb’s screw and screw socket. Only these four connections could cause a bulb to heat up. (And even then I’m not fully convinced.) Any other “faulty” connections anywhere in the circuit, while certainly undesirable, shouldn’t decrease a bulb’s life.