Reviving old lava lamp?

September 14, 2008 8:59 PM

How does one revive an old lava lamp that's been in storage for 10 years?

I was going through storage and found my old lava lamps from my recording studio days. They've not been on in 10 years. Bulbs are fine. The generic/knock-off one changed color and seems to work quite well. The real Lava Lamp just forms a somewhat grotesque blob at the top & middle of the globe and doesn't move a whole heck of a lot. The blob has quite a textured surface to it with little bubbles of lava within it that move around a bit.

I thought it might be too warm so I threw it on a dimmer which only caused the blob to move to the bottom of the globe.

Is it possible that these things go stale/bad?

posted by OTA to Home & Garden (4 answers total)

I had an old one I "rediscovered" a while back, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to fix it. Whatever weird-ass chemical compound it has in there, I don't think it can be revived after laying dormant for so long. Let them go, man.
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:38 PM on September 14, 2008

You can roll your own ooze, but you're probably better off just buying a new one.
posted by dhartung at 10:15 PM on September 14, 2008

It's possible that it's broken, but it's also possible that it's simply reverted to something like it's pre-first-use state. When you first get one of those things it can take twice as long to get going as it will after a few uses. Let the thing sit for a couple of hours.

If that doesn't work, yeah, get a new one.
posted by valkyryn at 4:36 AM on September 15, 2008

I'm running into the same thing with my old lamp. I usually kind of shake the solid column down to the bottom, where it s l o w l y heats up and runs as normal. Unfortunately, the next time I plug it in, I get the same thing. I've about decided these things just have a limited working life.
posted by MrMoonPie at 7:02 AM on September 15, 2008