Range hood lights keep burning out.

February 6, 2015 4:41 AM

Our range hood has become death, destroyer of light bulbs. We're having to change bulbs about once a month, even after switching from normal to "oven"-type. We never use the hood fan, either. Any ideas on what might be causing this, and a possible simple fix short of asking our landlord to replace the hood?
posted by penguinicity to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

Those are usually halogen bulbs, so if you're touching them with bare hands at installation, you could be setting them up for quick failure.
posted by klausman at 5:35 AM on February 6, 2015

Rather than oven style look for a rough service bulb, if it is an edison base, that will fit in your housing.
posted by Mitheral at 6:39 AM on February 6, 2015

Ours does this too, and it's a new hood. Our wiring is generally not the best (we suspect), but in this case we simply switched to a very small CFL bulb (it's an edison base) and so far so good.

(Frankly we are having an impossible time keeping any bulbs of any kind lit for more than a few weeks--manufacturers have stopped building any quality at all into regular incandescent bulbs.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:13 AM on February 6, 2015

What kind of base does it have? Is it halogen or incandescent?
posted by gregvr at 8:20 AM on February 6, 2015

Same problem: vent hood with two tungsten bulbs which burned out way too frequently.
At a lightbulb shop, the owner suggested 130-volt tungsten bulbs, which run cooler (and slightly dimmer) when on a standard 120-volt circuit.
I bought and installed them almost a year ago and haven't had to change them yet. They weren't expensive, either.
posted by Chriswill44 at 8:17 PM on February 6, 2015

We had the same problem. I cured it by replacing the bulbs with matching LED lights.
posted by X4ster at 9:58 PM on February 6, 2015