life expectancy of flouros

with all this talk about photoperiods i've seen recently, it's a good time to raise this question again. i have never been able to get a good answer before. i ran my veg chamber(8 4ft flouros) on 24/0 rather than 18/6 because it gets too cold in the closet without the lights on. my question is will a bulb last longer on 24/0 than it will on 18/6? i ask this because, if you think about it, when does a light usually burn out?.........when you first try to turn it on of course. in my experience lights don't usually just die when they have been burning for a while, they die when they have been off and you flip the switch to turn them on! so if i have my lights on 24/0 that meens they have only fired up 1 time in 18months but if i had them on 18/6 they would have had to fire up about 540 times!! they do have substancially more burn time but they don't have to fire up every day. i have not been able to find any info about this in the past and have posted this question on this and other forums before as well.

I saw on mythbusters recently that the recovery time for CFL's when turning on was like 23 seconds of continuous use.....so when you turn them on they are using the same energy as being on for 23 seconds. So to answer your question....no it doesn't affect the life of the bulb that much. Something else intresting about the test, the floro took the most time recovery time out of all the bulbs in the test. Hope that helps. :jointsmile: B

wth any light id replace them yearly however floro's seem to have a better life expectancy vs. hps lights.

id say the 24hrs is fine for them but if you see black rings on the ends of the bulbs its time to replace them

thanks guys i was just curious as to how energy/life it uses up firing up a light. with the lights burning for 18months straight i would be afraid that if i turned them off they would burn out when i try to turn them on again. i use agrosun full spectrum flouros which cost between 17-20 dollars each at the local hydroshops so replacing 8 of them can get expensive. i will replace them before i start my grow again. only a couple more months till my probation is over!!!!!!!