Light Bulbs

2Pack, GU10 120V 35W MR16 Q35MR16 35 watts JDR Halogen Bulb Lamp

One of the light bulbs in my brand new range hood is burned out. This is an outrage! This range hood is not even six months old! If it used regular old incandescent bulbs it would be a little annoying, but no more so than the annoyance caused by any other regular light bulb burning out somewhere in the house. But this one is some fancy-schmancy light bulb, so instead of just unscrewing the old bulb, reaching into my light bulb magazine (which is stocked with a whole bunch of regular old, 60 watt, incandescent, soft-white, light bulbs), pulling out a new bulb and screwing it in, I am faced with a Gordian knot sized problem.

It doesn't look like that big a problem, I should be able to pop the old bulb out, run to the store and buy a replacement, and pop the new one in. Not too bad. The annoyance of having to run to the store is countered by the fact that I would be going to Lowe's (a giant hardware store) which is always a soothing experience. Mmm, tools. Mmm, hardware. Mmm, plumbing. You get the picture, I hope.

But first I have to get the old bulb out, and how to do that is not obvious. The bulb is flush mounted in a panel on the underside of the hood. There is just a little lip protruding from the surface, and being coated with a thin film of grease (that comes from all the cooking being done here), it is un-grasp-able. I try a medium sized pair of channellocks, judiciously applied, to try and grip it, but no go. An observation by my sharp eyed assistant reveals arrows drawn on the panel indicating the direction the bulb should be turned to remove or install. So we are on the right track, but how do you get a hold of the bulb in order to turn it? And then inspiration hits. The bulb has a flat lower surface, flush with the panel. I reach up with my hand, place my palm flat on the lower face of bulb, apply a little pressure, turn (anti-clockwise) maybe a quarter circle, and it falls out in my hand. Easy-peasy, if you know what you are doing.

So what kind of bulb is this? Here's the second part of the problem. I can see there are some black markings on the side, but they are almost unreadable. They are printed on the outside of the glass reflector, which is fluted and plated on the inside. By focusing on one character at a time and slowly turning the bulb I can make out that it is a

GU10C

110V35W

I could take it to the store and look for one, but I have other things to do, and if I wait to do this when I am out and about I am liable to forget. Amazon to the rescue. Point and click and a couple of minutes later a pack of two bulbs is on its way for $9. It won't be here for a couple of days, but that is more reliable than relying on me to remember to look for one at the hardware store.

P.S. These bulbs come in two flavors: LED and Halogen. The one I have in my hand appears to be a Halogen bulb. I am still a little suspicious of LED's. Enthusiasm drives up the price. High prices cool my enthusiasm, so Halogen for me. Plus all the others on the first page were for packages of eight or ten, and I do not want a pile of these suckers. I only want one, but two might not be a bad idea. There are two bulbs in the hood, and if one has burned out the other might not be far behind.

Update: Plugging in the new bulb was a bit of a trick. As you can see from the photo (above), there are two prongs on back of the bulb. Plugging in the new bulb should be fairly straight forward, except once the prongs are near enough to the socket, you can no longer see what is going on. So I eyeball the situation, orient the bulb as best I can, raise it straight up and hope the prongs reach the correct holes. I make several attempts but none make the connection. Finally I abandon my careful align-the-bomb-sight method and simply push the bulb up with the palm of my hand and turn it (much in reverse of my removal procedure) and after a little big of jiggling, it pops into position. Now it's a matter of turning the bulb enough to engage the clips. That takes some repeated applications of torque, but eventually it gets done.