Remove Broken Light Bulbs Without Getting Cut or Shocked Using A Water Bottle

I made this instructable for the "SAVE THE BOTTLE" contest. I know there are other ways of getting this piece out but I wanted find a good use for a water bottle. The risk of getting shocked is pretty much non existant with a water bottle when compared to a potato or pliers.


Remove Broken Light Bulbs Without Getting Cut or Shocked With A Water Bottle.

Have you ever tried to remove a light bulb and had it break in your hand. DON'T try to get the metal piece out with your hands or pliers. You could get shocked or cut! Here's an instructable on how to use an ordinary water bottle to extract that piece.

Step 1 Remove Label, Lid and Collar

First, TURN THE LIGHT SWITCH OFF. Now, if it's a lamp with a cord and plug then, UNPLUG THE LIGHT. Then, double check the light switch is off. Then double check that it's unplugged. If you've ever been shocked you'll know why I repeated those steps. LEARN from my mistakes here people! Haha The devise we're making is plastic so you're not likely to be shocked even if the power is on but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Now, take an empty water bottle. The heftier ones are better for this application. Remove the cap, the label and the little ring around the neck that breaks when you take the lid off.

Comments

[laznz1]

HOW TO REMOVE A BROKEN OFF LIGHT BULB 1.Cut a potato in half 2. Ram on Broken metal 3.Twist SIMPLE and SAFE

[paqrat]

I've used the potato to good effect.

[Matt4_16]

always works for me (the potato that is)

[Plasmana]

But is that a waste of money?

[finfan7]

A waste of money as compared to what? A water bottle for this method? ($1 from vending machine, free if you drink bottled water anyway) Replacing the whole lamp? ($$) Heck, if you're pulling out potatoes anyway you could use the part of the potato not used on the light for food.

[Plasmana]

The potato method. Potatoes are also conductive, so if someone forgets to unplug the lamp, they would have an zapping and smoky nightmare from the potato, and it would be a pain to clean the potato residue burnt onto the lamp...

[finfan7]

I'm a bit confused. Did you just say it is a waste of money compared to itself and then launch into the safety issues? As far as safety is concerned the issue is kind of moot since any method one could use has the danger of electric shock if one doesn't unplug the lamp.

[Matt4_16]

What kind of expensive potatoes do you buy?

[Punkguyta]

I buy Yukon Gold spuds, they cost more than speckled salmon or canned albacore, dontchaknow?

[Plasmana]

I don't use potatoes to get the light bulb out...

[i make shooting things]

what do you do with empty bottles?

[Matt4_16]

recycle and get my money back

[i make shooting things]

yeah a penny

[Matt4_16]

where the hell are you from, i get like 10-25 cents a bottle, when i take all them in i usually get 50-100 bucks

[i make shooting things]

damn we gota pay to recycle them here

[junits15]

wow that stinks

[nvnusman]

Okay, I had the need just two days ago and bought a spud and tried that. The shell of the bulb is somewhat recessed in a ceramic socket, so I picked a potato with a narrow end. Pushed it in there and counter-clockwised it and all I got was an indentation in the spud the diameter of the light bulb's metal shell. I'll try this next. (YES, I unplugged it!) The particular fixture in inverted so the heat from the 375-watt heat lamp accelerates oxidation and the bulbs rarely are extracted easily. I'll try a bit of PJ on the next bulb. I've used pliers in the past, but the most recent attempt spun the ceramic socket and the insulation on the wires above, while supposedly "Hi-Temp," cracked off and the wiring shorted out. At least a (dry) plastic water bottle is not as conductive as a spud (but I pulled the plug OUT!). Thanks for the instructable. BTW, I think there should be a special place in Purgatory for the engineer who spec'ced that fluourescent bulbs should be a silly millimeter longer than the opening into which we must insert them while teetering on ladders!

[prabbit22m]

I already had that comment 3 times. I already responded to that comment 3 times. I already modified the very first paragraph of the instructable to cover this comment. Why don't people read past comments before posting? Here's a scenerio for you laznz1. Let's say this broken bulb is in a light fixture on the ceiling and there are two switches going to it. You know, the type where you can turn in off from a switch at the top of the stairs or the bottom and up or down being off or on changes depending on which switch was used last? Now, the bulb burned out yesterday and you have no idea how many times someone has tried to turn it on. You have absolutely no way of knowing if there is high voltage at the light socket. Your choices are: 1: Ram a wet potato in the socket and have a 50% chance of shock 2: Go buy a voltmeter 3: Turn off the breaker and then spend the next 3 hours resetting all the clocks and alarms and VCR's, Microwave, etc 4: Take a few seconds to make this water bottle tool? Do you know how much water is in a potato? Weigh a bag of potato chips. Then weigh the same amount of potatoes you think it took to make that bag of chips. The difference in weight is mostly water.

[ac-dc]

This is unreasonable. Any sane person dealing with broken, potentially still live AC powered items, unplugs them or flips the circuit beaker/pulls fuse, NOT shoving anything (even non-conductive because the circuit could still be shorted by part of the bulb or dodgy wiring) in until they know the circuit isn't live. It is not likely all the clocks are on the same circuit as one light, it would take about 1 minute to reset a clock, if we are talking about safety then never wonder, flip the breaker on the circuit or leave the job to someone who knows or has a meter to test whether it's live still.

[prabbit22m]

Agreed. Flipping the breaker is DEFINATELY the safest way to go. Or hiring a professional. But this world is full of people who insist on doing it themselves without knowing FOR SURE it's not live. I'm just trying to give those people ideas to reduce their risk. New homes are great and have circuit breakers labled. My old home doesn't. I can either start tripping breakers and hope that circuit is among the first I try (and again, how will you know you tripped the right breaker if the bulb is burnt out??) or turn the whole house off. But, yes, I agree 100% to make sure the circuit is off if they have the means of testing it. If not they should call a professional.

[sarge89or]

Try tripping the breakers one at a time and make a list of which breaker controls what circuit. Then in the future you will know which one to trip. Duh, guess you never thought of that.

[ac-dc]

If the home doesn't have a clear diagram of the circuits on the breaker box, that should be done right away, before a light bulb or anything else breaks. If one is unsure, generally it is better to at least flip the breaker for the circuit it seems to be on, rather than leaving that circuit live. Non-ground-faulted outlets in the same room are most likely on the same circuit for example so at least by plugging a lamp into one of those you can tell when that circuit is off. You can be reasonably sure the light is not on the same circuit as something distant, because the electrician won't have wound a single piece of wire in several different directions instead of the straightest run possible per area where it terminates, but again if there is any doubt it would be worthwhile to turn off any breaker in question, resetting a clock is a minor inconvenience considering light bulbs don't break in their sockets all that often.

[laznz1]

1: Ram a wet potato in the socket and have a 50% chance of shock its is completly safe ive done it for years

[prabbit22m]

I'm glad it's been working for you laz. I, personally would rather not take the risk but that's just my opinon.

[Solderguy]

You wouldn't even have this problem if you bought florescent light bulbs.

[prabbit22m]

Actually, I've seen florescent bulbs do the same thing. Especially the cheap ones that everyone bought a couple years ago. The cheap ones have cheap china plastic that get's hard and brittle. Besides, I would rather not have all that mercury in my home and in the landfills when the bulbs eventually go out. Can you imagine, all the florescent bulbs that are the 'craze' now will all be going out about the same time eventually and ALL that mercury will go somewhere?? Hopefully not into our landfills. Personally, I use the incandescent bulbs but I buy low wattage and only have bulbs in half the sockets in the house. That way I save energy and don't polute. LED's are the best way to go in my opinion. I'm just waiting for a good product to hit the market.

[paqrat]

Not too long ago I found some led bulbs at Walmart. Sort of torpedo shaped bulbs wih standard bulb bases. They are also available in candelabra bases. 1.5 watts. I believe it is supposed to be equivilent to 40 watt incandescent but the one I have seems to be producing more light than that. They also have some bulbs that I believe are intended for recessed lighting and tracks. Price was $5.something for the torpedo types. More expensive than cfl if purchased in bulk but no mercury. I prefer the color of the light produced to some of the cfl's too.

[dombeef]

Now the florescent bulbs have almost no mercury

[chicoman]

Hi, I tried your idea which I thought was terrific however I had a base that was too small. The bottle would not fit in the confined space (beneath my microwave) I noticed the plastic ring still on the bottle (which is used to seal the lid during processing), I removed it, squeezed the sides together, carefully inserted fully into the base sideways, and released  the tension. To my amazement the  ring had just enough force to grip the inside of the base and I was able to easily twist the ring without getting close to the short pieces of glass.

[tommck]

Why not unplug it and use needle-nose pliers?

[prabbit22m]

Because people don't read the the other bazillion comments exactly like the one they just posted.

[tommck]

At the time I commented on this, there were 10 comments, so, I did do that.

[prabbit22m]

Sorry for the sarcasm. I was in really really bad mood on Tues. I don't know what's going on with your instructables page or website but there are 127 comments proior to yours. And, that's not including the hundreds of duplicate comments I deleted of people naming the other thousands of items that could be used. This instructable was created for a "save the bottle" contest. I should just delete it.

[Punkguyta]

I gotta say, this is a good re-use of an empty water bottle. And I'm up for re-using used materials, sometimes it may be silly, other times like this, more practical. However, I don't see light bulbs breaking/getting rusted into the socket unless they're using a moist environment. Sure petroleum jelly would work well to get it out easier next time, would it not maybe burn a little if the bulb got really hot? I'm sure maybe eventually caking on the socket itself and making it even harder to remove next time? Personally pliers have worked swell for me in the past, but my reccomendation is just get a better/different lamp/light socket, I think half of it is due part of the design of the socket and the threads for the bulb, I haven't had to remove a broken bulb for years in my house.

[lunchboxslayer27]

who cares what other methods are! jeez!

[prabbit22m]

THANK YOU lunchboxslayer27!!!! My thoughts exactly. I could probably think of 100 ways to do this but I made this instructable for the "save the bottle" contest. I even put that in my intro but but people insist on posting all the different ways of getting it out. What's next? ... Uh .. dude, just take a Snickers bar and jamb it in there instead of the bottle ... Jeez people ... EVERYBODY knows this is just ONE of the ways to do it.

[imrealldum]

snickers would be tastier though....

[lunchboxslayer27]

go away!

[awlakers]

stir stick for stirring paint is what i've always used..fits perfect.

[blodefood]

I have heard that you can also use a hard vegetable like a potato to remove a light bulb base. Just make sure the fixture is unplugged first and there is no moisture left after the potato is used. Cut away the embedded part and throw the rest in the compost.