In article , Smarty wrote:

SNIP

Thanks for your reply. I too had an outdoor post lamp with a bulb which
failed very frequently.It too has a photoelectric sensor to turn the bulb on
and off, and the sensor would blow out when the bulb filament failed.

I ultimately solved the problem years ago, and have not needed to replace
the bulb in over 10 years. My solution was to install a "soft-start" diode
in the base of the bulb for the total cost of about one dollar.

The diode reduces the power consumed by the bulb by removing a portion of
the normal a.c. power, reducing the brightness but also reducing the rapid
heating and high burn temperature which causes the filament to fail. The
filament temperature and thus the thermal shock is much less of a problem
now in the cold climate where I live.

The device I used (and I have a dozen or more of these successfully
installed in outdoor lamps) is at:

http://tinyurl.com/d7augg

and is called a "Power Mizer".

If you find that the bulb brightness is too low once you install this device
(as I also did), then it is very easy to use a bigger bulb.

My original pole lamp had a 60 watt bulb and ran at 100% brightness. It now
has a 100 watt bulb running at about 50% brightness and looks absolutely
fine.

The solution I describe here will absolutely remove the frequent bulb
changing and is dirt cheap.

The 100 watt bulb with this is consuming about 58-59 watts - the cooler
filament has less resistance.

It appears "half brightness", you must have a good 100W bulb to compare
to a lousy 60 watt one. 60 watt "standard" 120V incandescents produce
usually 870 lumens. A "standard" 100W incandescent produces 1710 lumens,
about 480 lumens with a diode.

- Don Klipstein )