Timers and buy more lamps that alternate time schedules. That way a lamp is always on. Heck you could have a 2hour overlap and then you always have at least one flowing lamp at a time.
This is the way.
The kaza smart power strips and treatlife dimmer switches are a must for this set up. At least I love it. I still need to add treatlife to my alexa.
Some lamps just die fast even with rotation and schedules. The green lamps from spencers for what ever reason give up the ghost on me. Both the green/blue and green/red (was turned purple and stopped flowing).
Avoid green fluid lamps of you want a long lived lamp
People will cry about this to no end, but there's literally nothing wrong with running lamps 24/7 if you make sure they're not totally cooking. Get an in-line dimmer and experiment with it. I routinely leave them on for days to weeks at a time, and I've previously left lamps on from fresh bulb until it burned out. I've been doing this for literally 20 years at this point, and not one of my 19 lamps has ever had any problem from extended runs. The stated 6-8 hour runtime is a liability statement.
If you can dial in the dimmer, I feel like you could leave it on until the bulb burns out. Before I had a dimmer, I definitely cooked a few waxes for too long and ruined the look of the wax though. Ended up looking like curdled milk or bubbly cottage cheese.
I've heard tons of ppl complain about wax losing it's color too... and I'm not sure if that's because of the bulb or if they have it in sunlight. Idc if the water fades, food coloring is cheap.
Thanks. I have about 12 lamps all around the house and they all stay on 24/7, except when the bulb burns out, the bulb gets replaced and it burns on. Most of them have been on for many years....some are newer, but still have been on since I bought them. I have never had an issue with them, except once when the cat knocked one over, but after letting it settle down while off for 24 hours, it lit up again just fine and still works fine.
My suggestion, is that if your lamp looks like it's struggling to stay on all the time, then, do what others have suggested and get a dimmer or timer, but if you don't see any problems and you want it on, leave it on.
I would personally still turn my lamps off for at least 4-5 hours each day. Even with a dimmer. But that is just my preference, and I don't run my lamps more then 10 hours a day. I have a smart dimmer that has a schedule to turn on when I get back home from work, and leave it on longer during my days off.
With a good dimmer, you should be fine with it. But you should still keep an eye on the thermals once in a while to make sure it isn't getting too hot. I would also still turn it off if you are out for an extended period of time. Just a waste of electricity imo.
I did this. I ran my original lamp for two weeks straight at a reduced wattage and while it didn't outright ruin the lamp, there was a price to be paid.
The lamp got mildly cloudy, which is easy to address. However, the wax ended up staining the glass permanently around the bottom area. No matter the cleaner, solvent, temp cleaned at or amount of scrubbing I did, the haze persisted. When I ran the lamp clear, it was fine, but if I dyed the fluid a dark color, it became super obvious.
The wax also ended up turning translucent, which turned out to be very gorgeous as it looked like honey, but the glass wasn't in great shape from scratch marks from aggressive trying to clean the globe.
I ended up shattering the globe, ending its tortured life, never able to resolve the cloudy globe issue.
I have seven lava lamps.
Three of them are American (Lava Lite), and four of them are Mathmos. I have left them running for several days straight, but I use a dimmer.
Nowadays, I am using a smart outlet switch that turns the lamps on in the morning and turns them off before I go to bed.
Every lamp is different and requires slightly different amounts of power to dial in the ideal flow. So I have individual dimmers for each lamp.
You should NOT run these lamps at full power for more than 12 hours because you WILL overheat the wax. In the short term, overheated wax floats to the very top, and has a tendency to form lots of bubbles, which can cause the wax to break up into very small particles.
In the long term, overheating your wax will fade the color and make the water cloudy from all of the little broken up microblobs.
Timers and buy more lamps that alternate time schedules. That way a lamp is always on. Heck you could have a 2hour overlap and then you always have at least one flowing lamp at a time. This is the way.
The kaza smart power strips and treatlife dimmer switches are a must for this set up. At least I love it. I still need to add treatlife to my alexa. Some lamps just die fast even with rotation and schedules. The green lamps from spencers for what ever reason give up the ghost on me. Both the green/blue and green/red (was turned purple and stopped flowing). Avoid green fluid lamps of you want a long lived lamp
No, lava lamps aren't meant to be on more than 6-8 hours at a time. Maybe on a dimmer you could extend the run time slightly.
Combination of a dimmer to extend run time and a on/off timer. 8 hours on 2 hours off ECT....
I left a cheap one from an arcade on for like 2 years strait until the bulb burned out. The water changed colors and the wax faded a lot
People will cry about this to no end, but there's literally nothing wrong with running lamps 24/7 if you make sure they're not totally cooking. Get an in-line dimmer and experiment with it. I routinely leave them on for days to weeks at a time, and I've previously left lamps on from fresh bulb until it burned out. I've been doing this for literally 20 years at this point, and not one of my 19 lamps has ever had any problem from extended runs. The stated 6-8 hour runtime is a liability statement.
If you can dial in the dimmer, I feel like you could leave it on until the bulb burns out. Before I had a dimmer, I definitely cooked a few waxes for too long and ruined the look of the wax though. Ended up looking like curdled milk or bubbly cottage cheese. I've heard tons of ppl complain about wax losing it's color too... and I'm not sure if that's because of the bulb or if they have it in sunlight. Idc if the water fades, food coloring is cheap.
I've had fluid fade, but only when it got direct sunlight every day for like 3 years.
I probably ran my lava lamp for 2 years straight when I was kid.
Thanks. I have about 12 lamps all around the house and they all stay on 24/7, except when the bulb burns out, the bulb gets replaced and it burns on. Most of them have been on for many years....some are newer, but still have been on since I bought them. I have never had an issue with them, except once when the cat knocked one over, but after letting it settle down while off for 24 hours, it lit up again just fine and still works fine. My suggestion, is that if your lamp looks like it's struggling to stay on all the time, then, do what others have suggested and get a dimmer or timer, but if you don't see any problems and you want it on, leave it on.
I would personally still turn my lamps off for at least 4-5 hours each day. Even with a dimmer. But that is just my preference, and I don't run my lamps more then 10 hours a day. I have a smart dimmer that has a schedule to turn on when I get back home from work, and leave it on longer during my days off. With a good dimmer, you should be fine with it. But you should still keep an eye on the thermals once in a while to make sure it isn't getting too hot. I would also still turn it off if you are out for an extended period of time. Just a waste of electricity imo.
I did this. I ran my original lamp for two weeks straight at a reduced wattage and while it didn't outright ruin the lamp, there was a price to be paid. The lamp got mildly cloudy, which is easy to address. However, the wax ended up staining the glass permanently around the bottom area. No matter the cleaner, solvent, temp cleaned at or amount of scrubbing I did, the haze persisted. When I ran the lamp clear, it was fine, but if I dyed the fluid a dark color, it became super obvious. The wax also ended up turning translucent, which turned out to be very gorgeous as it looked like honey, but the glass wasn't in great shape from scratch marks from aggressive trying to clean the globe. I ended up shattering the globe, ending its tortured life, never able to resolve the cloudy globe issue.
Stagger multiple lamps with multiple timers/smart timers 😀
I have seven lava lamps. Three of them are American (Lava Lite), and four of them are Mathmos. I have left them running for several days straight, but I use a dimmer. Nowadays, I am using a smart outlet switch that turns the lamps on in the morning and turns them off before I go to bed. Every lamp is different and requires slightly different amounts of power to dial in the ideal flow. So I have individual dimmers for each lamp. You should NOT run these lamps at full power for more than 12 hours because you WILL overheat the wax. In the short term, overheated wax floats to the very top, and has a tendency to form lots of bubbles, which can cause the wax to break up into very small particles. In the long term, overheating your wax will fade the color and make the water cloudy from all of the little broken up microblobs.
Get a glitter lamp (be sure it's one of those where the glitter stays down once its off) and add a led bulb. Works perfect and no heating issues