how long to wait before giving up and filtering?

[Aaron Grier]

I purchased a 20oz clear/blue globe from lavalite LLC in Chi-town.  it was on clearance, and I can't return it.  (even if I could, return shipping would mean I'd be paying more for shipping than I paid for the globe.)

now I understand why it was on clearance.

it was not well-treated in shipment: while it was double-boxed, it was delivered on its side, and the first time I fired it up, there were powdery flakes floating in the milky liquid, and it either did the "goose egg" or all collected at the top with not much going on between the two modes.  a pretty sad sight.

after a week of cycling on a timer, the flow does seem to be getting better, and the flakes seem to be being pulled back into the wax (or at least sticking to the spring) so I'm hopeful it might clear up a little more, or at least develop some better flow.

how long should I wait before calling it a lost cause and taking more drastic measures?  what's the longest you've waited for a lamp to "break in"?

[Tim Gill]

To be honist I doubt its going to improve so really the best idea would be to replace the water or do a goo kit on it.

Unforantly it is verry commen for thies lamps to be like this on clearance or not

[Egnix]

I can't tell if you've just cycled it or have also filtered it.

You have a China-made lamp, and in my experience, cycling never helps a cloudy China-made lamp (or even a USA-made lamp in my experience).

As far as the flow: with the newer china-made lamps (like yours), flow generally does get better with time.

[Dr. WHAT?!]

rule of thumb dont buy anything on clearance that you have to have shipped to you :)  Also why does the base look larger then it should for that globe? also ALL 20 oz. lamps are crap even if it was clear or not. There's no room for flow or wax so if it was clear, it would just shoot up round blobs, not usually ideal for flow.

[lava luva ~ Tiffany]

hmmm...it looks like you have a 20oz globe on a 32oz bace. did it come like that?

[Egnix]

Sounds like it was a "globe only" purchase from the Clearance page at:

http://www.lavalamp.com/c/24/clearance

[Aaron Grier]

I wish I would've found and read this site before making my purchase... I figured buying from the source was a safe bet.  lesson learned! :)

Eqnix has the link exactly.  I was looking for a replacement globe for my dead 32oz midnight, hence the oversize base.  (I still have the old globe, but I started fiddling with it years ago due to bad flow issues...  after reading posts here, I'm pretty sure I could replace the liquid and get it going again, but that's the subject of another post.)

no filtering yet, just cycling.

I guess one benefit of the smaller globe is that even with a little bit of cloudiness, you can still see the flow.  I would hate to have gotten a larger lamp that was this cloudy.

if the flow for the 20oz are bad, are the 12oz worse?

[Egnix]

With a 20oz globe in a 32oz base, you'll probably want to switch to a 25w bulb.

In my experience, the 12oz are worse than the 20oz, especially the 12oz Clearview (though others have had better results than me I think).  Though I think my old 10oz globes flower better than my 12oz globes.

[Ian]

My Clearview 12oz lava lamp works pretty good, it doesn't overheat or anything and its crystal clear. It is red wax/ yellow liquid. I'm very happy it works so well, because all of the others I have seen don't flow well at all, and they overheat.

My 20oz yellow wax/ purple liquid doesn't work well at all. It doesn't overhear and its crystal clear but the flow is terrible. Half the time the wax gets all full of bubbles and eventually gets to the point where it does nothing at all, and the other half of the time it just flows very slow and does hardly anything.

So I think it is just a shot in the dark between the different sizes that are all made in China.

[Aaron Grier]

a few months and a couple burnt out appliance bulbs later, I did get a dimmer for the base that heats the 20oz globe, and in conjunction with my kill-a-watt meter, I can fine-tune the delivered power within a watt.

the 20oz is a bit more active with 30W than it was at 40, but the flow is still pretty bad.  (it doesn't move at all when dimmed down to 25W, per Eqnix' suggestion.)  the lava just doesn't "stretch" like it does on my 32oz midnight. I never get the columns of undulating, oozing goo that stretch from the top to the bottom on the 20oz, for instance. it just makes balls that don't want to recombine except on the spring.

I have a bench bottle capper and plenty of spare bottle caps (yay homebrewing), so I'm not beyond doing some tinkering.

would a wetting agent (like photoflo) help things out at all, or just make things worse?

[Metallica Man Trevor]

I've had several USA lamps clear up with cycling. 3 days on 4 off

Egnix said:

I can't tell if you've just cycled it or have also filtered it.

You have a China-made lamp, and in my experience, cycling never helps a cloudy China-made lamp (or even a USA-made lamp in my experience).

As far as the flow: with the newer china-made lamps (like yours), flow generally does get better with time.

[Gwen Williams]

Aaron- what you are experiancing is "china flow" there does not seem to be much that helps it be more like the US made lamps.