Oozing Goo - The Lava Lamp Syndicate

What wattage bulb for smooth flow on Mathmos Astro?

Hello all,

I've got a couple of Mathmos Astro's and have been using the 35W bulb from mathmos, which is fairly nice. One thing I've noticed is that I like the flow of my 10W bulb much more, but the room has to be decently warm to get a flow from bottom to top.

35W just seems too hot in my opinion and I've also experimented with 40W bulbs, but that just seems to cook the liquid and if way too hot.

I was wondering if I should get a 25W or 30W bulb to meet my demands for a slow but steady flow? I don't want to bother with dimmers, I just want to be able to turn the lamp on and not touch it for the rest of the evening. Would the 25W be better for that in a normal temperature room or would the 30W be more of a safe bet?

Has anyone experimented with these wattages with an Astro?

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I did try a different bulb in my astrobaby and it worked fine, I only went down 5w though, no idea about going even lower.

I know you don't want to bother with dimmers, but unless your room is a steady temp year round, they may be the best bet.  Something like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000LAU04K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin...

you could just "set and forget" then tweak occasiuonall as the temperature changes, and it basically costs the same a bulb.  I have an extension cable on a smart plug, then the lamps are plugged into those dimmers which are plugged into the extensin cable.  That way I can turn them on with alexa/google for the ultimate in laziness, and as it gets warmer I can dial them down a little.

One other potential pro for the dimmer is I've found that, weirdly, flow can vary from globe to globe - possibly due to different batches or the positioning of the coils.  I have a blue/blue that has a very snake like flow - one of the the coils on that one is slightly raised, and it doesn't want to go down, and a pink/blue that runs as if it's a little too hot with more/smaller blobs.  

Just my thoughts!

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