Posted By Dana1 on 18 Feb 2013 05:11 PM
Housefire events from CFLs are extremely rare events (much rarer than incandescent bulbs lighting off stuff from unintended contact of the bulb with flammable materials), and reported incidents are with exactly one manufacturer cited (resulting in the recalls of the offending product), of exactly FOUR reported fires.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cflbulb.asp

http://mammothtimes.com/content/mammoth-fire-dept-warns-cfl-bulb-users

There's a lot of folks blowing smoke on this subject, but it's not advisable to inhale too deeply.

I'm sure if you're fishing from the bottom of the barrel the world's crummiest CFL might trip a standard arc-fault or ground-fault breaker, but so would any number of crummy dimmers or low end switching power supplies. (More often than not illegitimate neutral connections would be the more likely candidate for flaky AFCI breaker behavior). Damning the whole class for the spitwad launched by the one rotten kid in the back corner is more than a bit silly. I'm not buying the "...impossible to run CFLs" statement, even if SOME CFLs may have compatibility issues. It's neither rocket-science nor expensive to design even an edison-base sized ballast to not have that sort of issue.

We have such a problem here in Colorado with CFL's and arc fault breaekrs that just about every electrician I know, carries a stock of arc faults with them to a job, once the inspections are done they swap back in standard breakers. Granted as close as I am to an arson investigator I'm bound to see more problems then successes. Still CFLs are having problems in the market and I believe they wont last long. with LED tech growing fast I see CFLs leaving the market just as fast as they came in. They aren't ROHS compliant and when inverted they also take a while to "warm up" and produce full light as the mercury takes a while to vaporize

So, about every electrician you know is willing to risk their license to hoodwink the inspector rather than telling their client they need to buy a better class of CFL? Really?

As close as you are to the arson investigator, you can perhaps can get him to point to ONE published case where a damaging house fire was started by a defective CFL? (Truly, this is the stuff of urban legend that has yet to actually pan out.)

Retrofit CFLs and LED retrofit bulbs will both have issues with the heat-isolating aspects of Edison base fixtures designed for much higher power, and yes, base-up configurations exaggerates those issues (particularly for R & PAR bulbs north of 15 watts in recessed lighting fixtures). Newer-better higher lumen/watt LEDs won't fix that issue any time soon. Replacing the fixture with a fixture-ballasted CFL or LED-specific fixture is the only way to deal with truly high-output versions of high-output down lighting.

It will be quite awhile before even 10W edison base LEDs are at price point that is cost-competitive with the $2-twisty CFL, but mercury regulations may eventually reduce the market for all sorts of fluorescent technology (not just CFLs.) Even where subsidized <10W LEDs are still 5-10x the price of comparable output CFLs, and only the best LEDs can beat CFL on raw efficiency, but that will likely change as other vendors try to meet or beat the efficiency of the 10W Philips L-Prize winning A-bulb replacement- street price currently $35 from internet discounters, unsubsidized. (But you can buy a 12-pack of 13W twistys from for that kind of money and still have enough left over for coffee and a snack.)

Most CFL vendors have ROHS compliant versions but they don't market that aspect heavily in the US where RoHS is not required (being a European Norm standard that has not been adopted into US code.) But some vendors ONLY make RoHS versions, since setting up dual production lines to serve ROHS/non-ROHS markets makes both versions more expensive. (google it)

Somehow I'm doubting the CFL will fade quickly, barring sudding more stringent restriction on mercury. It's a mature and very large market. But if "...leave as fast as they came in..." is the standard, assuming we're near the mid-point now it means we have another ~30 years of fade to go before they're done, which is a credible timeline for LED technology and regulations to make that happen.

Some of the last few CFLs I have purchased have worked out as did the very first expensive ones that came out. As for all of those in between they are horrible. In a 8 pack of cfls at least two of them would stop working within days and within at least half had issues. Nothing catastrofic just stop working. Closest was when a bulb that was outside got a burn mark on the base.

As for LED bulbs I have been very happy with them. I have many of the $10 Lowes / Homedepot type and have yet to have one go out. I like the quality of light better and my only gripe is that the brighter ones are more expensive. I have the things in all my outside hanging lights now. I have them in my kitchen. I also have them in some motion floods on my front deck.