You guys ever heard of harmonics. Its that dirty little electrical noise that supposedly causes health problems (Power Lines), reduces the life of appliances or the whole electrical system for that matter. Its that annoying static in the phone. Or that little bit of snow on a TV. If you listen to a actual fluorescent fixture that hum you hear is actual harmonics. Some of the lamps I've seen come with a warning not to install near any transmitting electrical device (TV, Radio, Cordless Phone etc..) As far as the life expectancy of the lamp itself I've run in to that very same thing on past completed jobs where my customer will want them installed through out the house. Only to find out later the life of them was shorter than a regular lamp. Especially in a cold weather condition. I personally think fluorescent is a commercial application where light is needed on a constant basis. Another alternative thats been proven that you could try would be installing a dimmer on regular incadescent. It would reduce the amount of wattage and increase the lifetime of the lamp. You could try to install a dimmer on the fluorescent but you'll see even more of a increase in price per lamp (need dimmable ballast). Not sure about the life expectancy though. With all that being said. I do believe LED will be the future.

Thanks,

Aaron
http://www.wolfenergysavings.com/

Yes, harmonics from appliances drive me crazy, and it's especially bad with fluorescent fixtures. But most people think I'm crazy when I mention it.

In 1992 a hurricane knocked out power for over a week. It made life difficult, but the one major positive note was NO HARMONICS practically anywhere in the city. There was this peaceful calm due to it. Switch forward to this year when another hurricane knocked out power for more than a week. No harmonics, but nowadays everybody buys a gasoline powered generator, so it sounded like lawn-mowers running constantly at every other house. Not exactly peaceful.

You may consider LED lighting. The LEDs do not hum. (I suppose excessive harmonics might not be good for the LED drivers.)  There are also no toxic chemicals. The price is high but actually they save money due to less energy use.

Thank you for the tip on Home depot. 

I may just drop off a bunch of bulbs tomorrow!

Ray

What LED bulbs? The only LED replacement bulbs I seen so far are output comparable to 30~35 watt incandescent bulb. That's way too dim for me. I need something in to 60 watt incandescent range at the very least, 75 to 100 watts would be even better.  Your house lighting must make it look like a cave.

The only place I can think of where they may be useful is in a Vanity Light where you have 6 or 8 bulbs in a row. The combined light should offer more than enough light for this purpose., but other than that, They are not useful to me. Most people use 60 watt or higher bulbs in there lamp fixtures. Sorry, LED bulbs offering the equilivent of 40 watt bulbs just don't cut it.

TechGromit: There are better LED bulbs out there that put out adequate luminosity, but primarily in spot or flood lamp configurations (the CREE LR6 ain't bad). They still underperform cheap standard edison-base retrofit CFL technology on raw efficiency though (except at some sub-10Watt situations, where keeping the filament warm enough to sustain an arc in the CFL becomes a significant fraction of the power consumption.)

LEDs aren't isotropic light emitters- they need efficiency-killing optics & diffusers to get much spread out of the light beam. It'll be awhile before they perform adequately in sockets designed for A-bulbs (like table & floor lamps), where $2 twisty CFLs do just fine.

LEDs make the most sense as low power halogen spot replacements, where you need/want the inherent focused beam, and the high-contrast sparkle/shadow edge that fluorescent technology simple can't reproduce. In most standard interior lighting applications they're just less efficient & more expensive (with higher glare to boot) than CFLs. But someday...