Lighting. Incandescent, Fluorescent, LED

When we first moved to the house in Solon I started to replace all the lights with compact fluorescents.Now keep in mind that this was back in 2002 or so.The lights we were buying then were all the high-dollar Philips units. Those "bulbs" were still working when we left. The turn-on time of those bulbs was pretty quick, and the rated life was the truth.Now, on the other hand, the CFLs are crap. They are all just built to a cost, built by the lowest bidder.The bulbs we have, and the bulbs we can get now, are crap. They don't really last nearly as long as they claim. They take forever to warm up.  The fact that they can't light up means that you never turn them off.

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When we moved here most of the lights were CFLs. Like I said before, they uniformly sucked. Most of them were recent vintage. When one of them burnt out in the family room I decided to try out a Philips LED flood lamp.Holy crap.This thing is freaking nirvana. They are bright. They light up quickly. They don't have any mercury. The color temperature is just where I like it.I was forced to buy seven more to fill out the rest of the lights in the room. Now the family room is awesome.Then another went in the kitchen. I replaced it with an LED. Today another died.As it turns out, Seattle Light is having some program where they subsidize LED lights. The kitchen is now fully kitted out with them.Of course there is still margin left in LED lights, unlike CFLs. I'm not looking forward to the day that LEDs go down the same path with lowest bidder crap. Then you'll have a whole different set of problems. As long as I can buy non crap I'll be happy.