I'm sure they all used to work, but I looked up the other day and noticed that three out of four fluorescent tubes in my garage were dark. DH and I rearranged the tubes and concluded we had bad ballasts. So it went on the hardware store list.
During our semi-regular Costco visit this weekend, we saw several people circulating with LED shop lights in their carts. I'm not usually one to give in to peer pressure so quickly, but it was on the list and definitely time. So we went hunting around and found them. On the way out, someone else walked up and asked us where we'd found them. (Not with LEDs. At least in our store they're closer to tools and auto stuff.)
We got two, at $40 each, for the fixture with both bulbs. They're 38W for the whole fixture (as opposed to anywhere from 25 to 40W for each of two tubes). They plug into a regular wall socket (already present), so aside from a little rearrangement of some mounting screws, the installation was trivial, maybe 30-45 minutes, including recycling the cartons.
What a huge difference. There's more than four times the light, I'm sure. There's no sputtering to life and then buzzing the whole time, just a split-second delay and little ticking when they first heat up. The box claims they'll last 45 years; if they last a quarter of that time, they'll still be an improvement over the old ones. I don't think I'll mind so much the next time I'm in there working.
Now all I need to do is clean out the garage. At least I'll have good light to work by. I'll start by recycling the old bulbs and fixtures.
