When I moved I thought about switching out my CFL's since I had the old bulbs but decided karma for helping out the world was worth more then the $40 the bulbs where worth. All I did do was take the giant 23 watt cfl's from the shop and replace them with some 13 watt bulbs. the Real big/bright ones are hard to find around here sometimes. The second or 3rd day I lived here I went shopping and bought door stops and $100 worth of CFL's including 6 dimming floods for pot lights and 2 dimming regular ones.

In 1.5 years I think I've replaced 3 of them, one was noisy from day one and works but I got annoyed at it, one I broke when I hit it while on a ladder and the other burnt out within the first month.

I have a CFL box with about 8 incandescents in it, but I should probably just throw them out.

When my last roommate and I parted ways, I left all the CFLs with her, because she's too frugal (:rolleyes:) to buy them for herself.

If you're looking for ways to spend money to save energy, giving people CFLs that they will actually use provides absolutely enormous bang for the buck.

So Patrick, have you had any problems with your water heater yet? I'm seeing on sears.com people complaining of issues and the local plumber said he had people complaining also. Just wondering how your experience has turned out so far. My local electric company gives us a $300 rebate so I've been considering this seriously.

What complaints are there?

No problems so far. My wife complained that the water temp was getting lower at the end of her shower when I had the heat setting at the lowest level. But she likes to take REALLY hot showers. I just turned the heater up a notch and it's been fine since.

The one Sears sells is the GE unit, mine is the Rheem.

Daox, Someone on sears.com said their compressor exploded after they had a brown out. That's a weird one. There were a few other people saying that it died after a month or two of operation. The plumber I called up said he had issues diagnosing problems with them. That's probably an obvious one though. You'd probably have better luck calling up an HVAC repair man.