[quote=AN]I switch all of my lights to CFL and all of them are E26 and not GU24. I had to buy a GU24 adapter because the light housing in front of my garage door is GU24. I have no energy comparison, but I do noticed some last less than advertised while others have last for 5 years and going. So, maybe it has to do with the housing itself that cause the early death. I got it over 5 years ago when SDG&E and Home Depot were doing some special deals on them and I got them for ~$1/bulb. I stocked up a lot and still have plenty. I can’t justify going to LED because they’re still way too expensive compare to my $1/bulb CFL.
So for my house recess lighting, I actually went in and cut out the GU24 sockets and installed and wired new E26 bulb sockets each time a new CFL recess lighting goes out or starts to flicker… Unfortunately, I think I have a total of 24 recess lighting in my home, 10 in the kitchen alone…. So yeah, it’s kind of a problem, a slow and painful problem…That’s fine, problem solved, and contractor packs for the E26 sockets at HD are pretty cheap… Just time consuming to do all of them in one shot..
For things like floor lamps, I could put on a new socket, but I would need to take apart the floor lamps, which I don’t really feel like doing…So adapters, it is… The problem with the adapters is that it adds about 3/4″ height to the light socket…Which for small lamps (not floor lamps) won’t leave enough room for a lot of the CFL bulbs which are already slightly larger….
I think a lot of these newer lights switched to GU24 simply because they thought they could charge consumers more for the special lightbulbs (that or it hasn’t caught on yet)…
BTW: in CA, 100w or more incandescent bulbs are banned in CA (started Jan 1st). If you have 100w bulbs or higher, those are going to be relics soon.