Interesting. My family is the first to live in my house but i think there were lamps already in the fixtures. I can't remember what brand lamps were in my bedroom light but the lamps were 60W and were changed to 13W GE CFLs around my 8th birthday or so. Then i changed the ones in my bedroom to LED in April 2011 and they've been maintenance free ever since. The CFLs that were in my room were used elsewhere in the house.
Some of the lights are incandescent though because they either don't fit CFLs or they're too difficult to reach. We also kept the ones in the bathrooms incandescent. The keyless lampholders in my garage are also incandescent because the lamps haven't died yet. My brother's room has two CFLs and one 40W incandescent because one of the CFLs had gone mercury starved (i kept it) and stayed a dim pink/purple color and got really hot. You could see the mercury mgration through the spiral as well, it's cool to watch.
Well maybe lamps came included with the fixtures? Ditto on keeping some lights incandescent; as I live in Alaska it gets chilly in the winter and the areas of my house that aren't heated (pantry, shop, etc.) don't have CFLs. The linear T12 florescents in those areas HATE the cold (but are fine in summer). And these are full-wattage, full-mercury lamps, no energy saver 34w and/or low mercury ones at my house (except for F32T8 GE EcoLux ones.
Replacing the magnetic ballasts with electronic rapid start F40T12 ballasts should solve that issue. I live in Rhode Island so not as harsh winters lol.
The GE ProLine ballasts are good quality. I used to own one that was in a Cooper strip light and the lamp started with no flickering and the lamps last a long time on them too. A Universal or Advance ballast from here would give good results as well. Personally i like magnetic ballasts because i like older fixtures but if you want to stop the flickering and keep the good old T12 lamps then an electronic rapid start ballast will definetly fix the problem.
No problem. Keep the magnetic ballasts though for collection purposes. They don't make them anymore. Also try to avoid cutting the wires. The ballast leads will come off of the socket by twisting the wires counterclockwise and pulling on the wires at the same time. It takes some time and work but that way you won't end up cutting the leads on the old ballast. The new ballast leads attatch the socket simply by pushing them into their respective terminal holes on the socket. After pushing them in, just tug on them a bit to be sure they're in the socket all the way. They should stay in unless you pull and twist counterclockwise.
Sounds simple enough... but I won't be doing that for some time yet. The ballast in question is a MagneTek magnetic RS one. In cold temps it will just glow dimly at the ends of the bulbs. (which are cool white Philips HomeLight ones BTW). This ballast also buzzes and gives the glowing-ends thing on modified-sine-wave inverter power (I'm off the grid).
Do you know the age of the ballast/fixture? On the back of the ballast there will be a code stamped into the ballast casing. It'll be something like "C73" which would be March 1973. My shoplite has a Universal Ligting magnetic rapid start ballast from February 1973 and it's still going strong. I found it at someone's curb with the wrong lamps installed (it probably didn't work with incorrect lamps hence they were getting rid of it) so i removed the lamps and brought it home on my bike. I repainted it and installed new sockets and the fixture looks like new and works great with a pair of full mercury Sylvania F40T12 cool white deluxe lamps.
Hmm, try and see if you can get a cold start F40 ballast, they're pretty rare but they should be better in cold temps and plus since they're cold temp they should be exempt from all bans.
If that dosen't work well I guess you could try using HO/VHO lamps but you'll probably need a new fixture for those since the ballast for them is a lot bigger and probably won't fit in a F40 fixture.
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Some of the lights are incandescent though because they either don't fit CFLs or they're too difficult to reach. We also kept the ones in the bathrooms incandescent. The keyless lampholders in my garage are also incandescent because the lamps haven't died yet. My brother's room has two CFLs and one 40W incandescent because one of the CFLs had gone mercury starved (i kept it) and stayed a dim pink/purple color and got really hot. You could see the mercury mgration through the spiral as well, it's cool to watch.
If that dosen't work well I guess you could try using HO/VHO lamps but you'll probably need a new fixture for those since the ballast for them is a lot bigger and probably won't fit in a F40 fixture.