In article , Chad wrote:

I just put 3 flourescent replacement lights in my bathroom (shaped like a
spiral, meant to replace the incandescent bulb in the same socket).

When I turn on the power there is a very audible hum. I know that
flourescent's can hum but did not think it would be this bad. Is the
humming a possible indactor of another problem? I can't have a bulb that
makes this sound in a small bathroom.

The spirals normally do not do this humming, bit I have found a couple
that did. One was a 27 watt model and the other was a 30 watt model.

I have also known heat buildup problems in some fixtures with higher
wattages, and even some complaints of early failures of 42 watt ones
operated base-up apparently resulting from heat. I also saw a possibly
heat-related failure of a 24 watt spiral, and those have been replaced by
23 watt ones due to improvements in efficiency of the electronics.

In addition, I have seen a slight trend of color of spirals being
slightly harsher with higher wattages as wattage increases past 23 watts.

As a result of all of this data, I might suggest to use 23 watt ones if
you were using a higher wattage. 23 watt spirals have light output a
little over halfway from "75 watts" to "100 watts" of "standard
incandescent" "equivalence".

The next step down in wattage in spirals is the 18-20 watt range, with
18 or 19 now being the norm here. Those have light output about that of
75 watt 120V "standard incandescents".

- Don Klipstein )