Lights of America 65 Watt Outdoor Fluorescent Floodlight

This outdoor fluorescent floodflight (Costco item 464411), manufactured by Lights of America consumes only 65 Watts of power, but is as bright as a 500 Watt incandescent bulb. Even better, it only costs $8.49 at my local Costco warehouse.

This is not just a bulb, but it includes the housing. You need to wire it up to your house's electrical system. It's much easier than that sounds, if you just replace another external fixture.

I installed this in under an hour. First turn off the power to the current fixture, at the breaker box. Unscrew the current fixture from the wall, and pull out the power wires from the box. Disconnect the power wires from the current fixture, and use the screw caps to connect the power wires to the new fixture. Screw the new fixture onto the wall, and turn the power back on.

If your new fixture doesn't light up right away, don't panic. This Lights of America fluorescent floodlight has a built in light sensor that shuts off the power to the floodlight during daylight hours! You can use this as a security light that will automatically stay lit all night, and shut off in the morning. (You can still test the light, by covering the sensor with a piece of black electrical tape.)

The bulb is rated at 10,000 hours. If you leave the lamp on all night, you'll average 12 hours of use per day throughout the year and the bulb should last you about 2 and a half years.

This was a great buy and I highly recommend everyone replace their outdoor fixtures with this lamp. My only critiques are that it is a much harsher color (6500K color temp) where you and I are probably used to the standard incandescent bulb (about 2700K color temperature). 6500K is the basically the color of light you get on an overcast day, so it's quite appropriate for outside use.