Not going fully fluorescent

My family has used household fluorescent lights since long before it was the "green" thing to do. Our kitchen light when I was young was a large circular fixture, and some utility lights in the basement were replaced with "circlelight" lights (six or eight inch fluorescent circles that plugged into a ballast that screwed into a standard socket.) We bought "compact fluorescents" as soon as they hit the market, and paid premium prices for them until economies of scale brought them down to current levels. In my mom's house I would say at least 75% of the lights are compact fluorescent. Even my grandmother's house (now my house) features vintage fluorescent fixtures in the kitchen and the bathroom.

However, there's one set of lights that will stay incandescent, because apparently Jesus wants it that way.

Those are the flood lights in our back yard. These are security lights that are kept on all night long, illuminating the approach to our back door. Over the years I have taken steps to use lower-wattage bulbs to reduce energy consumption, and to switch from "flood" to "spot" patterns to reduce light pollution. This week I decided to take this a step further and replace the 45 Watt incandescent bulbs with 14 Watt fluorescents.

Alas, it was not to be.

The first set that I bought were small indoor/outdoor floodlight bulbs. These were shaped differently from the incandescent flood light bulbs, something more like a standard light bulb with a flattened front. I pulled out my trusty array of attachments for my light-bulb-changing pole, and chose the one designed for standard incandescents. After removing the old bulb, I carefully hoisted the new bulb into position, and turned, and turned, and...nothing.

OK. Must be doing something wrong that the threads were not engaging. I decided that maybe the changing head didn't have the right grip on the bulb. I switched to a suction-cup head with a string release and tried that. Still nothing.

I went over to the other flood light and had the same series of failures.

Giving up, I took one of the fluorescents and one of the incandescents and compared bases. There was a subtle but important difference that gave the incandescent bulb slightly more depth of thread. This, I decided, was what was making the difference.

Today I was in a different store and found a different sort of fluorescent flood light. This one consisted of a standard compact fluorescent within a weatherproof housing. I checked the base and saw that it had the proper base depth. This time, it should work.

I will spare you the details. It did not work, and the attempt ended with not one but two broken fluorescent floodlights under the Rhododendron that is beneath this fixture. Only the protective housings shattered, not the bulbs within, so I don't think I've released any toxic Mercury into the environment. Maybe. I hope.

So now the low-wattage incandescents are back in place, protecting the house from intruders or helping them to see what they are doing, I'm not sure which. Perhaps someday someone will outlaw incandescent bulbs and we'll be forced to deal with this. But for now, I think I've invested enough money in attempting to replace these bulbs. The world will have to try to get by with them as they are.