Florescent lighting fixtures bother some people.
When wiring a house, most men don't care about the lighting or what kind it was.
Women were specific about what they wanted and what they didn't.
The number 1 complaint was concerning fluorescent fixtures.
The top 3 complaints from women were noise, flickering fixtures, and headaches.
Noise is not as much a problem anymore on fluorescent lighting because of electronic ballasts.
It hasn't been eliminated completely because there still have some cheap ballasts out there.
You can walk into a building and hear a low hum.
You start looking up wondering where that hum is coming from.
The ballast in old buildings are still around.
But there are new silent electronic ballast.
There are different divisions of ballast that you can buy.
In other words you can buy noiseless ballast.
It will give you less noise, or quieter ballast.
Everybody is going into quiet these days.
Even the vent fans installed in bathrooms are listed by decibel.
They are looking at the DB to see how loud it can be.
The decibel in a vent fan used to be really loud.
You couldn't hear yourself talk.
Nobody could hear you in the shower because the vent fan used to be so loud.
Nowadays, the make them so quiet that you hardly notice them.
Flickering can be caused because the gas is not completely ignited throughout the tube.
It happens particularly in cold weather.
They may flicker until they get up to speed.
Most women tell me that their fluorescent are flickering and want them replaced with a different type of fixture.
Headaches can be caused by fluorescent fixtures.
I read that the scientific community says that they can't prove it.
Usually, it was the women that did not want fluorescent lighting.
It is due to the 60 cycle hum.
Everyone in the electrical field knew about the 60 cycle hum.
They know that 60 cycles a second that the generator has to turn to generate that much power.
But the eyes of women must be more sensitive to this than the eyes of men.
90% of complaints were from women.
They did not want their kitchens with fluorescent lights.
It is mostly women that complain about florescents.
No man has ever complained about them.
A fixture can be brand new and women will complain.
Electricians know because they have tried to correct the problem.
Electricians start with the usual solutions.
They can change out the bulbs and they can change out the ballast.
Yet, according to some woman, it still bothers them.