I just purchased a Fantech, too. It is installed but not operating yet, waiting completion of the bathroom. I chose the halogen so they could be dimmed. I think I was told fluorescent can't, or is more complicated? I wanted a light in the shower and the fan with light cut down on one more fixture to install. I also have one over the tub area and wanted a bright light mostly for cleaning. My gc hooked it up and ran it for me before he installed the insulation. It was so quiet, I was very pleased.

"we haven't sold one fluorescent fixture in over 4 years ..." Well, sure. Stores sell what they push. If you don't suggest that customers buy a product, most won't. (I'm the exception, as I usually know what I want long before I step into a store. :) "the difference between low voltage halogen and fluorescent in terms of energy use and life is nothing close to what the numbers claim." As the old saw goes, the plural of anecdote is not data. If you have your lights dimmed most of the time, you've probably chosen the wrong light. Curiously, low light output is one of the places where low voltage incandescents "shine" (sorry). For a given wattage, the filament is thicker for better life and durability. Compared to line voltage incandescents, they can run hotter (and whiter) for better efficiency at low light output. But that's when they're run at normal voltage. You lose that advantage when you dim them. As you dim any incandescent lamp, its efficacy in lumens per watt, already overall the lowest of modern lighting systems, becomes even lower. This is a natural consequence of the lower filament temperature. In other words, your energy use is low because you aren't producing much light, not because your lights are efficient. So you could use even less energy if you'd use even lower voltage lights running flat-out - assuming you could find such lights. (Practically speaking, this is where LEDs come in.) BTW, a dimmed halogen lamp also loses one of its other great advantages over a conventional incandescent - maintaining light output over the full life of the lamp. That's because the chemical reaction that keeps tungsten boiled off the filament from deposting on the lamp envelope doesn't run at the lower temperatures of a dimmed lamp. "most fluorescents can't dim..." There are some retrofit dimmable CFs that dim rather nicely. I'll admit that they don't dim as low as many people would like, however. "Mercury is one of the biggest contaminants in land fills." I don't doubt that it could be a concern, but I'd like to see your source for this statement. Here's what counts, folks. When you use a fluorescent lamp, you are releasing LESS mercury into the world. Period. Most people state that and let it go, but here are the hard numbers. The amount of mercury in fluorescent lamps has gotten drastically smaller in the last couple of decades. A typical compact fluorescent lamp has only about 5mg. There are even some full-size linear fluorescent lamps (Philips Alto range, for example) that contain so little mercury - less than 3.6mg per 32 watt F32T8 lamp - that the EPA has actually approved disposing of them in regular trash, though I still recommend taking them to a household hazardous waste (HHW) disposal site (and do this myself). Now, a coal fired powerplant will emit about 3.5mg of mercury powering a 20W CF for its lifetime, taking that as 7500h (a rough average). If you chuck the CF in the trash, you've just released 8.5mg of mercury into the environment. If you take it to the HHW center and they recycle the mercury, you've released only 3.5mg. Now let's say you use a 75W incandescent bulb instead. Since it lasts an average of 750h you'll need 10 of them to the one CF. This uses more landfill space and more raw materials, but we'll neglect that for now. The salient point here is that although those 10 bulbs contain no mercury, the powerplant emits 13mg of mercury powering them. And there's not a thing you can do about it. You can't haul any of that mercury to your local HHW center. So, here's the bottom line. Using an incandescent bulb releases at least 53% more mercury into the environment than using a CF, and that's if you junk the CF in a landfill. If you use a CF and dispose of it properly at a HHW disposal center, the mercury released is only 3.5mg. In that case, using the incandescent bulb releases 270% more mercury, or 3.7 times as much. "Again, this boils down to personal preference." Absolutely. Choice is good. Informed choice is better. That's why I take the time to write this stuff. :)

Xenon is a bit warmer looking in color. Xenon has a longer lifespan but using halogen lamps would be more consistant with the MR16s you have nearby. You can use a magnetic transformer for the puck lights. They will work perfectly. You must use class 2 rated transformer(s) to be code compliant and safe with the puck light wiring. Unless low voltage is class 2 it must comply with all other standard wiring rules. Class 2 is power limited so that you don't need junction boxes. You'll find that class 2 magnetic transformers are much larger than their electronic low voltage equivalents. Do not mix electronic low voltage and magnetic low voltage transformers on the same dimmer. There are different dimmer types for each. Lightech and some others make electronic transformers that are fairly successfull at working with standard line voltage dimmers but typically they won't guarantee that they will work. If you strickly follow UL listings the load type and dimmer must match each other. Dimming electronic low voltage can be tricky to get right. The standards seem a bit loose.

Koolforkatz -- I know that florescent lights can be hardwired without a transformer, but they can't be dimmed. Do the zenon lights require a transformer because they are low voltage? Did you install them yourself, or did you have an electrician do them for you? Remodelmama, I am beginning this same decision-making process for our kitchen. I have done some searching online, and I'm intrigued by LED lights. They're more expensive up front, but *much* more energy efficient. That's the pitch, anyway. I found a great website that makes the case for LED, and other environmentally-friendly lighting options. The link is below.... Here is a link that might be useful: Why environmental lights?