T12 4 foot led conversion

Could have gone here or off topic. Chose here.....

Ive got (currently installed) 28 individual t12 bulbs in my 18x25 shop. Im pretty sure this is increasing thermal load down here. I have another 24 to add when i finish the ceiling.

Ive already got a couple of bad ballasts.

Thinking about converting to led. Been doing the house one bulb at a time, and am happy so far.

I want it bright. Not operating room bright, but nuclear holocaust bright. Have to wear sunglasses at night outside when the door is open bright. Think search lights, and then multiply by a billion. Bright.

What do i want? Wattage? Lumens? Brand? Supplier?

They seem to be going for about 8-10 a bulb on amazon. Id be doing this in stages, starting with the bad ballast fixtures and then moving on. Big price for that many bulbs all at once.

I was going to give you a hard time about too many lights, then I counted my 20 by 26 shop half of my garage, and I have 56 four foot tubes. Plus, I painted high gloss white.

I will just wander off now.

I've been converting over to these from Amazon a couple at a time. It makes a massive difference compared to flourescents, particularly in the winter, when you get useable light right away and dont have to let the lights warm up for 10-15 minutes.

What about in summer?

Warm up time is least of my concern. Actually useful light is the most important, followed by lifespan.

In reply to Streetwiseguy:

I like bright spaces. Apparently you do too.

To give you an idea, here's my garage with 13 4' tubes, plus 3 100w equivalent screw-in bulbs. You'll have over double the lumens with your 28, so yes, you'd probably want some sunglasses and maybe SPF20 or so . (There are 4 more tubes to the right over the back of the cars that I didn't turn on)

XLR99 wrote: I've been converting over to these from Amazon a couple at a time. It makes a massive difference compared to flourescents, particularly in the winter, when you get useable light right away and dont have to let the lights warm up for 10-15 minutes.

What color temp did you get? I want to put 4 of them in the light in the kitchen which has a frosted cover. This will complete the conversion of the whole house to LED.

In reply to Hal:

I got the 5000k, I figured it was kind of middle of the road.

Just wanted to circle back and say thanks for this thread. This evening I was able to convert one of my garage fixtures to the bulbs XLR99 linked above. Although I don't usually play with electricity, this video explained how to bypass the ballasts in the dual-ballast fixture. Everything went smoothly and I'll order bulbs for the other fixture.

The pic doesn't really do justice to the difference in brightness between the fixtures. Also, I REALLY need to tidy up my bench, wow.