4 foot led conversion question

So, the vast majority of the light fixtures in my office/shop/basement are t12. Ive got a couple of dead ballasts, im out of spare florescent bulbs, and im not happy with power bills/light quality now that im in there 4-8 hours a day. 

Which led me to Lowe's last night. They have some great sales right now on utilitech t8 led bolbs right now. 

Box says they must be used with electronic ballasts.  

What do i need to know/do/find out to swap my current fixtures to t8 led? 

And by great sales, 4 pack for 12 bucks. Or a 16 pack for 40. That 16 pack would do all my fixtures currently installed that have dead parts. 

I bought Phillips brand. They have a "no cut no wiring" bulb that went right into the fixture and just worked. They're called "instant fit". 

I think I paid $7 each for them, and I should have bought them years ago. 

But that sale you mention, much as I dislike Lowes, I might have to look into it

Product URL here; https://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-2-Pack-32-W-Equivalent-Bright-White-T8-LED-Tube-Light-Bulbs/1000083433

I'm not the smarty man about these things, but, it seems like these require electronic ballasts, which isn't really great because your T12 fixtures probably aren't electronic aka compatible with these bulbs.  Are there others on sale that don't require ballasts and you can wire directly instead?  The price is awesome but those are kind of weird bulbs.  Not using the ballast is a bonus to efficiency anyway.

To me using them with ballasts kind of defeats the purpose. IMHO itching the old bulbs and moving to LEDs means also not worrying about fried ballasts anymore. My guess it is for facilities who want to upgrade, but not have to swap out fixtures.

slefain said:

To me using them with ballasts kind of defeats the purpose. IMHO itching the old bulbs and moving to LEDs means also not worrying about fried ballasts anymore. My guess it is for facilities who want to upgrade, but not have to swap out fixtures.

That was my thought, as well.  I replaced all my florescent fixtures with cheap Costco LEDs a couple of years ago and it's a huge improvement in both light level and reliability.

I wound up going with no ballast T8s and rewired my light fixtures appropriately.  If I can do it, you can do it.  Check to see if they'll work without ballasts.  I've seen some LEDs that can work with electronic ballasts or without ballasts.

Yeah, to make those work, you'll need to buy T8 ballasts and replace what's in there now.  I did that on one set in the shop.  Ideally, you get the kind that just wires in directly and you don't have to mess with the ballasts anymore.

Well, crap. Theres no tech support number that i can find, and a couple of reviews said that the bulbs would not work without ballasts. 

So, whats my cheapest option here? Id really rather not replace the fixtures if at all possible.  Part of the reason why i want to go led is so i can stop replacing ballasts.....

Man, where are all you guys getting these garbage ballasts?

Between my home, the apartments, offices, and hotels I did maintenance for, the only time I ever had ballasts to change was after the sprinklers went off. That's almost 1000 apartments, 200+ offices, plus an entire hotel over 10 years, only a few offices were new, most stuff had been in place since before I was born. Some of the ones in my house right now are over 30 years old, and they took the instant fit lights no problem. 

HID light ballasts on the other hand are a biyearly replacement,  yearly if they're mounted outside. 

For $7 each, ill still recommend the Phillips instant fit. Brighter, whiter light that seems to be immune to cold, without needing to cut or replace anything. 

Edit: and now that I've said this, I expect the 4 ballasts currently in my house to all die tomorrow just because.

How many fixtures do you have?  Are they all the same?  What type of fixtures?

One problem is making sure the color temps match.  You don't want different temperature lights next to each other in the same room.

A reasonable compromise between cost and effectiveness is to replace fixtures in one room at a time, keeping the old fixtures for spares in the other rooms.

There are 20 fixtures.  All in the same room. 6 are 4 bulb fixtures, the rest are 2 bulb. All 4 foot. All but 2 are t12. All are 12 feet in the air mounted into the ceiling that i hung last year. Almost all the fixtures were used, and of unknown age. 

I didn't want to replace the fixtures either.  I had one that had a bad ballast.  I thought the bulbs were bad, so I bought the LED bulbs from Lowe's, only to find it was the ballast, giving me 2 LED bulbs that need a ballast and no ballast.  I tried wiring them direct  to 110.  No good.  They need the 800V from the "ballast."  I bought a new T8 ballast on amazon at a fraction of the price of the ones at lowes, wired it all up and it works great.

I did about 12 seconds of research and found this;

https://www.earthled.com/blogs/led-lighting-faq-frequently-asked-questions/can-i-use-a-t8-led-tube-in-a-t12-fluorescent-fixture

If that's true, find direct wire T8 LED bulbs and rewire your fixtures to be direct wire and no ballast.  You should be able to use your existing tombstones in the T12 fixtures if the above information is correct (grain of salt, read for yourself, I spent 12 seconds on this).

I did use LED bulbs from Amazon for my T8 florescent to LED conversion this past year.  The thing I did that was kind of silly was buying four tubes once, and then a different set later to round out my fixtures, and they don't wire the same way.  One set wires through the contacts at one end, the other side goes to both ends.  So I have them wired differently.  In theory I won't need to worry about it for a couple decades if the bulbs last as long as they're rated for.  But I still wish they were all the same.  

Peanut gallery input on using T8 style bulbs in a T12 fixture purely from a fit & connectivity standpoint would be nice.

I'm running the Phillips led with ballast in the garage. The bulbs and fixture together were way cheaper than the cheapest LED shop lights at my local stores. I've had no issues at all since I've been running it and plan to add at least two more in the near future. 

In reply to pres589 :

All the conflicting information on Google (spent like 4 hours last night researching and getting confused) are why i came here. This place has the best tech for everything.  

And there is so much disparity in cost between brands and sites that it makes it even more baffling.  

I think my first fixtures to change are the 4 bulb fixtures over both bays. Thats 24 bulbs, and theoretically 12 ballasts.  Granted, i dont know if there are 1 ballast for every 2 bulbs or 4. The 2 bulb fixtures are all bench/desk lights or side lighting for filling in the shadows. 

I should also probably admit that these are all in a 18x25 room.

In reply to pres589 :

When I did the LED rewiring, I went from T12 to T8 in the same fixture.

pres589 said:

I did about 12 seconds of research and found this;

https://www.earthled.com/blogs/led-lighting-faq-frequently-asked-questions/can-i-use-a-t8-led-tube-in-a-t12-fluorescent-fixture

If that's true, find direct wire T8 LED bulbs and rewire your fixtures to be direct wire and no ballast.  You should be able to use your existing tombstones in the T12 fixtures if the above information is correct (grain of salt, read for yourself, I spent 12 seconds on this).

I did use LED bulbs from Amazon for my T8 florescent to LED conversion this past year.  The thing I did that was kind of silly was buying four tubes once, and then a different set later to round out my fixtures, and they don't wire the same way.  One set wires through the contacts at one end, the other side goes to both ends.  So I have them wired differently.  In theory I won't need to worry about it for a couple decades if the bulbs last as long as they're rated for.  But I still wish they were all the same.  

Peanut gallery input on using T8 style bulbs in a T12 fixture purely from a fit & connectivity standpoint would be nice.

^^ This

I had 9 4' 2 bulb florescent fixtures in the house.  Bought LED bulbs on Amazon which said they could be installed with the ballast in place or with the ballast removed and wired directly to 110v.  I pulled the ballasts - took about 10 min per fixture after the first one. Bulbs used the original tombstones.  Been up for a year and have been flawless.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HBT3BVM?m=A1V31LM9AH9FRH&ref_=v_sp_widget_detail_page

https://m.ebay.com/itm/Integrated-4FT-24W-5000K-MILKY-48-Fluorescent-Replacement-LED-Tube-Light-3360Lm/301637626735?_mwBanner=1&ul_ref=https%3A%2F%2Frover.ebay.com%2Frover%2F0%2F0%2F0%3Fmpre%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ebay.com%252Fulk%252Fitm%252F301637626735%26rvr_id%3D0&ul_noapp=true

Cheaper to replace the works than replace the bulbs, especially if you sell off the old junk while it still works.

oldopel, is that a single tube for $43 bucks, on the ebay ad?  I like that ad for the six tubes & fixtures for $42 on Amazon.  Only real issue is getting the linking cables going.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00SSNPGSC/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

^^^ what I used to convert a pair of my existing T8 fixtures.  Really the only issue I had was that my tombstones were internally wired together using a jumper which I had to pry out with a small screwdriver.  

Don't leave the ballasts. They lose some of the efficiency of the fixture. By leaving the ballast, you're converting 120v AC to high voltage AC then back down to low voltage DC. It's not an enormous loss but probably in the 10% range for good quality electronic ballasts, and much more for the old T12 magnetic ballasts. A few dollars more spent on the ballast-less LED bulbs will pay off many times over in power savings if you're running the lights 4-8 hours a day. It's probably only a few dollars a month saved but that continues over the life of the bulbs which should be many years.

There's also the maintenance aspect. Despite RevRico's experience, ballasts do go bad. We still have a ton of T8 lighting at work and have to keep ballasts in stock to replace them. Given hundreds of fixtures in operation 12 hours a day 5 days a week it's only a few ballasts a month but it's still a consideration.

We have been doing this very thing at work for months now.  I think our total count to date is close to 12,000 lamps changed.

There is no hard and fast rule for determining compatibility before hand, we put them in and see what happens.  I’ve put T8 size led lamps in a T12 ballast fixture and they worked fine, but some haven’t.  We get to some fixtures with T8 fluorescents that won’t light and seem to have bad ballasts- put the leds in and they work fine as they are.

As for what you may want, I’d look for “hybrid” led lamps.  They can work with or without a ballast so you can go either way- strip all the ballasts and direct wire, or replace ballasts to get them to work.

The one consistent thing we’ve seen is if the ballast says “program start” on it, it prolly won’t work.  Rapid start is a maybe.  But instant start will.  That’s all we are putting in now.

*Edit- if I were spending the money, I would go for the direct bypass solution (no ballast).  

dculberson said:

There's also the maintenance aspect. Despite RevRico's experience, ballasts do go bad. We still have a ton of T8 lighting at work and have to keep ballasts in stock to replace them. Given hundreds of fixtures in operation 12 hours a day 5 days a week it's only a few ballasts a month but it's still a consideration.

 

Maybe I've just been lucky with regards to ballasts. I know there's a reason for the entire wall of them at the electrical supply place. 

Now, broken tombstones, mice chewing threw wires, 4 bulb ceiling fixtures you need to break a bulb to get the other 3 out then hope, pray, and push to get new bulbs into, had to deal with that crap all the time. 

After buying the standalone 4 foot leds for the car port, they're what I plan on replacing my lights with when the time comes, if we're still living here. They also cost more and require outlets, which aside from in my kitchen, I can accommodate easier than modifying the fixtures. But for quick cheap and dirty, I think that direct bulb replacement is the easiest. 

In reply to pres589 :

I don't know, but 10 is right around $100 and 25 is just over $200, and they claim to be 50% brighter than the Amazon ones. I ordered two sets of the Amazon ones before a co-worker pointed out the eBay ones he had ordered. The pigtails that come with the eBay ones would have worked better for me and the cords that came with mine would have worked better for him but we both had them installed before we figured that out.

oldopel:  Sounds like the ebay route might be worth going down.  Selling the old fixtures, even for a couple bucks each, would help as well.

I replaced all the 4' 2 tube fixtures in my basement and garage with the $25 2 tube lights from Costco.  and then sold the old fixtures at a yard sale for $5 each.  Much better lighting and hopefully less maintenance.