Replacing fluorescents with LEDs

My shop has 8' dual bulb fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling. I've got a fixture with a burned out bulb, and I really don't want to replace it with the same technology if an upgrade is available. So, questions:

1) I see some LED bulbs on Amazon advertised as "Works in fluorescent fixtures—some rewiring required." I assume this is some sort of ballast bypass? Anyone have any experience with these, or something similar?

2) Or, is there just a good 8' LED fixture I can replace the whole thing with? Googling "8' LED light fixture" and various iterations of same was surprisingly little help.

Surely someone are has faced the same situation. Enlighten me (CWUTIDITHR)

IIRC we've had a couple of good discussions along these lines of late. Sam's Club (and apparently Cosco) have some good 4" LED fixtures and they put out serious light. I've also tried a strip of this stuff and it seems awfully close to my old T12 8" fixtures in terms of output.

Keith Tanner wrote: IIRC we've had a couple of good discussions along these lines of late. Sam's Club (and apparently Cosco) have some good 4" LED fixtures and they put out serious light. I've also tried a strip of this stuff and it seems awfully close to my old T12 8" fixtures in terms of output.

You know, I guess I could just attach two 4' fixtures to an 8' 2 x 4 and call it an 8' fixture. The current fixtures are all hardwired, but I could just wire a receptacle in to plug the lights into.

I bought whole new 4' LED fixtures from Sam's Club for $35 each. They are only 40w and put out 4500 Lumens. Replacing the 4 fluorescent fixtures in my garage with these - I almost need sunglasses with all of them on. It might be the best $140 I've spent in my garage in years. I actually never knew how dirty it was in there. I'm going to buy another one and bolt skateboard wheels on it to roll under things.

https://www.samsclub.com/sams/4ft-led-shoplight-shoplight-led/prod16460030.ip

I have been thinking about the same thing. I have two dual 8 foot florescent fixtures over each bay of my garage. Each pair is wired to a single switch. The light output is great, but they hum. I wandered around the lighting aisles at Home Depot and Lowes, but the biggest that they had were four footers. I don't know enough about this stuff at this point to determine if it's a bad idea to wire 4 four footers to a single switch.

Definitely not a problem as long as you don't have a crazy draw. They're just lights, nothing too exotic

I recommend wiring in receptacles, it gives you more flexibility in the future.

In reply to Woody:

Wire them in parallel. 40w each at 120v. No big deal. It's less than 3 amps total for 8 lamps and it doesn't have the inductive load (mucking with power factor) or high startup hit of the ballasts. Whatever circuit you have them on now will be fine.

Keith Tanner wrote: Definitely not a problem as long as you don't have a crazy draw. They're just lights, nothing too exotic I recommend wiring in receptacles, it gives you more flexibility in the future.

This is what I did. Removed all my hard-wired florescent fixtures and put in receptacles, then put up a bunch of the $35 Costco lights. You could do surgery out there now.

The 4 4ft LED fixtures that are hanging in the carport have a combined draw of 1.3amps. I should have pictures of all 4 up tomorrow or Friday night. They have 6 foot cords on them, so I have them spaced out but back to back on the ceiling sharing an outlet(2 per outlet).

I have one in my garage along with an 8ft 2 bulb T12 fixture. The single 4 foot led outshines the fluorescents even after they warm up.

I bought LED bulbs from lowes that works fine in fixtures with existing ballasts. As long as its an electronic ballast.

These ones https://www.youtube.com/embed/enqAfX1pb80

The wiring content is usually a ballast-ectomy. I bought two 4' fixtures from the Habitat for Humanity store for cheap and a 4 pack of light tubes on Amazon for $52cdn. They're going in the shop soon.

I bought six 8' led bulbs off eBay a little over a year ago for just under $100 to upgrade the lighting in my shop. My install was made more complicated than it had to be because the new led bulbs had a single stud on each end and my fixtures had double prong ends, so I had to spend another $30 for six pairs of replacement ends; luckily Lowes had the replacement ends on hand.

It was as simple as taking the cover off, undoing the wire nuts that hooked the ballast to the line, cutting the wires between the ballast and the ends of the fixtures, and using the wire nuts to attach the ends to the line supply directly. In my case the ballast was clear at one end, with a pair of short wires to the near side and a pair of long wires to the far side, so I pulled the ballast, short side wires, and short side ends as a unit and tossed it, then used the two long wires, one to each end, with a small jumper between the two fixtures on each end.

It took about 10 minutes for the first one and under 10 for both of the others. Setting up the scaffolding so I could get up there and work in the dark, along with the cleaning up for room to set up the scaffolding, took much longer than the actual install.

In reply to 1988RedT2:

Do your gas lamps ever interfere with spray painting?

In reply to 1988RedT2:

Well when a 4ft LED fixture is cheaper, brighter, and uses less power than a 8ft t12 flouro tube replacement, it looks like you're just shopping in the wrong stores.

I just rewired a 4' light fixture for LEDs. I replaced 4 T12 fluorescent bulbs with LEDs. It was a ballast-ectomy. Just pay attention to the wiring diagram that comes in the bulbs.

1988RedT2 wrote: Bah! Technology, humbug! My latest foray into the LED marketplace is much like my earlier experience. This time, the lamp works for a time, then blinks off, stays off for from a few minutes to an hour, then comes back on. I suppose it's an improvement, since the last batch just burned out in a couple days. Edison bulbs and conventional fluorescent are still the way to go. LED's have some theoretical advantages, but these advantages have yet to be utilized in a reliable consumer product. Corporate greed playing upon consumer desire to be "green." LED lighting is clearly for people with more money (and distorted ideology) than brains.

Red you must have some wiring or supply issues because the LEDs are far superior to either of the old technologies in almost every way except for heat output when you need a old style bulb to use as a heater to keep some small animal warm in the winter.

BTW in a previous thread I learned that dimmable LEDs have a 60 hz flicker that the non-dimmable ones don't. Some people are sensitive to that flicker, but they also don't like fluorescent bulbs either.

I bought two T8 LED "bulbs" at Lowes and put them in 1 4' fixture. They require the ballast. I tried to run them straight from 120V with no ballast and it was a no-go. They need 600V from the ballast. Problem being the ballast was dead, which was why I was working on it in the first place. Anyway, a cheap ballast from Amazon and the LED "bulbs" and it is working great now. I have a few actual bulbs left, and when I run out of those for the other 3 fixtures, I'll switch them to the cheap LED replacments also. And I put in 2 10 meter strips of LED's from Amazon stuck on the roof at the back. Those put out some light.

In reply to Dr. Hess:

Most of the reason to go LED is to get rid of the ballasts. I've worked with some clients who have used the conversion bulbs, but in those cases they are dealing with hundreds of 277V fixtures and keep spare ballasts on hand anyway.

I stripped the bulbs and ballasts from the fixtures in my garage. I used one roll of the LED strips (tape) per fixture. They work fine. I think it cost me $20 per fixture including the wall wart. That being said, $40 is stinking cheap and saves you all that labor.

1988RedT2 wrote: Bah! Technology, humbug! LED lighting is clearly for people with more money (and distorted ideology) than brains.

Duke Energy is sending me 12 LED bulbs for FREE. I bought a bunch of them through the power company at subsidized prices (cheap). I've had great luck with them.

Still have T8's in the garage though. When I run out of the FREE bulbs I was given, I'll upgrade those to LED too!

Another vote for the Costco LED lights; I bought 12 at $25/ea and have loved them. No problems with any of them, instant on, and super bright.

1988RedT2 wrote: Bah! Technology, humbug! My latest foray into the LED marketplace is much like my earlier experience. This time, the lamp works for a time, then blinks off, stays off for from a few minutes to an hour, then comes back on. I suppose it's an improvement, since the last batch just burned out in a couple days. Edison bulbs and conventional fluorescent are still the way to go. LED's have some theoretical advantages, but these advantages have yet to be utilized in a reliable consumer product. Corporate greed playing upon consumer desire to be "green." LED lighting is clearly for people with more money (and distorted ideology) than brains.

Funny. But obviously you haven't worked with many (or any?) good LED lights. We've been doing LED retrofits at work and had great success with them. We haven't done any of our 4' T8 fixtures yet, but our experience replacing traditional sodium bulb outdoor fixtures with LED has been awesome. They've more than paid for themselves just from power usage, not counting the ballasts and bulbs we would have consumed in the meantime. At home I have LEDs in every one of about 70 fixtures and they've been awesome. I've had to replace a few in the 2 years I've had them but overall it's been a huge savings and the house is way more comfortable in the summer since it doesn't have thousands of watts of heat pumping down on you in every room.

Yes LEDs had a rocky start as does any new tech, but at this point the major bugs have been worked out and as long as you're not buying bottom of the barrel or doing something wrong with install they're way less troublesome than edison bulbs and conventional fluorescent. And they cost less! At least once considering lifetime costs which is the only reasonable way to do it.

I've now bought 6 FEIT 4' LED shop light type fixtures from Costco. I've not had a problem with any of them. They have vastly improved the lighting in my shop. I see no reason to ever go back to the old fluorescent lights

Weird. I've had zero issues with some extremely cheap ones I bought. I got a 6 pack of 60 watt equivalents for I think 7 bucks at Home Depot and they have been great.

1988RedT2 wrote:

Bah! Technology, humbug! My latest foray into the LED marketplace is much like my earlier experience. This time, the lamp works for a time, then blinks off, stays off for from a few minutes to an hour, then comes back on. I suppose it's an improvement, since the last batch just burned out in a couple days. Edison bulbs and conventional fluorescent are still the way to go. LED's have some theoretical advantages, but these advantages have yet to be utilized in a reliable consumer product. Corporate greed playing upon consumer desire to be "green." LED lighting is clearly for people with more money (and distorted ideology) than brains.

When I did our shop in Louisiana we just replaced the fixtures int their entirety. The fixture cost was the least expensive part of it.

what you are looking for is LED high bay lights. If you are running the old two tube fluorescents the improved reflectors and lens will also help with visibility.