Shop Lighting

[supton]

Originally Posted By: JTK
Supton, sorry if I missed it, but what type of T12 fixtures are these? Shop lights with power cords, or hard wired strip lights or troffers?

IMO, unless they're easy enough to bypass the ballasts on and retrofit with LED 'tubes', I'd either just re-lamp with quality T12 tubes or swap out the whole fixture with an LED fixture. I'm hoping today's LED fixtures are better than today's T8 fluorescents. Most T8 fixtures (mainly the ballasts) are junk that you're lucky to get 5yrs out of. Old magnetic ballasts or older electronic ones are beasts.


Hardwired lighting. No tools required to open, remove tubes or to remove the cover on the ballasts. I haven't touched the things that make contact to the tubes, but I'm guessing it's all an easy job.


Seems like ballast-less LED's are the way to go. No real reason for them going forward, the control electronics really ought to be part of the LED "system" itself.

 

[JTK]

^^ Agreed.

Those are nice solid old T12 troffers with lots of room in them. I'd do the ballast snip and run them with two LED tubes each. Like I say, I just couldn't be bothered swapping out those ballasts to T8. I'd keep them T12 before I did that.

 

[eljefino]

Your "troffers" started life in an office suspended ceiling then were ripped out when more economic T8s came out.

The "tombstones" are the pin connectors and easy enough to monkey with.

Maybe get a multipack of electronic balasstsses on amazon?

 

[Cujet]

I agree that ballast-bypass LED's are a better way to go. Amazon has a great selection. The brighter the better when it comes to LED's. I don't like anything more than 4000K color temperature.

I notice that at Home Depot and Lowes, they have LED fixtures with non replaceable bulbs. Some of these fixtures have started to fail and the bulbs are super dim or completely out. I'd rather have the choice to replace individual bulbs.

 

[supton]

Gave in and bought Toggled LED's. 16W, 1,700 lumens. Two are 4100K and two are 5000K; I wanted to go slow and make sure I liked them, after all they are $20 each and I need at least 8 (plus potentially 4 more). I like them: conversion was about 5 minutes, once I figured out the wiring in the existing fixtures, instant on, good light. I think I use 4100K for anyplace that isn't a workbench area.

Each tube came with two wire nuts so there was zero additional cost. Since the existing ballasts were magnetic it was either same cost as T8 and new ballasts, or perhaps even cheaper.

I do have two fixtures that are the U tubes; haven't figured out what I will use in those. Quick look reveals they are more expensive. I'll finish changing the other tubes out first, then see about these U ones.

 

[JTK]

Good deal. I had to Google "Toggled". I didn't realize that was a name brand. "Designed and engineered in the USA". No UL rating though. Not a huge deal, but from what I've experienced, UL rated lighting lasts longer.

 

[supton]

UL class UL1598C. Link Not that I know what that classification means.

Figured, the future has to be ballast-less LED's. Once I figured in the cost of electronics ballasts it seemed wiser/easier to go with the ballast-less ones. Maybe I'm wrong, but as long as the lights last a couple of decades, not sure how much I care.