Lighting tube or ballast?

[user 4883]

Do all replacement LED tubes contain the LED drivers?

No. Some contain the driver and some run off a driver external from the lamp.
I've done literally thousands of direct wire LED retrofits.
It's easier, cheaper and faster than a ballast replacement.

 

[tmiskimen]

afjes_2016 : In fact, I love LED. Do you have some sites/links that can show me how to wiring a LED tubes?

Wiring diagrams are usually included with the LED tubes. And yes watching a few "good ol' you tube" videos is always a good idea. LED tubes are not all wired the same.

 

[Guzzle]

Sometimes the tiny drivers are integrated into the fixture & conformally coated, so they can be hard to spot.

 

[Eddie_T]

When working on fluorescent fixtures I have often wondered why all the excess wiring is present. I notice that YouTube LED replacement instructions leave it in place. Maybe it's cheaper to make ballasts and tombstones as "one size fits most". Anyways if I ever convert any of mine I will remove the excess and keep it for hookup wire.

 

[Guzzle]

From another thread, for the price of a 120v:36v, 5A, 180w filament transformer, you can boost your 240v to 276v & use discarded retail troffers to light your shop.

 

[Guzzle]

My bad, the primary winding needs to be 240v.

If I don't post back it means I actually tried it @ full power & it blew up.

 

[Sparky617]

I replaced several florescent lights with LEDs. With the ones I used you remove the ballast, and wire one of the tombstones directly to 120V, the other tombstone is just there to hold the tube. It is like a 10 minute operation to do the swap. They came with a sticker to apply near the hot end warning that they line voltage and to only use LEDs with built in circuitry. At our church we swapped out all the florescent lights with this type of tube, we're pretty happy with the results and the energy savings multiplied over several hundred florescent tubes was significant. Reduced maintenance was also a plus. There was certainly a labor factor in doing the swap, but a group of retired members did the swap over a couple of workdays.

One other thing in commercial buildings to save energy and reduce maintenance is swapping incandescent fire exit lights with LEDs. It may not seem like much but those little 15 watt bulbs burn 24x365, we probably had 30 of them in our church. I convinced the building manager that we should do it, rather than continuing to replace batteries on the traditional ones.

 

[CYUE]

I wonder, for those Single Ended LED tubes, if I connected them wrongly, Hot to Netural, and Netural to Hot, what will happen?

 

[Eddie_T]

I wonder, for those Single Ended LED tubes, if I connected them wrongly, Hot to Netural, and Netural to Hot, what will happen?

Since the pins can rotate into the tombstone either way I would assume no problem. AC doesn't really have a ± direction.

 

[Sparky617]

Since the pins can rotate into the tombstone either way I would assume no problem. AC doesn't really have a ± direction.

Doesn't seem to be an issue. If you plug it in with the wrong end it to the power it just doesn't work. The pins themselves on the wired end don't seem to care whether they are on the hot or neutral.

 

[Guzzle]

I thought the hot/neutral issue is for personal safety & IMO the risk is near zero anyway.

 

[Eddie_T]

I thought the hot/neutral issue is for personal safety & IMO the risk is near zero anyway.

Yup, the lines coming in would just be 2 hots if the NEC hadn't chosen to reference the white one to ground.

 

[Guzzle]

& if the fixture ran on batteries, the voltage on either terminal w/respect to ground would be indeterminate & almost certainly could not source more than a few uA.

 

[Eddie_T]

Reminds me of Hulda Clark Zappers supposedly having a positive pulse output from a 9v battery holding an electrode in each hand.

 

[Guzzle]

"Zapper: A device to pulse low voltage direct current (DC) through the body at specific frequencies."
It seems contradictory but pulse rise time is related to frequency, Bandwidth x risetime = 0.35.

Playing God for a moment, is anyone better off now that she's dead? Worse off?

 

[Eddie_T]

I leave my kitchen lights on for around 16 hrs/day but just recently replaced the four tubes. I was afraid LEDs would be too bright and didn't have time for research, so I am committed for the life of those tubes. I have one single tube shop light in the garage which is a candidate as I can use its tube as a spare for the other two lights. It's a candidate as it's the one most used and takes a while to get to full brightness in the winter as do my CFLs in the fixtures by my door.

 

[Sparky617]

I leave my kitchen lights on for around 16 hrs/day but just recently replaced the four tubes. I was afraid LEDs would be too bright and didn't have time for research, so I am committed for the life of those tubes. I have one single tube shop light in the garage which is a candidate as I can use its tube as a spare for the other two lights. It's a candidate as it's the one most used and takes a while to get to full brightness in the winter as do my CFLs in the fixtures by my door.

You probably want a soft white light for your kitchen. The daylight bulbs are kind of harsh in my view.

 

[ccpyue]

Hello everyone, I successfully converted the regular flourescent tubes to LED tubes, by-passing the ballast. They work extremely well at temperature -12 degree C. They are so bright, I can say they provide double the brightness of regular flouescent tubes. I will keep going to convert all my flouescent tubes to LED.

 

[afjes_2016]

ccpyue: Glad you are happy with the results. I was happy with my LEDs when I converted over to them from fluorescent tubes - big difference.