Testing Ballast or going LED?

[John Stankus]

I have seven four bulb T8 fixtures in my garage/shop (3 car garage with three fixtures over the workshop bay, 2 over the adjacent bay where one of the cars live, one over the far car space, and an additional fixture over a bump out where my sharpening table is)
One of the fixtures quit on my (unfortunately the one directly over my workbench ) It did pop on after a while the other day, but subsequently it hasn't been working.

This leaves me a couple questions:
1) How can I test the ballast?
2) Can a bad bulb prevent the others from lighting? (I have had some of the bulbs pulled and still no light)
3) is there a recomendation for a replacement ballast? Home Depot has a four bulb T8 ballast for about $27.
4) Should I just replace with LEDs? There was a post earlier this year about using SATCO bulbs. Is that a good replacement? I would go for the ballast by-pass type. Those SATCO bulbs look like about $14 each (5000K, 2200 Lumens), so for the fixture with problems it would be twice the ballast replacement cost.

John

[Jerome Stanek]

I would get the bypass LED bulbs

[Frank Pratt]

1) It's complicated. there are many different types of fluorescent ballasts. The most practical way is to just put in four known good lamps.
2) Some ballasts will keep working if one lamp goes out, some won't.
3) Don't waste your money on replacing the ballast.
4) I would go with the bypass LED lamps.

[Bill Dufour]

Many fixtures use one ballast for each pair of bulbs. I would relamp with led bulbs and bypass the ballasts. Get the kind of lamps that draw power from both ends and your tombstones will be fine. Probably cheaper to buy LED bulbs then a new ballast. Florescents that are dying have problems as the weather gets cooler.
Bill D

[Steve Eure]

I am not putting a plug in for Rockler, but they have a replacement led bulb for around $9 that just plugs into your existing light. No rewiring, no disconnecting the ballast or anything. I bought several to replace my t-8's that were giving me problems and they are amazing. Bright and instant-on.
https://www.rockler.com/2000-lumen-u...ment-tube-bulb

[Doug Garson]

I am not putting a plug in for Rockler, but they have a replacement led bulb for around $9 that just plugs into your existing light. No rewiring, no disconnecting the ballast or anything. I bought several to replace my t-8's that were giving me problems and they are amazing. Bright and instant-on.
https://www.rockler.com/2000-lumen-u...ment-tube-bulb

The problem with that option is what do you do if the ballast fails?
One additional consideration, the LED bulbs designed to work with your ballast only work with the newer electronic ballasts, they do not work with the older magnetic ballasts. One way to tell is to view the existing light with your phone or a digital camera. If the ballast is the older magnetic type you will see dark stripe across the bulb. If so you can't use the plug and play LED bulbs.

[Bill Dufour]

It sounds like his ballast may have failed already so those type of lamps will not work for him unless he replaces the ballasts. No sense in doing the job twice and paying for a ballast that is not necessary. By the time he pays for four new tubes and two ballasts he is money ahead to buy 4 led bulbs that need no ballasts ever. I doubt his new ballast will last twenty years before it needs replacing again as well.
Bil lD

[Jason Roehl]

Many fixtures use one ballast for each pair of bulbs. I would relamp with led bulbs and bypass the ballasts. Get the kind of lamps that draw power from both ends and your tombstones will be fine. Probably cheaper to buy LED bulbs then a new ballast. Florescents that are dying have problems as the weather gets cooler.
Bill D

This isn’t necessarily correct. What you are describing are shunted tombstones. There are many fluorescent fixtures with non-shunted tombstones that take an LED lamp powered on one end only—the building for which I am maintenance tech has hundreds of such fixtures and are partially converted now. I’ve changed over dozens now—I just leave the ballast in place, snip the wires, and re-nut the incoming power to the yellow leads on the one end.

The ballast schematic should help you figure out if the tombstones are shunted or not.

[Curt Harms]

This isn’t necessarily correct. What you are describing are shunted tombstones. There are many fluorescent fixtures with non-shunted tombstones that take an LED lamp powered on one end only—the building for which I am maintenance tech has hundreds of such fixtures and are partially converted now. I’ve changed over dozens now—I just leave the ballast in place, snip the wires, and re-nut the incoming power to the yellow leads on the one end.

The ballast schematic should help you figure out if the tombstones are shunted or not.

That's what I did with my fluorescent fixtures. The tombstones on one end are lamp holders only, no power to them. I did have to jumper the hot end to get power to the pins on the hot end of the tube but it was pretty simple. I'm not sure if the light spectrum is different, the tubes have less dust on them or what but the light from the LEDs sure seem brighter than the T8 tubes they replaced.

[Erik Loza]

Similar situation here. It’s about to get cold, which means my fluorescents will start out dim, hum, etc. On the list: Rip out the existing fixtures and replace with 5,000K linkable LED lights.

Erik

[Ron Selzer]

I have been removing existing fixtures and installing we linkable less where I can. Only relamp with led , removing the ballast where the fixture has to stay.

[Drew Bernat]

+1 for cut out the ballasts. I did that on our current garage light and it was a piece of cake - cut wires, add wire nuts, done. I used bulbs from Amazon, link at the bottom. After coming over, my friend (and new neighbor) asked me to do the same for his garage. From a simplicity point of view, I'd prefer piping 110V straight to a bulb designed to do it rather than have a bulb that's trying to back out the effect of a ballast. Less stuff in the circuit too.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[John Stankus]

Swapping bulbs around no joy. I'm going to order bypass LED and eliminate the ballast. Just going to reconfigure this fixture for now. Next one that goes I'll buy the 24 pack to be able to swap as the go bad.
Only thing is now I am going to have a bunch of good T8 fluorescent bulbs kicking around.

John

[Curt Harms]

Swapping bulbs around no joy. I'm going to order bypass LED and eliminate the ballast. Just going to reconfigure this fixture for now. Next one that goes I'll buy the 24 pack to be able to swap as the go bad.
Only thing is now I am going to have a bunch of good T8 fluorescent bulbs kicking around.

John

I replaced the T-8s as they failed. For whatever reason the original T-12s lived long lives, the T-8s less so. The "transplant surgery" is pretty painless. I recall that polarity matters though. If you put the LED tube into a properly wired fixture and nothing happens, try rotating it 180*.

[Alan Lightstone]

Go for high CRI LED replacements and remove the ballasts. I did that in my workshop and garage (17 foot ceilings, so not a joy to do, but a one-time job). I went with Hyperikons. More expensive to buy, but much nicer light and will save on electricity which will EVENTUALLY pay for itself. And, of course, the color temperature that you find most pleasing to work in.