LED light conversions

[Chris Hammersley]

Menards has plug and play LED bulbs. Does ballast condition affect these bulbs? I know my ballast are week in cold weather. I'm debating conversion or new fixtures.

[roger wiegand]

Can't answer your question for sure, but I popped a couple of these into a really nasty, ancient ('60's vintage) fixture a few weeks ago and they worked perfectly. No rewiring, just popped them in and done. I was impressed.

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[Bruce Page]

I’ll be following closely. I have 8 4ft/4bulb florescent fixtures in my shop ceiling that I’d love to switch out to led. I’ve switched everything else in the shop.

[Chris Hammersley]

I'm thinking that at the worst I'll just have to remove the ballast and rewire the tombstones.....

[Jim Becker]

I've used a few of the conversion "tubes" in my shop as well as a closet in the house where the beasts were no up to snuff for fluorescent tubes but worked perfectly well for the LED replacements. (That particular fixture installed by. the previous owner was poorly designed and changing out or removing the ballasts would have been a royal pain).

[Michael W. Clark]

I used a couple of the LED bulbs that are direct replacements. They work very well. I had some ballasts go out and did the direct wire led bulbs. That’s what I do now. Once you do one, it’s pretty easy to make the wiring changes and get rid of the ballast.

[Lisa Starr]

I converted my whole shop to LED 2 years ago. I removed the ballasts and rewired the fixtures. I wasn't difficult and only took an afternoon. As a bonus, getting rid of the ballasts greatly improved my radio reception.

[Tom M King]

The tombstones are easy to change, and cheap, if your fixtures are old enough to have a size you'd rather pass, like T12's. You can get them off Amazon. On the ones I've changed, there is just one screw, with a 1/4" hex head holding in the piece of sheet metal that the tombstones snap into. You don't even need any tools to change them. You can do it with your fingers.

I don't know of a good reason to keep an old ballast, or replace with new ones. There may be, but I don't know what that would be.

There's plenty of wire in the fixture to do any rewiring you need. The wires just push in the tombstones after you strip the ends. Really, the only tools you need are typically a 1/4" nut driver, wire cutters, and strippers for the small wires. You probably won't find those strippers where the other electrial tools are in the box stores, but you will find them where the phone, and TV wiring stuff is.

If you decide to do the direct wire tubes, there is no good reason to even leave the old ballast in the fixture. There is only one screw holding it in, and the other end slides under a little keeper. I cut the small wires off close to the ballast, and it leaves more than enough wires to do the conversion.

[Michael W. Clark]

The direct wire bulbs I bought came with new tombstones but I didn’t have to replace mine. I have a pair of the blue handled Klein strippers and they worked for the wires. I also use the Ideal wire connectors and that makes it quick and easy too. I think I’ve done 8 or 10 now throughout the house and part of the shop.

[Alan Lightstone]

I switched my shop to LED direct-wire bulbs when I built it. I used Hyperikon bulbs, as they have >90 CRI and am extremely happy with them. Rewiring each fixture (removing the ballasts) just took a few minutes, and I'll never have to worry about ballasts going bad on my 17' high ceiling. There was no need to remove tombstones on mine. Couldn't be easier (although 17' up in the air).

[Mike Gresham]

Personally, I would not consider using plug and play LED tubes. When the ballast fails the light will no longer work. I just installed 9 ballast bypass tubes. It took about 5 minutes each including changing out the tombstones. No worries about the ballast failing.

[Tom M King]

The direct wire bulbs I bought came with new tombstones but I didn’t have to replace mine. I have a pair of the blue handled Klein strippers and they worked for the wires. I also use the Ideal wire connectors and that makes it quick and easy too. I think I’ve done 8 or 10 now throughout the house and part of the shop.

The blue handled Kleins were the ones I used also. The ones for house wiring typically don't go smaller than for no.14's.

[Curt Harms]

I have this wire stripper:

https://www.amazon.com/Neiko-01924A-...s%2C145&sr=8-4

It works well and covers all wire sizes ( 10 - 24) that I'm likely to encounter. As far as tubes, I did direct wire also, no benefit to having ballasts beyond not having to remove them from fluorescent fixtures. The tubes I bought from a few different sources are all powered on one end. It's simpler than replacing a ballast, fewer wires. I just did little jumpers from one tombstone to another. The tombstones on the unpowered end of the tube simply hold that end of the tube in place. The LED tubes came with a sticker to install on the fixture saying that the fixture had been modified and fluorescent tubes would no longer work.

[Bill Dufour]

Good idea to mark inside fixture how LED bulb is wired. Some are power from one end only others are power from both ends. I think that there will eventually be only one way in the future but I have no idea which way. Kinda like VHS and Beta. Beta was a better system but VHS way outsold it until DVDs killed both.
Bill D

[Jim Becker]

Good idea to mark inside fixture how LED bulb is wired. Some are power from one end only others are power from both ends. I think that there will eventually be only one way in the future but I have no idea which way. Kinda like VHS and Beta. Beta was a better system but VHS way outsold it until DVDs killed both.
Bill D

Honestly, it will be interesting to see if the "tube" format even continues long-term with LED fixtures.