I recently sought opinion on what I should do about the 5 foot 58w T8 magnetic ballast type fitting in my utility room. The problem was that it was switched by an occupancy switch (PIR), to allow hands free switching when walking in and out of the room with hands full.
The options were - leave as is (the tube's heaters were being hammered, by regular starting), change to an LED strip, or change the magnetic ballast for an electronic one. When it is on, t is not on for long, so no big advantage for LED. I decided on the latter option (E-Ballast)and managed to find an electronic ballast for £7.60 delivered and fitted yesterday.
I was half expecting the series connected PIR not to work and having to modify the light to allow it to charge up, but it worked fine without any changes. Light comes on instantly, but with a slight strobing, which clears within seconds.
I think I would have paid the extra £5 and bought a LED tube from toolstation and just removed the ballast. You can just leave the ballast in and use the shorting starter supplied but you don't need a ballast with a led tube.
That is certainly a low cost. The ones I have for my under cupboard lighting in the kitchen are Osram, and cost several times that. But must be about 20 years old now. And still the original tubes.
So if it is well made, should have a long life. Unlike LEDs which may promise that, but not give it in practice. And of course the actual light quality hasn't changed from what you're used to.
I wasn't convinced - The LED was only a little more than half the lumen output of the 58w tube. Power economy was not a consideration, rather the problem was tube life with all the on/offs. I have already swapped all of the regularly in use lights over to LED and been happy with them, but this wasn't a place where the consumption saving would be worthwhile. The £5 extra cost, would have needed many years to repay its investment.
In many cases perhaps, but not really here - the location needed direct output from around 300 degrees of the diameter of tube, rather than just down at the floor.
Yes some are like that other seem to kind of fade on. I don't see them nowadays but our studio has quick start electronic ballasts and apart from blowing one after 10 years they have been fine.
Folk who keep advocating the "advantage" of downward only lighting of the cheaper LED tube substitutes to compensate for their lower total output, do so at the risk of neglecting the other excellent reasons why a fluorescent tube offers a better lighting solution, lower glare index and less self shadowing of the work area.
That's not to say that reasonably sized LED lighting panels can't offer the same benefits but such an upgrade is an even costlier alternative to simply upgrading the magnetic ballast of an existing fitting to an HF ballast. The only troubling thing about that 7 quid *instant* start (with brief flickery ramp up period) ballast is that it might be a simple HF ballast without any form of lamp fault detection/protection to save the more 'delicate' modern T8 tubes from premature wear.
The startup description echoes that of the cheap and nasty Chinese electronic ballast that I replaced with a microprocessor controlled Helvar ballast I'd bought for just under a fiver when I found myself having to replace the 36W T8 tube for the second time in 18 months in a cheap B&Q 4 foot slimline batten fitting.
The Helvar ballast refused to run the failed replacement and only attempted a single start on the original, leaving me to take a chance on buying a new tube in the hope that my new fancy ballast was doing what it was doing by design rather than by fault. As it happened, the former proved to be the case and I note it applies some 900ms of pre-heat before it strikes the tube into life with no flicker.
Unfortunately, because of the minimal mercury dosing, these tubes which used to ramp straight up to full brightness, now have a similar run up time to that of the mercury amalgam lamps used in CFLs. I guess that's the price of "progress" in the world of linear fluorescent lamp technology development that allows you to achieve the same lighting levels as a 4 foot "40W" T12 tube in a magnetically ballasted fitting (which actually used a total of 52W) from just the 36 watts consumed by an electronically ballasted T8 tubed fitting. :-(
That 7 quid electronic ballast bargain might not be quite the bargain you thought it was if you find yourself having to replace tubes on a yearly basis. :-(
A few years back I changed the starters on three fluoros in my garage and shed for the electronic ones, two of the tubes died within a couple of days of using them, I presume the 'harsher' start was what did for them?
One of the electronic starters has now died, and one of the original starters put back, if I go to the shed in the depths of winter the tube may light quickly, but takes a long time to reach decent brightness, I guess next time something fails will be the time for LED tubes
The older, now sadly obsolete, T12 tubes would light up to full brightness in all but the coldest of room temperatures and on a "Quickstart"(tm) ballast[1], fire up in about quarter of a second without all the fuss and sputtering of electrodes of a switch start ballast making them almost as instant as an incandescent light and with a tube life of about two or three times that of one fitted into a switch start fitting typically used for kitchen lighting.
Thanks to H&S regulations, the newer, and more fragile T8 versions also have to contend with an inadequate dosing of mercury (about a tenth of that which used to be used in the older T12 tubes I believe) which would appear to be *the* cause for the CFL like warm up characteristic. :-(
I reckon a mere doubling up of the new excruciatingly low mercury dosing levels currently mandated by H&S would eliminate most, if not all, of this run up time and still provide an 80% reduction of the mercury contamination risk of a broken tube. There does, after all, appear to be hard evidence that H&S can take things far too far. :-(
[1] Although a T8 tube can be fitted in place of a T12 tube, these refuse to start on a "Quickstart"(tm) ballast circuit, requiring either a downgrade to the switchstart ballast circuit or else an upgrade to an electronic microprocessor controlled HF ballast.
In my garage, workshops and hut I have around 20 fluorescent fittings of various sizes, all using ballasts and starters. All are less frequently turned on than my utility light, so I have not intention of swapping those over to an E-Ballast.
Thanks. I wasn't aware that they were made with such a wide spread. The ceiling is quite low, around 7 foot and as the only light in the room I needed the spread.
You're forgeting the log response of your eyes, halving the power is only just perecptable. As I've mentioned before and the Aldi 5' 22W
2000 lm LED tubes I could barely tell the difference in light level between the LED and previous 58W 5' florry.
The spread is as near as damn it identical to a florry as well.
With a light that isn't on for long (total) per day that's sensible, but with a occpancy switched light the total on time per day can be higher than one might expect. But with only a 20 W saving pay back via power saving will still be long.
This is the gamble, if the LED costs three times the price of a tube but last 4 times longer...
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