LED panel lights

It adds up if the installer is not a qualified electrician. I think changing the tube and the starter is a job most of the population could confidently carry out. By-passing the ballast in a workplace environment I expect would need to be carried out by a competent person. Likewise, for the domestic market 'plug and play' would be a good selling point. Most people I know would not by-pass a ballast (though personally I would give it a go - I assume a couple of terminal blocks and a short length of cable of flex would be all that is needed).

There is also an issue if you want to revert to fluorescent tubes.

Are all LED replacements powered at only one end? If so a very simple modification is all that is needed.

I believe they are. I am sure the modification would be very simple. But can it - in the days of regulations and Health and Safety - be carried out by a person with no qualifications (such as me)?

Yes - but seem to have got this reputation of working perfectly for ever.

they don't of course.

NT

How?

Yes, the tube and dummy starter are easily replaced, without the use of wirecutters or screwdrivers.

So why do you think it adds up to expect a non-qualified person to snip/alter wiring if it has an electronic ballast, but not if it has a magnetic one?

They come with a sticker telling some future person not to do that.

As I sought to explain.

I think you have answered your first question :-)

I didn't say that, I said that the benefit of 'plug and play' [where it can be implemented] is to make it easy for non-qualified persons to replace the tube and ballast. I thought there were LED tubes available for electronic ballasts (EM?) but don't have time to check at the moment.

Chicken and egg. My point was this could safely be overcome if the ballast remains and the starter can be changed back.

It must be so - I have the details somewhere on a 20-year-old CD!

Then we must be at cross-purposes.

But a starter is *NOT* a ballast!

I was querying why you thought a non qualified person could remove one type of ballast, but not the other?

Ta, I'll use that a bit further up in the thread:-)

Tubular "fluorescents"?

Some are, some aren't.

:oD

No.

There are three types of tube available.

1. The one that uses the dummy starter. Now the driver might be at one end of the tube but the other end of the tube is a short circuit.

1. "One end feed" tube. These have open circuit pins at the opposite end to the driver.

2. "Opposite end feed" tubes. These usually have both pins at one side of the tube to live and both pins at the other end of the tube to neutral.

1 is the most common retrofit tube available in the UK. But there is a lot more info here

ARW wrote in news:BK_tA.25583$ snipped-for-privacy@fx32.am:

Blimey - a minefield.

New and single application LED fittings must be the best way. Even different type of caps.

TBH that link showed a lot more LED tube variations than I have ever seen.

The driver at one end with a short circuit at the other end, are as I said, the most common LED replacement tubes I have come across.

eg these ones - from a link I found about 90 minutes ago:-)

It was news to me that fluorescent tubes were ever wired as anything other than live and neutral at each end, so the filaments at both ends get power to make them glow, and then once the tube strikes you get an arc from one end to the other.

I'd never heard of LED equivalents of fluorescent tubes, but I think I'd have expected them to be wired so they could plug into a fitting that had live and neutral at each end; if the fitting needs to be rewired, then the LED tube isn't exactly a *replacement* for a fluorescent tube.

And which end of T9 would you power up?

I looked at these but it was for a 5m long room which currently has a single centre light. I was suspicious that the beam angle of 120 degrees would be insufficient and I would need multiple panels for reasonable light coverage.

This could be the case. >

I know. What I was suggesting was that a non-qualified person could replace the starter but NOT short-circuit the ballast. If correct (and I am interested to know whether it is) then the savings in not having to employ an electrician could tip the balance in favour of leaving the ballast intact.

If I implied that, it was wholly unintentional as I don't really know the difference between the two.