Replacing flourescent tubes with LEDs

I have the old Thorne normal single and double ones here in this house. I'd assume the conversion was just the starter then. Not that I use lighting myself, but some folk do complain my lights are looking dim and tired. Besides trying to get the old fat bi pin tubes at a reasonable cost is somewhat difficult now. Brian

A hole bunging device? Brian

Why should not the ballast stay? You are not using it as a storage device to get the tube to strike via a starter after all, unless one thinks the capacitor might be an issue of course. Brian

Ah but so can the mess you leave when you fit something of a different size, as you end up having to paint the ceiling if you are not careful.

Brian

And old ballasts make good door stops too. Brian

Why do you want to keep a lump of iron warm?

Nice use of the conduit T box and the pull switch.

Personally I think batons were best the solution for your garage.

No. Just a wire link between the two terminals of the "starter".

IIRC, a fluorescent lamp normally has live to one pin at one end and Neutral to one pin at the other. On start-up the starter links the other two pins, passing power through the filaments at each end to heat them and then, once they are hot enough to emit, the ionised gas in the tube becomes the conductive path and the starter goes open circuit. The LED tubes have both supply contacts at one end, the contacts at the other end are linked together and the replacement "starter" is a link. So no re-wiring is necessary and it doesn't matter which way around the tube is inserted, the circuit is still complete - through the starter and the linked end of the tube to the power end or vice-versa.

They (and the longest one) do look pretty cheap but do they actually give out much light (they mention 400 lumens and that doesn't sound very bright)? Visions of the sort of light levels you might find in a caravan? ;-)

I wonder if that's also a function of the actual light output level over the colour temperature?

Funnily enough, I quite like symmetry and uniformity and both way more than 'style'. ;-)

If you hit your head or a box on one, do you think the light would stay in place?

Doh.

Yeah ... sometimes *having* to modify something means you can do things that you might not otherwise.

Like if the extension leads only came in 1m increments and you wanted two lamps 1.5m apart, you would have to 'lose' the 500mm somewhere.

Cheers, T i m

Where that 'wire' can be inside a 20mm wire ended fuse in some cases.

Allow me to rephrase that....

the wooden batons you fitted to mount the panels to were the best solution.

The frames would have looked poor mounted onto the trusses.

The 14W 6ft ones are about 1400lm and they're bright enough although I don't have a lumenometer to measure them. I've ended up putting more in the loft than I expected but I think that's because the beams are fairly focused out of the ~110degree lens, rather than spilling much over the ends of the fitting. (the lofts are roughly triangular 1m high x 2-3m wide x 10m long, hence only a row of strips would really do it)

Possibly, or maybe just they seem dimmer in comparison to the other 4000K ones. Lofts being full of mostly yellow stuff (wood and rockwool) probably tricks the eye. I'll put 4000K ones in the garage when I come to do that.

They're fairly firmly in the clips. I tried to remove one the other day without having a flathead screwdriver to hand - a largeish crosshead wouldn't do it. So I doubt you could dislodge one unless the clip wasn't tightly screwed to the wall/ceiling/whatever.

It's possible the idea is you have a continuous chain of them for say a stairwell, but that doesn't work when you have rafters and stuff to get over.

They come with a 1.5m female 'mains in' cable with bare ferrules on the other end, as well as the male-female link cable. So one junction between each light isn't so bad, if you don't need more than 1.5m gap.

(A nice way I've done it is to run a temporary input cable on a mains plug, which means I can use the light from one fitting to install the next. Much better than the headtorch that I had to use before)

Theo

Ahem.... Its a Luxmeter.....

I've ended up putting more in the loft

Ahem <g>, if you do make such a correction, it's sorta spoiled by then not snipping all the stuff you aren't commenting on.

Cheers, T i m

I didn't have a pair of scissors conveniently to hand... :-)

It's confusing - /if/ I've read it right, it' 10W at 100 lm/W and 400 lm, um?

You need to go to specsavers....

Download and open the PDF, the PDF actaully covers the range of link lights.

The first page covers PEL01618 - 619... which is the 4 W versions

scroll down to page that states PEL01622 - 623 (page 3) which covers the

That should shed some light on the matter and illuminate your short sighted error... :-)

P.S. Admittedly, the hyperlink to the PDF is misleading as it does suggest a single product datasheet rather than one that covers the whole range of pro elec link lights......

Golly, weree those truncheons, or swagger sticks?

Me granpa had a truss