Replacing Fluorescent Light Fittings

Our kitchen Fluorescent Light Fittings need to be replaced. The present fittings each have two four foot tubes. How do I choose new LED fittings to have a comparable amount of light?

Reply to
GB
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A 4ft LED will be about the same:-) Or are you no longer wanting strip lights?

Reply to
ARW

I think we do want an extended light source, to avoid shadows.

I put one of these up elsewhere, as I reckoned it is the most bling you can get for £45, but it doesn't give much light.

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Reply to
GB

That's why linear fluorescent fittings never seem out of place in a kitchen. Unlike a fleet of ceiling downlighters which tend to generate high contrast self shadowing, they let you see what you're doing with ease.

Back when the only efficiency competitor to a linear fluorescent fitting was CFL (of slightly lower efficiency), you _still_ wouldn't replace a 40W 4 foot tube (52W consumption with inductive ballast) with the lumen equivilent in the form of two or three seperate electronically ballasted 20W CFLs on the grounds of high contrast self shadowing effects, even if the CFLs were spread out (you just wouldn't!).

Now that we have electronically ballasted 4 foot fittings (36W consumption), such a scheme would make no sense at all so there are very sound reasons for the manufacture of LED equivilents to the linear fluorescent tube[1] (not restricted solely to a form that can be used as a "Fluorescent tube Drop in Replacement", useful as that is).

I'm sure we'll see such linear LED lamps become available as an integrated linear luminaire screwed or clipped to the ceiling[2] as a single unit (50,000 hour ratings will be the big factor in supplying 'disposable linear lamp fittings')

My Gawd, that looks bloody awful!

[1] I'm deliberately excluding those "LEDs on a sticky backed roll of tape" alternatives. Such rolls of LED lamps have their uses but not as a ceiling fitting.

The current ones are still using relatively low efficiency LEDs (the larger effective surface area reduces the heat loading sufficiently to allow the use of lower efficiency LEDs to give the required illumination levels expected from the linear fluorescent tube it's intended to replace).

[2] More probably designed to be screwed/attached directly to a standard ceiling rose. They'll certainly weigh a lot less than the 5 foot fitting that's been hanging off the ceiling rose in my 'office' (a bedroom converted to such use) for the past 15 years or more.
Reply to
Johny B Good

I am considering modifying my

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to take an LED replacement lamp.

But I take it you no longer want a fluorescent type fitting. The other options (depending on what work you want do do) is as you know more fittings.

Reply to
ARW

Funky...

But where was the choke? A separate unit in the ceiling?

Reply to
Tim Watts

The bit at the end I think.

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Reply to
Graham.

I can't see any choke in Adams photos.

Some early fluorescent fittings used a resistor as a ballast rather than a choke. It made for a cheaper lamp!

Reply to
Fredxxx

According to the caption to the 3rd picture down it used a length of resistor wire running the length of the fitting

Reply to
Chris French

The last time this Netaline fitting was discussed and links to those photos posted, I'm pretty sure the lamp relied on resistive ballasting to both save weight and bulk. Although this destroys most of the efficiency benefit, there's still enough of a gain to make it a worthwhile alternative to tungsten filament lighting (much longer lamp life as well as more lumens per watt).

Reply to
Johny B Good

I seem to recall that some similar fittings has a filament bulb in the end.

Reply to
DerbyBorn

Read the text, it's done by a length of resistive wire which travels the length of the fitting. We had a similar fitting in the kitchen when I was a youngster, it was similarly slim, lacking a conventional ballast, but had a centre-mounted ceiling bracket. The tube was held in place by two slide-on plastic cups at each end. The starter was concealed in one of those.

Tried to find a pic but failed.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

As people do such mods the originals get ever rarer and of more interest to a few. I'd keep it as is. You could solve the resistor problem by clipping on an easily removed shorting lead & adding an external C ballast.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

Ew - was not expecting something so crude and inefficient...

We had a similar fitting in the kitchen when I

Reply to
Tim Watts

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