The fluorescent light in our kitchen is probably about 10 years old; I fitted it back them.
6ft tube, at some point I'll convert it to LED. I'd rather not replace it completely.The diffuser unclips for changing tubes, but it has yellowed significantly. Is there anything I can do to reverse the yellowing? I suspect not, in which case I'll just buy a new LED fitting!
Sometimes one looks at D-I-Y jobs and thinks '12 hours of my time, tens of quid spent on materials, or 60 quid for a new unit...'
Yup. OTOH sometimes there's good reason. The 2 things you could try are retrobright & car headlight unfogging. The latter removes a microscopic surface layer, which is likely but not certain to be the problem.
Plus repainting the entire ceiling, since the LED batten will probably occupy less space on the ceiling than the ancient old florry.
Ours fell off at some point and broke. We managed fine without it.
(Until the T12 tube burnt out and I found you couldn't buy single replacements. So it was new fitting time, which should now be LED. I had fitted an electronic starter which meant the tube lasted for many years but had become obsolete by the time it did burn out.)
If anyone is buying an LED tube for an existing fluorescent fitting note there are two types: one works with an existing magnetic ballast (i.e. a coil) and the other requires you to bypass the ballast. The type seems to be printed in small print on the wrapper.
I'm not aware of an LED conversion tube that works with an electronic ballast.
I wouldn't bother, it's cheap enough and far less work to replace the fitting with an LED one. I changed both the 4' fittings in my railway room (shed) with LED ones and found them far better. In my garage (no diffusers), I have replaced the (failing) tubes with LED ones, which are good, but not as good as the sealed LED units.
Philips did a LED tube that worked with an electronic ballast.
However most LED tubes sold in the UK are single ended powered (L and N at one end of the tubes pins) with a short internally across the pin at the non powered end. Depending on how you rewire the fitting this is important - if done correctly the LED tube can be fitted both ways and it will still work - if bodged it goes bang
Two out of five "identical" LED replacement tubes, bought together, had faulty links on the non-powered end. I ended up adding an external link to the tubes, rather than modifying the fittings.
snip
I changed 30 or so recently. Mostly choke types but didn't find any issues.
Pays to open the box in the store. TLC were very good about replacing transit breakages:-)
There was no visible damage and the link is normally hidden by the plastic end cap.
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