T12 tubes, are direct replacements available?

I have a lot of 4ft and 5ft T12 fluorescent tubes around the garage and in my study. It seems these are beginning to become 'old fashioned'.

Should I stock up now or can the newer/better T8 (or even smaller) tubes be used in the same fittings? All the fittings have electronic starters already and a couple are high frequency ones.

Reply to
tinnews
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No, they begun to become old fashioned in 1980.

T12 and high frequency control gear come from two different generations. Are you sure?

You can swap in T8's where you have series ballasts:

4' 40W T12 -> 36W T8 5' 65W T12 -> 58W T8 5' 80W T12 - no T8 replacement, but that would be a very old fitting, and probably bayonet cap tubes.

T5's need different fittings and control gear.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

OK! :-)

Coo, you're right, the tubes in my HF fittings *are* T8 tubes

OK, thank you.

Reply to
tinnews

Almost all old T12 fittings will happily take T8 tubes. But you said its tubes you've got, or do you have both tubes and fittings?

NT

Reply to
Tabby

Be aware that some early HF ballasts (certainly the Philips ones up to around the late 80s) require special tubes. The correct tubes are krypton-free triphosphor and are marked with a lower power rating - e.g.

50W for a 5 ft. tube. The tube marking will be something like TLD50HF/xx, where xx is the colour temperature code. I don't know whether these tubes are still available.

Later HF ballasts are 'krypton optimised' and use normal tubes, running at less than the marked wattage.

Reply to
Andy Wade

Mine have Osram 58 watt tubes in them, they're the ones originally supplied with the fittings.

Reply to
tinnews

Existing lighting fittings in my two garage/workshops. Having looked it turns out that most of them are already T8, there's only a couple of T12s. I'll just try swapping tubes to make sure the ones with T12s work with T8s and then I can get T8 replacements as necessary.

... BTW whoever came up with the wonderful concept of measuring fluorescent tube diameters in eights of an inch? :-)

Reply to
tinnews

If the T12ed fittings are the same length as the T8s, there wont be any problem using T8s in them.

NT

Reply to
Tabby

It is common in the lighting industry to measure in 1/8ths inch. e.g. MR16, PAR38, etc.

In continental Europe, sometimes the number is in mm instead, but it can be inconsistent which is used, and even we now use R63, R80.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

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