too bad he is not closer to me, i have a s*** load of ballast and tubes to retrofit the old t-12 to t-8.
Shop lighting
- Thread starter Spook50
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spook if you have not bought lights for your garage yet, do you have 2 tube or 4 tube lights in there?
i am working on cleaning my building, so i can get concrete poured, so if i have the ballast it is not hard to retro them then all you need to do is buy the t-8 tubes.
i am working on cleaning my building, so i can get concrete poured, so if i have the ballast it is not hard to retro them then all you need to do is buy the t-8 tubes.
- Thread starter
- #23
I haven't bought anything yet. Still in the stages of planning it out but I've pretty much decided on eight dual T8 fixtures. Four for general lighting and four mounted directly above each work surface (each of those will be switched).
ok spook i will check and make sure i have enough ballast, then i will post a pic of them so you can see if that will work for you.
spook i have plenty of the 2 wire ballast, here are the pics.
they are 9 3/4" long 1 5/8" wide 1 1/8" deep.
they are 9 3/4" long 1 5/8" wide 1 1/8" deep.
- Thread starter
- #26
spook i have plenty of the 2 wire ballast, here are the pics.
they are 9 3/4" long 1 5/8" wide 1 1/8" deep.
Cool man! PM incoming.
spook once you get it done post some pics!
- Thread starter
- #28
Will do. I've got enough 14/2 wire to do up the new lighting circuit in my shop so once I get set up enough to tackle that, the lighting will be the first to be customized for me. A 15A circuit for the lights (inside and an LED security light on the outside), a dedicated 15A circuit for the exhaust blower, and so on as I go along. Bitch of it is I'll have to redo all the drywall in there, but that's not a ballbreaker. I'll get a drywall book and the shop will be my practice project once the rewiring is done
- Thread starter
- #29
I finally got an opportunity to retrofit one of my old T12 fixtures in the shop with one of the T8 ballasts that toy4xfun sent me. Works like a champ! It wasn't as cut n' dry as I had initially expected, but it was still pretty simple and a HUGE improvement over the T12 tubes in the fixture. This fixture had both magnetic ballasts shot so even new bulbs wouldn't illuminate. Good feeling to have given new, updated life to an otherwise junked fixture. Each one I retrofit saves me $30, so it's definitely worth an hour and a half of work per fixture to do it. Here's a few pics of what I had to do on these old fixtures.
Here's an end piece. All the fixtures are like this. No replaceable "tombstones", which kind of sucks because if a contact breaks, the whole fixture is garbage.
The guts. Both end pieces have this same setup on every fixture. Some had some burn marks around them, but surprisingly the wires and plastic were still in good shape and not melted or warped at all.
After rewiring the end cap for the new ballast.
The ballast installed into the housing. I did have to drill holes to securely mount the ballast, but that was no biggy.
Far end wired to the ballast.
The ballasts were about a quarter inch too tall to fit underneath the center covers for the fixtures, so I just took some tin snips and cut the cover so there would be an opening for the ballast to protrude. There's still tons of clearance between the ballast and the tubes, so no worries there. You can see how far it protrudes here.
The cord was only about a foot long, so I pulled the 4' cord off the fixture that was unserviceable and installed it into this one. Here's the cord end repaired and wired up to the ballast.
The fixture reassembled with the new ballast and modified center cap (now caps).
It works! The lights snapped right on with zero flickering and seem to put out much more (and better since I'm using a higher color temperature) light than the old T12 tubes that were being used. Side by side with a fixture running two good T12s, I'll take the T8 retrofitted fixture any day.
Now to work on the rest, get them all mounted up again, figure the placement of the receptacles for them, and rewire the lighting circuit in the shop and I'll be good to go. Thanks again to toy4xfun for hooking me up with these ballasts and saving me a ton of money in updating my shop's lighting.
Here's an end piece. All the fixtures are like this. No replaceable "tombstones", which kind of sucks because if a contact breaks, the whole fixture is garbage.
The guts. Both end pieces have this same setup on every fixture. Some had some burn marks around them, but surprisingly the wires and plastic were still in good shape and not melted or warped at all.
After rewiring the end cap for the new ballast.
The ballast installed into the housing. I did have to drill holes to securely mount the ballast, but that was no biggy.
Far end wired to the ballast.
The ballasts were about a quarter inch too tall to fit underneath the center covers for the fixtures, so I just took some tin snips and cut the cover so there would be an opening for the ballast to protrude. There's still tons of clearance between the ballast and the tubes, so no worries there. You can see how far it protrudes here.
The cord was only about a foot long, so I pulled the 4' cord off the fixture that was unserviceable and installed it into this one. Here's the cord end repaired and wired up to the ballast.
The fixture reassembled with the new ballast and modified center cap (now caps).
It works! The lights snapped right on with zero flickering and seem to put out much more (and better since I'm using a higher color temperature) light than the old T12 tubes that were being used. Side by side with a fixture running two good T12s, I'll take the T8 retrofitted fixture any day.
Now to work on the rest, get them all mounted up again, figure the placement of the receptacles for them, and rewire the lighting circuit in the shop and I'll be good to go. Thanks again to toy4xfun for hooking me up with these ballasts and saving me a ton of money in updating my shop's lighting.
I know jack**** about these lights. I've got several that don't work worth a damn, but I've been told by several people that it's easier and almost just as cheap to replace the whole fixture than it is to replace the ballasts. Would that have been easier for you?
ballasts or new lights?
- Thread starter
- #33
It would've. If I were to buy the ballasts to convert the fixtures, it would've cost me just under the price of a whole new fixture, plus the time to do the retrofit. Wouldn't have been worth it at that point. As it happened, toy4xfun had a bunch of two tube T8 ballasts that he just wanted to get out of his shop and he hooked me up. All brand new from the manufacturer too. Getting them for free made it more than worth it, but if I had to go out and buy them, it wouldn't have been.
My electrical supplier stopped on yesterday and informed me that florescent bulbs or any bulb with phosphorus in is going up. China controls the market on phosphorus and are chargin for it.
There was a 25% increase last month, another 25% this month. They are something like 500% higher than they were 18 months ago.
Does anybody know if this has any truth to it or is he just being a salesman?
There was a 25% increase last month, another 25% this month. They are something like 500% higher than they were 18 months ago.
Does anybody know if this has any truth to it or is he just being a salesman?
