I’m looking for opinions with a decission I need to make for my church. We have between 30-40 4’ fluorescent ceiling fixtures that are over 25 years old. I’ve replace some of the ballast thru the past few years and recommended that they all be replaced. I now have the decission of either bypassing the ballast, replacing the tombstones to run LED tubes (which I thing is the best conversion) or replace all the ballast and continue to run T12/T8 tubes. Buying in bulk LED tubes I think will definitely help in bringing down the overall cost for the upgrade and lower the energy cost for the future. Replacing the ballast still seems to be a costly investment. Labor is not an issue, I’ll be doing all work w/o cost to the church.
No need to replace the sockets. Remove the ballasts and plug in led tubes.
Get the type that are powered from both ends. ie. neutral to one end and hot to the other.
Do a test one first. Some people can’t tolerate cool white, and see an uncomfortable color.
Most all will pick cw over nw if compared, but not all.
Check with your local electric company. Ours (SDG&E) replaced our vintage flourescent tubes with new LED tubes-all for free.They were in and out of our 1000 sq.ft. warehouse in about 2 hrs, and they even cleaned up their mess.
But which do you think is more cost effective?
LED no ballast tubes were about $7 ea . They use way less energy so they will pay for themselves plus you dont ever have to buy and replace a ballast again
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