LED Conversion

My dad's shop is set up really nice. It's a four bay with the fourth one being the lift bay. The lift bay has those old school gym lights...the big ones that buzz. Remember those? The other three bays have four 2x4 fluorescent light's each. They have been bright enough for stuff we do, and if we need more light, we pull over a drop light. No biggie. Then he learned about converting the 2x4's to LED. It is pricey, but man it's nice! Aerial said it best, "...a whole new world...!". I took some photos when I helped him to show you just how easy it is. Ridiculously easy. The price is the kicker though. 

I am assuming if you are looking into this and run across my post that you already know how to remove the cover/diffuser, bulbs, and ballast cover.

This setup has one ballast per two bulbs. The ballast power sources are wired to the electrical supply for this light. To do the LED conversion, you have to remove the ballasts and do some gentle rewiring. Evidently, there are "plug-and-play" linear LED bulbs out there which does not require rewiring. Check into them.  LED Info

The first bulbs my dad got were powered from one end of the bulb. That worked out great because you could remove the unnecessary wiring and clean the fixture up. You simply wired the building electrical to the wiring of the sockets of the end of the light that was to get power. 

The sockets in this photo were on the end of the bulb that not get power so we took the socket down, removed the wiring, and put the socket back. They were just dead sockets at that point.

The sockets in this photo are the powered end of the bulb. All the wiring just went back up into the ballast cover like before.

Here's the simple wiring diagram on the bulb itself. It's funny, they sure did not feel heavy enough to be so pricey, haha.

The LED bulbs fit directly back into the T8 sockets. Easy peasy.

Can you see the bulb on the left doesn't have wires from the LED strip to the prongs and the one on the right does? That is how you can tell if the bulb is installed correctly. It took us a few minutes to learn there was one way to install the bulbs.

Another set of bulbs my dad unknowingly got were wired on both ends. In order to use those bulbs, we would've had to keep the wiring connected on the sockets on both ends of the bulbs. He took those back.

Below is the side by side comparison between the fluorescent and the LED. It is noticeable in the photo, but it was REALLY noticeable when all the lights has been converted. If you decide to do it, good luck.....and talk to an electrician. 

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