It didn’t take me long after settlement on the Lebanon Paper Box warehouse to develop a passion for converting old ballast powered light strips to work with LED bulbs. Although there is a significant cost savings to switching over to LED, the primary motivation for me was to be able to see the building that I just purchased!
Over the years of prior ownership, all of the windows have been bricked over on the first floor and a majority of them have been bricked over on remaining floors. This was done to improve security since the building had previously been a target of vandalism in years past. The building is now locked up tight, but it is also awfully dark inside. I’m not quite ready to reopen the windows, so I needed to find another solution.
The lights that are in the building are of various ages. I’m not a lighting professional, but some are probably from the early iterations of fluorescent lights. The fixtures that are really old are salvageable, but I prefer to retire them when possible. Besides the fixtures being old and ballasts failing, fluorescent lights tend to mind the cold. The Lebanon Paper Box building does not have an HVAC system and it is often much colder inside the building than it is outside. The fluorescent lights take a while to start up in the bone chilling months of winter, and sometimes they just won’t turn on at all.
So between the failing ballasts and cold temperatures, converting the fixtures from fluorescent to LED was the most logical and economic option to solve my lighting issue. An expensive ballast replacement is not necessary when converting to LED and bypassing the need for a ballast. It took me a while to research how to retrofit a fluorescent light ballast to LED and I wasn’t sure which LED light bulbs to purchase. Most of the YouTube videos that I watched made the rewiring look easy since the fixture was laying on a table. It is actually pretty easy, but I was retrofitting the fixture while it was still hanging over my head. If possible, I highly recommend taking down the fixtures. It ends up being about 2000% easier. Also, if you’re not 100% sure what you are doing, speak with a certified electrician before attempting to do this yourself.
After a ton of research and trying multiple brands and styles of LED bulbs, for the 4′ fixture retrofits, I very highly recommend the Diva Light Plug and Play & Bypass Tube Lamp. I don’t get royalties for you clicking that link and purchasing the bulbs. I just love them that much! They are also very inexpensive compared to some of the other LED bulbs out there. I have spent as much as $30 for an LED bulb that performs no differently than this Diva bulb. I have also done a few 8′ fixture retrofits and have been very happy with this 8ft 40W LED (bypass) by GreenLightDepot.
One of the options that you will notice when choosing a light is the color. They typically range between 3000K – 6000K. The 3000K side of the spectrum is your typical office lighting scenario which is very similar to the traditional Soft White incandescent bulb. It is explained as a warm light that tends to have a bit of a yellow coloration. The 6000K end of the spectrum is a very bright, almost blueish, light. This level of light is supposed to be more along the lines of daylight. I have tried the different colors of light and prefer 5000K for my application.
The afterthought of all of this for me is the cost savings. I have been able to cut the cost of energy for each light fixture by over 50%. In some cases, even more because one bulb is a sufficient light source in certain parts of the warehouse. Going from two fluorescent bulbs to one LED is over a 75% energy savings!
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