48" led tube replacement - fail

[laser3kw]

Warning! rant/ wall of text!
For those who haven't experienced the pleasure, re-tubing a fluorescent or round bulb with LED can be a really education!
I started last December, re-bulbed the house. I had to make a couple of trips to Menards. Getting the right style, temperature (color) and wattage. Replacing wattage for wattage will get you way brighter than you would expect. Then getting a comfortable "temperature" (color) - to blue, to yellow, 3500k, 4000k,5000k. But All is good, got it down, AND I have seen a drop in power bill - definitely worth it.
Then I decide to do my 2, 4 tube fluorescent troffers. Has to be easier - right?
Wrong! I have the color thing down, but now the added complexity of the construction of the fixture. T8, T12, 2 tube, 4 tube, shunted tombstone, non-shunted tombstone, direct fit, ballast delete, plug and play -
Now the meat of this post.
I determined I have older T12, 4 tube , magnetic ballast, non shunted tombstone fixtures. Some of that is obvious ( 4 tubes, T12) some is not. I just wanted a plug and play tube. Most LED tubes will not work with magnetic ballast. But when I was in Menards, the sales person showed me their Zilotek tubes. Menards Zilotek link
It says right on the box and in their website :

A perfect replacement for traditional fluorescent T8s or T12s, the LED versions offer high color rendering white light at low running cost. Using just 20 watts, these tubes are ideal for retail, home, business, and everything in between. Compatible will all Instant-Start electronic and magnetic ballasts, every tube is easy-to-install, worry-free, and will have an immediate improvement on both energy costs and environmental impact.

Good to go! Bought 4(pairs) and went home and installed the first 4 in one troffer, flipped switch - great light! Left it on and did the next one, 8 feet away, same nice result, left it on too! Started working on a project and about 10 minutes later the first troffer goes off like you threw the switch. I open it up and the ballast cover is HOT.
I put the fluorescent T12s back in and only 2 of the 4 would light. As I am finishing the first troffer, the second goes out. I open it up and the ballast cover in it too is HOT. Put the fluorescent T12s back in and it too would only light 2 tubes. WTH is going on? It seems these plug and play, fits all, no worries LED tubes some how knocked out the ballast?
Has anyone experienced this? Or , as always, am I the first one in.
But if I have to fix this, I either have to buy a new T12 electronic ballast or just go the ballast delete and put direct fit tubes in. Menards will take the LED tubes back for a full refund but won't do anything about the ballast.
So, how was YOUR day.....

 

[cybrdyke]

Zilotek is not a real company. It's a house brand of Menards, just like EcoSmart is at Home Depot and Utilitech is at Lowes. House brands are a rip-off when it comes to LED lighting.
The big box store asks the cheeziest manufacturers to bid on building products for them and part of the deal is that they must label it with the name of the house brand. Cheapest bidder wins. All the house brand stuff is ****.
There are "giveaways" in their instruction sheet that tells me that these are junk lamps. One is that they mention an F40T12-IS ballast. This ballast is rarer than a unicorn. Most F40T12 ballasts are RS, Rapid Start, which would make it incompatible with your tube.
Sorry for your luck. For future reference, all you have to do is google the brand name. If they dont have their own website then they dont exist.
CD

 

[Crazyjake8493]

I would go with LED ballast-bypass and cut the ballasts right out of the fixtures. I've got a few different brands of them and all work great. I've had a couple friends that have had problems with the "plug and play" LED tubes, can't say I'd recommend any of them.

 

[racintj]

Agreed, definitely bypass the ballast. You'll eliminate a point of failure. Very easy to do.

You may also want to look at some quality LED tubes as well. Many times the true color of the light is not as true on the cheaper ones.

 

[oilslick]

Arent all of these tubes made in china? Who makes a good bulb? Ebay seems to have a lot of the same bulbs sold by many different sellers for all different prices. I ordered some for work from a company called shine retrofits, bulbs came in a box from company ledi2! Seem good so far but definitely higher priced than ebay.

 

[zendriver]

Arent all of these tubes made in china? Who makes a good bulb? Ebay seems to have a lot of the same bulbs sold by many different sellers for all different prices. I ordered some for work from a company called shine retrofits, bulbs came in a box from company ledi2! Seem good so far but definitely higher priced than ebay.

They probably all are made in China.

I have the "Honeywell" brand that have worked and looked perfectly, in my old rewired fixtures. They were from Sam's Club.

They are supposed to be"plug and play" for some new fixtures, but they are also 100% functional if the ballasts are removed.

Unless someone has 100's (or 1000's) of fixtures, I'm not sure why anyone would want to leave the ballasts wired in anyway.

It's just a useless source of heat, another point of failure and a complete waste of electricity, at least using these awesome tubes.

$20 per pair.

 

[BD1]

I bought the Costco LED complete fixture for $25.00 and work fine .

 

[zeke01]

Sorry for being so obtuse but do I understand that you can re-wire your old fixture, eliminating the ballast and the LED tubes will work? Do you have to change the tombstones? My fixtures are 20 years old and use the F40CW tubes. Which LED tubes do you use as replacements? I tried plugging the LED tubes into the existing fixtures and they wouldn't light up at all. Zeke

 

[Crazyjake8493]

Sorry for being so obtuse but do I understand that you can re-wire your old fixture, eliminating the ballast and the LED tubes will work? Do you have to change the tombstones? My fixtures are 20 years old and use the F40CW tubes. Which LED tubes do you use as replacements? I tried plugging the LED tubes into the existing fixtures and they wouldn't light up at all. Zeke

You can rewire any old fixture to accept an LED ballast-bypass tube. The tombstones must be non-shunted, and you would wire 120V (or 277V) right to the tombstone at one end, the other end would be disconnected. If you have T12 fixtures, the tombstones should already be non-shunted and you should be fine. If you're converting a T8 fixture the tombstones are most likely shunted and you would need to replace the tombstones.

Another plus of the ballast-bypass tubes is that you may be able to sell the working bulbs and ballasts at a yard sale or on CL and re-coup some of the cost for the LED conversion.

 

[zendriver]

You can rewire any old fixture to accept an LED ballast-bypass tube. The tombstones must be non-shunted, and you would wire 120V (or 277V) right to the tombstone at one end, the other end would be disconnected. If you have T12 fixtures, the tombstones should already be non-shunted and you should be fine. If you're converting a T8 fixture the tombstones are most likely shunted and you would need to replace the tombstones.

Another plus of the ballast-bypass tubes is that you may be able to sell the working bulbs and ballasts at a yard sale or on CL and re-coup some of the cost for the LED conversion.

Not the "Honeywell" tubes. They only have one hot pin (of two)at each end of the tube, and are opposite each other, so the tube can be installed either direction.

Every pin on the tombstones at one end, of the fixture should be wired together, for hot and all pins at the other end wired for neutral.

 

[zendriver]

Sorry for being so obtuse but do I understand that you can re-wire your old fixture, eliminating the ballast and the LED tubes will work? Do you have to change the tombstones? My fixtures are 20 years old and use the F40CW tubes. Which LED tubes do you use as replacements? I tried plugging the LED tubes into the existing fixtures and they wouldn't light up at all. Zeke

Many LED tubes, have their own circuitry, so they don't need a ballast anymore.

Like I stated, I used these in ancient fixtures, with the ballasts removed and they work excellent.

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/led-tube-light-set-in-club-item-785072/prod20071895.ip?navAction=

If the ballasts in your fixtures are incompatible, with the "plug and Pray" style tubes, they wont work right - or at all.

 

[zeke01]

Thanks for the information. I'm tired of going out to my unheated garage in the winter and having to light a match to see if the lights are on. Zeke

 

[laser3kw]

You may also want to look at some quality LED tubes as well.

I admit, that like many people, I tried the "cheap and easy" route. It proved to be neither.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to leave the ballasts wired in anyway.

The OCD in me (or others) rationalizes it so that if I want to go back to a fluorescent tube, the fixture will readily accept it. Kind of twisted reasoning, but it's just the way it works.

I fully examined all permutations (again OCD) and know the best route is remove the ballast. AND my T12 fixture already have the correct tombstone so less work to boot. But my mind won't let go the notion to be backwards compatible. I will bring myself to it in time.

 

[ghlkal]

laser3kw, I feel your pain. The label indicated it would work, and you bought it in good faith and invested the time ... and then it didn't

 

[tfi racing]

It never ends.Save yourself the grief,pain and inconvenience of trying to save pennies by spending dollars for still unreliable and inconsistent LED 4' tube replacements.Unless you have hundreds or thousands or millions of lamps(BTW,most of the big box stores that have them in their ceilings didn't pay a cent for them),nothing else beats a quality T8 ballast and the corresponding T8 lamps for residential use,stop wasting your time and energy trying to convert 10,15 or 50 year old flourescent tin boxes to 2001 technology.

 

[Two Sheds]

In the winter, it seems to take forever for the fluorescents to come up to brightness in my unheated garage, and I have some ballasts that have gone bad. So a ballast bypass LED conversion would be ideal for these fixtures, but I've looked at Home Depot and Lowes, and all the conversion tubes are for use with T8 electronic ballasts.

So, my question is, where do you get the ballast bypass LED conversions, and which brands are OK?

 

[zcar751]

I admit that I love the idea of the LED bulbs but at this point I can't justify the expense to go that route. Any way I crunch the numbers you pay more for the bulbs and they don't pay for themselves over the life expectancy. Now the instant on feature is nice but you can buy cold start ballist to take care of this problem for you guys in cold climates. Of course the price of electricity in your area may make the pay off more probable. Here in the Tennessee Vally electricity is cheep and I could never make the enegery savings argument work.

 

[zendriver]

It never ends.Save yourself the grief,pain and inconvenience of trying to save pennies by spending dollars for still unreliable and inconsistent LED 4' tube replacements.Unless you have hundreds or thousands or millions of lamps(BTW,most of the big box stores that have them in their ceilings didn't pay a cent for them),nothing else beats a quality T8 ballast and the corresponding T8 lamps for residential use,stop wasting your time and energy trying to convert 10,15 or 50 year old flourescent tin boxes to 2001 technology.

It takes about 10 minutes to convert a quad fixture to use LEDs, taking my time.

I disagree that spending good money, replacing ancient florescent technology,with obsolete florescent technology, is a prudent thing to do.

Despite the fact, LED technology is not perfect, it is being adopted almost everywhere and seem to be getting the job done. I have yet to hear, someone wish they had their florescents back.

 

[zendriver]

In the winter, it seems to take forever for the fluorescents to come up to brightness in my unheated garage, and I have some ballasts that have gone bad. So a ballast bypass LED conversion would be ideal for these fixtures, but I've looked at Home Depot and Lowes, and all the conversion tubes are for use with T8 electronic ballasts.

So, my question is, where do you get the ballast bypass LED conversions, and which brands are OK?

I love these from Sam's club. $10 per tube.

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=318256

 

[zendriver]

I admit that I love the idea of the LED bulbs but at this point I can't justify the expense to go that route. Any way I crunch the numbers you pay more for the bulbs and they don't pay for themselves over the life expectancy. Now the instant on feature is nice but you can buy cold start ballist to take care of this problem for you guys in cold climates. Of course the price of electricity in your area may make the pay off more probable. Here in the Tennessee Vally electricity is cheep and I could never make the enegery savings argument work.

IMO, LED's put out much better light.