Searching Amazon for LED shop lights, you can get a 4-pack for $135. Several brands, lots of good reviews, I would recommend the 4000K models (I don’t see many that are 3000K). This would be replacing the whole thing - all 8 tubes, which at $20 each, would cost you $160. And junking the fluorescents, light covers, all of it - just starting over.
Seems like a decent plan. And there’s no complex wiring to do - you just turn off the power, unscrew the current hanging fixtures from their chains, disconnect the power cable, and basically do this in reverse with the new ones.
One bulb out in each fixture sounds to me like someone deliberately disconnected power to one of the tubes in each fixture in order to save energy/money. Seems like too big a coincidence for each fixture to have transformer problems.
No starters, and in the fixtures I opened up (two of them at this count) there is a ground wire to the fixture from the power lead.
It may be a lot of coincidence, but having opened two, I see no instance of anything disconnected. I see power coming in, going to each end, and (with attendant circuitry) wiring to each of the four leads off the tubes. Thus I don’t think it was deliberate.
However, at this point, it seems like it’s not worth it to troubleshoot any further. I’m just going to scrap them out in favor of LEDs. At $20 per fixture with LED bulbs included, I don’t think any part could be prelaced cheaper than buying new, as icbm did.
Thanks to everyone for their input. I was kinda hoping it was going to be something easy, but I admit I have no idea what that would have been.
[ol]
[li]Can you simply replace the florescent tubes with LED tubes, or do you need a new fixture.[/li][li]All the talk in this thread is for garage/shop lights. Would LEDs be appropriate for basement lighting?[/li][/ol]
The original models required that you disconnect the ballast in the fixture, but the newest bulbs are “hybrid” models that have a “plug and play” festure as well as the traditional “direct wire” feature. You can plug them into an existing fixture with an electronic ballast or remove the ballast. (Note: the ballast must be electronic.)
while I’ll admit it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that someone did that, most people would’ve just put bulbs where they wanted them to work and not disconnected anything in the fixture itself.
If the ballast is bad a non-bypass LED tube isn’t going to work either.
Fixtures that us “PL” type compact tubes (like wall sconces and CFL cans and stuff like that) technically still use starters, but the starter is embedded into the tube and thus gets replaced with it.
