I have a fluorescent light fixture in my laundry room. It takes four foot fluorescent tubes.
It was working OK, and then, according to my wife, it flashed and then both bulbs didn’t work – she actually thought the power went out, it happened so abruptly. I went and got new bulbs (which are all LEDs now) and they also don’t work.
So, maybe it’s a problem with the ballast or starter, whatever they are? Are they replaceable?
Let’s say I want to just buy a new fixture. How the heck are those things attached to the ceiling? I don’t see any obviously accessible screws.
The receptacle where the lights slide into seem to be removeable with a pinch.
Anyway, I’m pretty clueless about fluorescent fixtures, so I’ll take any answers to the above.
The new “fluorescent” bulbs are now all LEDs anyway, at least at Home Depot.
ETA: This video showed me how to remove the center piece, exposing the wires and the screws that are holding up the fixture. Fingers crossed that HD has a drop-in replacement!
Cut power, remove bulbs, and take a close look at the metal housing/fixture. You should see screws that hold the fixture up. There might a couple screws near each end of the fixture, and/or screws in the center. Disconnect wires and remove all the screws.
Oh, and it just occurred to me that, since the light doesn’t work, you need to make sure you have flipped off the correct breaker. You need to measure the voltage using a meter. (One way is to measure across the switch contacts with the switch off. With breaker on it should be around 120 VAC. With breaker off it should be 0 VAC.)
If I turn off the wall switch and then check the black wire to the copper ground to make sure there’s no power there, is that sufficient? I don’t know which breaker switch will actually cut that exact room off and the idea of fixing a bunch of blinking clocks and restarting networks and computers is nightmarish.
This was part of a 2007 renovation, so I imagine that the switch stops power, rather than cutting the white ground.
Is the light switch on the wall? If so, and if it were me, I would:
Flip light switch off.
Remove light switch cover and measure voltage across light switch terminals. Verify 120 VAC.
Turn off circuit breaker.
With switch still off, measure voltage across light switch terminals. Verify 0 VAC. (If not, try another breaker.) If it is 0 VAC, also make sure there’s 0 VAC between each switch terminal and ground if there is a convenient ground in the switch box.
Disconnect hot and neutral wires from light fixture. Verify 0 VAC between hot and neutral wires (for the wires going back to the breaker panel, not the light fixture).
(A short cut to the above is to forget about the switch and just do all the voltage measurements at the hot & neutral wires at the fixture. But it’s a little bit riskier, since you may be disconnecting wires that are live.)
Just seconding the LED replacement suggestion. If your ballasts died, they make LED replacements that you can use in lieu of the ballast. You’d cut the wires and wire the LED tubes directly to the fixture wires, bypassing the ballasts. (But yes, flip the breakers and make sure there’s no power at the fixture).
But if you’re going that way anyway, it’s also an opportunity to replace the entire fixture. The tubes (LED or florescent) tend to be a pain to work with compared to bulb or strip style lights, and typically have slightly lower color quality (CRI) and colder (higher color temperature). The modern LEDs are an improvement over the old fluorescents, but the best ones tend to be in bulb format.
Of course, there’s no guarantee (or even a high likelihood) that their fixture is exactly the same as yours. At that point, it’s up to you to figure out the details, such as how to locate and remove the fasteners holding the fixture on the ceiling.
OK, I’ll turn off the breaker, I’ll remove the fixture and take it with me to HD and see how close I can get to a drop-in replacement. I’m not interested in changing the fixture to something different, fixing the existing holes in the ceiling, etc.
Just for clarity (wasn’t sure from your post), normally you would only need to replace:
The tubes if they’re burnt out. Those requires no tools, typically, just a twist and remove (unless the cover is screwed in, but they usually aren’t). You can get a drop-in LED replacement for these, but make sure the replacement tube says it works with your existing ballast. The HD person won’t always know, but the manufacturer’s website should have a table. I just did this with Sylvania drop in replacements a few months ago.
If your ballasts are busted, you would either have to replace them too (more difficult) OR replace the tube + ballast together with a LED replacement (a different kind, a ballast bypass tube). The latter isn’t any easier or more difficult, but it should last a lot longer than a replacement ballast and florescent tubes.
If the fixture itself is somehow busted (very unlikely), you can take the whole thing – the housing around the tubes and ballasts and all – to HD, but it’s unlikely they would have that exact same fixture. Maybe something similar enough to cover the same screw holes, or else you’d have to try to find it online.
But from the sounds of it, it would probably be a ballast issue. Keeping the same fixture (housing) but removing its tubes and replacing them with a ballast bypass LED (requires some minor rewiring) is probably a good medium term solution. Easier than replacing the fixture altogether, but longer lasting than replacing the ballasts. LEDs don’t need a ballast, that’s something the florescents needed.
I’d highly recommending finding a CRI of 90+ or close to it (which gives you better color quality, as in ability to see different colors under the light and not just have a horrible green cast to everything), and a color temperature that you like. 3000k is almost like a warm incandescent (not quite), while higher values will be cooler / bluer / closer to daylight. These should all be indicated on the box somewhere with a Lighting Facts label that looks like nutrition facts.
My goal here is to get the laundry room light functioning as close to it was before as quickly and easily as possible.
I replaced the tubes with LED tubes and it still didn’t work. One of the fluorescent bulbs looked dark on one end, so it’s possible that that ballast broke some time ago and only recently did the other one broke. Or, is there only one ballast for the whole fixture? Is that the black box in the middle?
Assuming the ballast is the black box in the middle (called Electronic ballast, it looks like, duh), it looks pretty easy to remove, but how easy is it to get the wires out and back into the end pieces that hold the lights in place?
ETA: Anything I do will be over the weekend – I’m working from home today and I don’t want to accidentally turn off my computer when I’m playing with the switches.
Yeah, absolutely. Sorry I wasn’t clearer… the point of the ballast-bypass LED tubes is that:
They should be just as easy (or difficult) to install as replacing the ballast
It’s a one-time fix, after which you never have to worry about the ballast again
They are more energy-efficient (no energy wasted on the ballast), should last longer than a replacement ballast + LED tube, and are instant-on (which may not be the case with ballast + LEDs)
The wire lever nuts in that video are wonderful too, if you’re going to go to Home Depot anyway.
IF your ballasts were still good, then yes, using a drop-in ballast-compatible LED tube would be the easiest. But since it looks like the ballasts are dead anyway, and you have to replace them anyhow, you might as well replace them with direct-wire, ballast-bypass LED tubes rather than adding in another ballast (that will just fail again in a few years).
The one time I installed a ballast-bypass LED light tube kit, it even came with good-quality lever wire connectors. Which made working above my head at the top of a stepladder a lot easier.
So, to finish the story, I went with the bypass LEDs. It only required two trips to Home Depot – first, to get all the stuff, then to go back and get some toggle bolts, because that’s how it was attached to the ceiling and the old butterfly thingies are floating around up there somewhere.
Yes, I turned off the breaker.
All of this was worth it to learn about the existence of lever wire connectors, which are totally awesome. Also, I bought myself a new wire cutter/stripper, because my old one was really old and dull, so that’s a bonus.