Motivated by
this post I replaced 4 fluorescent tube lights, 2 each on two fixtures, with LEDs. It was not that difficult and I didn't burn down the house (my greatest fear
). Even better, these lights are in the laundry room and closet, and they are always left on (I won't say by whom).
Now all I need is to find a way to dispose of the tubes.
I also did a replacement of our 2-40W fluorescent tubes over the kitchen sink. Got these for our application:
http://www.amazon.com/Hyperikon®-Du...p/B00SSNPB96/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8
I tried with the ballast in place just to test them out, but they flickered (our ballast may be failing), so I bypassed the ballast. They were very bright and harsh. Felt like I was on a stage with a spotlight on me. The color seems like bright white to me, no real obvious 'color' to it.
The fixture they are in (hand made by me) has a plastic "egg crate" sort of grid, and that just doesn't diffuse the light enough with these to make it 'soft'. I realized, the fluorescent tubes emit light 360 degrees, so most of it is reflected from the back and sides of the fixture (all painted white), while these LEDs point directly down.
Playing around a little bit, I found if I simply installed them upside down, the LEDs now reflect off the fixture. Brightness is still at least as bright as the old tubes, and the light seems to be as 'soft/diffused' as the tubes. It kinda bugged the engineer in me since this is cutting down on the efficiency, but it gets the job done, no failing ballast to worry about (the old lights were getting tough to start sometimes), and they are 18W versus 40W tubes, so we are saving kWh anyhow.
I'm happy with them now, the jury is still out for DW - she sees a color shift, but I think it's a matter of getting used to them. She'd probably think the old tubes look funny now if I could switch back.
I've thought about whether I could tweak the diffusion a bit and get by with one LED tube rather than two, but this works, I think I'll stick with it.
Thanks to Michael B and REWahoo for pointing these out - it provided the motivation I needed to get this done.
edit/add: I also bookmarked that link for circuit board repairs - very interesting business model -
http://circuitboardmedics.com/
-ERD50