Replace that Old Florescent Light ... with a New One

There LED replacements for fluorescent tubes out now.
First grab from Google.
T8 LED Fluorescent Tube, LED Tube, Fluorescent Replacement, LED
Replacement Tube, EarthLED DirectLED FL Series, LED Fluorescent Tubes, F32T8 LED, U-Bent LED, U Tube LED

You have to bypass the ballast for them though. More energy savings, but those with poor relationships with hand tools might need an electrician's help.

 

I moved in to this home almost 7 years ago and replaced 76 incandescent bulbs with CFL and LEDs, leaving 12 incandescent I can't replace (inside oven and microwave, inside ice maker in door to fridge) The cost savings can add up even in one home.

76 * 60 is a lot more than 76 * 13 and my A/C works easier for all those watts I am not adding. (I swear I never actually have all 76 on at once)

 

Borrow some of the neighbor's kids, then you can get all 88 of those puppies burning.

 

...I just did mine in the kitchen we have a 4x40W fixture. Unfort I replaced in kind and really it was the ballast seems the ballast has a shorter life than the bulbs. But are you saying you found energy saving fluorescents? I noticed they do seem to come in 32W and 40W I should have got the 32W.

 

Thanks for that link! They do keep getting better. I've got only a few odd lights around here that I didn't already change from incandescent to fluorescent several years ago, and the fluorescents are still going strong so I won't need to replace them soon. The outdoor porch lights were among the ones I had not switched to fluorescent because I didn't want cold-weather starting hassles, so one of those just burned out and I tried my first LED replacement using the 9.5 watt, 800 lumen Cree. Very satisfied.

These tube retrofits don't look quite as appealing to me yet. Partly it's that in the tube shape, what it'll be replacing is obviously a fluorescent, which is already pretty efficient so there's less room to improve on what's already there. And they just don't seem quite yet able to get enough output into a package: my Philips F40T12s in the basement give me something like 3300 lumens from 40 watts, so not quite 90 lm/W. The EarthLED 4 foot tube at 1500 lm from 15 W is a really sweet 100 lm/W but it's still less than half the light - and the color rendering index a bit worse too, and at that rate $60 per tube still needs some coming down to catch my interest.

I'm sure they'll keep improving on all those fronts ... the Cree I recently bought has 85 CRI, output comparable to a good fluorescent, and a great price. I'm looking forward to what'll be out in the next few years.

-Chap

 

There are more ways to play the game than just choosing between the 40w and 32w "energy saving" flavors. The 32-watters came out decades ago really as a way of saving energy by settling for less light. But now thanks to technology improvements you can choose among products of the same wattage with quite a range of light output for the same power input ... also much better color rendition than the old ones, and a wide selection of color temperatures.

And one way the world is really better now since only several years ago ... even in the consumer big-box stores you pretty much see the lumen output, color temperature and CRI right there on the label next to the watts in, so you can buy exactly what you want and know what you're getting. Even just several years ago you'd typically only see watts in and basic warm/cool/daylight labels on consumer retail packages (though if you went to lighting distributors you could look up the other stuff and order from their full catalogs).

-Chap

 

T8 fluorescent bulbs at 35w are much more efficient than the older 40w T12 fluorescent bulbs. You must replace the ballasts though. But if the ballasts are years old, then the newer ballasts will be more efficient as well.

SCH-I535

 

Beats me, but the T8 bulbs are brighter and use less watts per lumen, so it's a win win IMO.

LEDs are still too expensive for me.

SCH-I535

 

Where is the US (for example) now, in terms of fluorescent-bulb recycling? There is just 5 to 100 milligrams of mercury in each one, but when multiplied by millions, it can become important.

 

Hi SageBrush,

You've probably already checked this, but the literature for your ballast should say whether it's ok long-term with having one of the lamps missing. I get the impression T8 electronic ballasts are all the Instant Start type and probably won't have a problem, though the ballast literature ought to say for sure. The Rapid Start type (which you probably had before) could be adversely affected by having one lamp out (and the linked article ends with a story about a Texas school district thinking they could save money in the 1974 energy crisis by taking out some of the lamps in each fixture).

-Chap

 

I can only speak for Pinellas County, FL. There is a free dropoff center for ANY hazardous waste as well as collection events (residential only). Likewise Lowe's and Home Depot take CFLs only for recycling. However, I'm sure most of the population throws whatever they want to get rid of in the garbage bins no matter how toxic.