Shop lighting - the switch to LED

"It is our attitude toward events, not events themselves, which we can control.  Nothing is by its own nature calamitous - even death is terrible only if we fear it." - Epictetus

 I mentioned that I'd placed an order for LED tubes to replace the overhead lights in the shop, about 2/3 of the way down this long post.  At the bottom of this post, they had arrived, but I still hadn't found time to install them.

One of the fluorescent fixtures had dead bulbs that were failing to ignite, and I finally had a half-day when I found time to make the wiring changes and replace the bulbs on that fixture.  Below, the far right bulbs are glowing, but only very dimly.

The new bulbs are not plug and play - meaning that you have to do a little re-wiring to bypass the ballast.  There are four wires going to each end of these fixtures (each bulb has two pins at each end) and so I thought this was going to be complicated.  It wasn't.  

All four wires at one end of the fixture go to hot, and all four at the other end go to neutral.  The bulbs don't care which end is hot or neutral.  All I needed to do was snip the wires off the ballast and connect the four wires from one end of the fixture to the black wire, and the four from the other end to the white wire.  Easy.  

Below, the far right fixture changed over to LED.  The color is slightly blue compared to the standard "cool white" fluorescent bulbs.  It is quite a bit brighter standing underneath the fixture than under these tired fluorescent fixtures.

After seeing the difference, I decided to spend another hour and a half changing the other fixtures over to LED.  Fortunately the ceiling lights are split into two circuits, so I had decent light while doing the job.  The floor and old truck really show the changes in the before/after picture.  The first photos also had afternoon sun, which was adding to the light in the "before" picture.

I'm super happy with these lights, even though they take a moment to come on after you flip the switch.  They also have the ability to rotate in different directions, so the outboard lights I twisted just slightly toward the walls to illuminate the edges of the shop a bit better.

If there is a down-side to switching to LED bulbs, it's this:  The local transfer station won't accept the old mercury-filled tubes.  

I had to make a special run to town to dispose of them.  Oddly when I got there, the guy told me to throw them out with the regular waste... I thought these were considered "Universal Waste", which is why the local station could not take them.  Weird.  Anyway, I'm done with them and did the right thing.