LED tube replacement

[Harry Bloomfield]

don't have a smart phone - they're just for cabbages

I might have been of the same opinion, in the distant past, and I bought one to see how useful they are, for things other than just the basics, of making phone calls. For instance - I have to do regular home BP readings, for my GP, and hospital consultant. My BP monitor automatically bluetooths it's reading, straight across to my phone. I have all my credit and debit cards on the phone, secured via facial recognition, so I no longer need to carry any cash around.

 

[ChupaRain]

I just removed the starter and bypassed the ballast by wiring live to one end and neutral to the other; sorted it in ten minutes and everything fired up fine.

 

[EFLImpudence]

We generally don't want our work to fire up.

 

[ChupaRain]

I just removed the starter and bypassed the ballast by wiring live to one end and neutral to the other; sorted it in ten minutes and everything fired up fine.

I had a similar setup and just swapped the tubes with LED ones, bypassing the ballast like others mentioned. The whole thing lit up fine after that, no flicker. I did this for my garage first, then did something similar with wall lights in a hallway—just had to check how they were wired before messing with them. Swapping tubes isn't too tricky once you figure out the wiring layout.

 

[SPLINE]

Question for experienced LED lamp installers...when converting existing lighting to LED do you change the MCB protecting the circuit?

In theory, there is higher inrush current, but of many people I've known retro-fitting LED none have mentioned upgrading MCBs. Maybe it doesn't matter with a small number of fittings in a house, but large supermarkets with 100s of fittings are now being converted to LED. What happens MCB--wise in these cases?

 

[ericmark]

Question for experienced LED lamp installers...when converting existing lighting to LED do you change the MCB protecting the circuit?

In theory, there is higher inrush current, but of many people I've known retro-fitting LED none have mentioned upgrading MCBs. Maybe it doesn't matter with a small number of fittings in a house, but large supermarkets with 100s of fittings are now being converted to LED. What happens MCB--wise in these cases?

The old fluorescent lamp did have an inrush, and also very voltage dependent, at one time we saw voltage optimisers used to reduce the excess power used when we got high voltage, the move from magnetic to electronic ballasts, resulted in higher lumen output, and lower current, and longer life, and also it auto adjusted for voltage variations, so the optimiser was no longer required.

The move to LED from the HF ballast fluorescent has resulted in lower lumen and lower wattage, the lumen output in many cases halved, and often this does not matter, as main reason for fluorescent was to get the spread of light rather than a high output, and also to allow for fluorescents to get dimmer with age.

The MCB is not a problem, as the load has gone down not up.

 

[333rocky333]

Question for experienced LED lamp installers...when converting existing lighting to LED do you change the MCB protecting the circuit?

In theory, there is higher inrush current, but of many people I've known retro-fitting LED none have mentioned upgrading MCBs. Maybe it doesn't matter with a small number of fittings in a house, but large supermarkets with 100s of fittings are now being converted to LED. What happens MCB--wise in these cases?

Firm i work for has removed thousands of T8 and T5 tube fittings and replaced with led fittings in retail stores, all still with existing mcbs often original since the 1980s and I don't recall any issues.
I have only ever witnessed inrush tripping mcbs with older halogen lamp transformers and metal halide control gear.

 

[JohnW2]

Question for experienced LED lamp installers...when converting existing lighting to LED do you change the MCB protecting the circuit? ...

I would say that the short answer is that virtually no-one would even consider that, let alone do it!

In theory, there is higher inrush current, but of many people I've known retro-fitting LED none have mentioned upgrading MCBs.

What is this "higher inrush current" (with LEDs) you're postulating? For a start, LED lighting uses dramatically less current than any of the historical alternatives, so all currents (both 'running' and 'at start up') will be lower with LEDs. Furthermore, whilst both fluorescent and incandescent lighting has/had (for different reasons) appreciable 'inrush current' at switch-on, there may (theoretically) be no appreciable 'inrush' current with LED lighting - it depends entirely on how they are powered.