Les
Well-Known Member
We have about 24 of the 4-lamp suspended-ceiling T12 troffers spread throughout our greenroom, dressing rooms, and backstage hallway areas (including stairwells). Last year I went through and did a total relamp since about 75% of the lamps in each room were in some stage of being burned out. That fixed about 95% of the issues, but one year later they are back at it again. The weird thing is that the lights act like it's all or nothing. You can walk in a room and flip the switch and they all turn on dim (or maybe one fixture out of four will turn on at all). Flip the switch on/off a few times and usually they will all turn on, at least for the most part.
I'm not really thinking it's a wiring issue. The wiring is all 25-year-old THHN run through conduit. I think we have a bunch of bad ballasts. So my thought now is to go through each room systematically and replace all the lamps with LED ballast-bypass versions like these.
I know there are some needs as far as the sockets are concerned - that they can't be the "shunted" version; but I have a multimeter and can confirm that as needed.
Has anyone had any success with these (or similar)? I know there are two flavors of LED retrofit lamps available -- plug-n-play and ballast bypass. I lean towards ballast bypass since failing ballasts is the reason I'm wanting to retrofit these lights in the first place. The lamps I linked to are about $6.99 each which seems like a good price, but I am also open for suggestions. I want to save money but also live by the adage "buy once, cry once".
I'd really rather not drop in entire fixtures if I can help it, due to labor and cost ($28 per fixture to retrofit) but maybe I could be convinced of that as well.
I'm not really thinking it's a wiring issue. The wiring is all 25-year-old THHN run through conduit. I think we have a bunch of bad ballasts. So my thought now is to go through each room systematically and replace all the lamps with LED ballast-bypass versions like these.
I know there are some needs as far as the sockets are concerned - that they can't be the "shunted" version; but I have a multimeter and can confirm that as needed.
Has anyone had any success with these (or similar)? I know there are two flavors of LED retrofit lamps available -- plug-n-play and ballast bypass. I lean towards ballast bypass since failing ballasts is the reason I'm wanting to retrofit these lights in the first place. The lamps I linked to are about $6.99 each which seems like a good price, but I am also open for suggestions. I want to save money but also live by the adage "buy once, cry once".
I'd really rather not drop in entire fixtures if I can help it, due to labor and cost ($28 per fixture to retrofit) but maybe I could be convinced of that as well.