Replacing 160 fluorescent tubes T8/T10/T12, 4FT, LED Light Tube, Dual-End Powered, Easy Ballast

Replacing 160 fluorescent tubes T8/T10/T12, 4FT, LED Light Tube, Dual-End Powered, Easy Ballast

I've been looking to switch my fluorescent tubes out with led for about a year but held of because of the cost and general PITA of doing the switch.

Anyway I noticed the cost of they LED Light Tubes T8 / T10 / T12,4FT HTlights were reasonable so I went ahead and bought 4 of the 5000k clear tubes and 4 of the 4000k frosted tubes to try out in my house. It was really easy to bypass the ballast on both the single ballast double ballast fixtures I have. On the single ballast fixtures one side had blue and red wires and the other side had yellow wires. I connected the black wire to the red/blue wires and the white wire to the yellow. Followed the same pattern on the dual ballast fixtures... black to red/blue and white to yellow. My understanding is you can go either way but it worked for me on the first fixture so why change?

Now the important part, the light was fantastic, IMO superior to the fluorescent. I originally bought both the 4000K and 5000K to try out around home to see which I preferred before moving on and redoing my office building. I don't think one could go wrong with either in an office setting but I really liked the 5000K.

Next step was to order a 10 pack and try it out in my office (has 2 - 4 tube fixtures) in a 15'X15' space. It is bright, but not harsh at all, very nice light to work all day under. I won't go back to fluorescent again. My employees liked them as well so I'm going to redo the whole office... 160 tubes total of which I've ordered 90 of so far.

Edit:

I've installed 98 tubes so far, not a bad one in the lot. I've also gotten very quick on the changeover, approx 10 min for a one ballast fixture and 20 min for a 2 ballast fixture. Time to order more.

Edit:

I've uploaded a picture of all the old tubes replaced (164) and a picture of one of the offices with the replaced LEDs. Been using them for 4 weeks or so and can't say enough about how much I like them. Not one bad replacement light in the lot.

Now that it is done I would definitely recommend bypassing the ballast whether you need to or not. Not a difficult job plenty of youtube resources on how to do it. I would also recommend using the Wago wire connectors, I used mostly the 6 wire and 4 wire varieties but occasionally used the 2 wire ones when I had to splice a wire to make it longer, much better than the twist wire connectors.

It also should be noted I bought all the tubes at full retail on Amazon, I was not one of the lucky ones to get a discounted product to review.