Need Advice from Licensed Electrician

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TerryMiller

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We are in the process of helping our youngest son with fixing up a house for him to move into. In the process of many things being done, we are looking at replacing fluorescent light bulbs with LED ones. (That is going on with all the electrical lights.)

Not being an electrician but having some experience with wiring and such, I've been studying articles and YouTube videos for guidance. In the videos, I've seen wiring done in two different ways. One way, the guy cuts all the wires at one end of the light fixture and wires in a particular way at the other end after removing the ballast. In the other video, the guy wires one set of wires at one end and the other set of wires at the other end after removing the ballast.

Question: Would I be right in presuming that the guy that is wiring both ends is working with double ended bulbs and the other guy is working with single ended bulbs?

In looking at our fixture(s), we have found that our fixture evidently has non-shunted tombstones (funny reference when working with electricity).

Beyond the one question above, is there any other advice that we could get from someone that knows this stuff?

Thanks in advance for any help given.
 

KOPBET

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Not having seen the videos in question, from what you say it sounds like what you said about the single-end and double-end lamps is correct. Single-end lamps have hot and neutral on one end only. Double-end lamps have neutral and hot on opposite ends. I would use the single-end lamps myself and wire accordingly. Use only the non-shunted tombstones.

Disclaimer: I am not an electrician. This is my opinion only and not professional advise.
 
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Shoot Summ

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I've converted all of my shop 8' fluorescents to LED. It was as simple as turning off the power, cutting all of the wires and removing the ballast, and following the wiring instructions from the LED provider for the install.
 

tyromeo55

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Without an industry standard the manufacturers produced the lamps however they pleased. Convert them as needed for the lamps you purchase being mindful of shunted tombstones
 

rickm

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We are in the process of helping our youngest son with fixing up a house for him to move into. In the process of many things being done, we are looking at replacing fluorescent light bulbs with LED ones. (That is going on with all the electrical lights.)

Not being an electrician but having some experience with wiring and such, I've been studying articles and YouTube videos for guidance. In the videos, I've seen wiring done in two different ways. One way, the guy cuts all the wires at one end of the light fixture and wires in a particular way at the other end after removing the ballast. In the other video, the guy wires one set of wires at one end and the other set of wires at the other end after removing the ballast.

Question: Would I be right in presuming that the guy that is wiring both ends is working with double ended bulbs and the other guy is working with single ended bulbs?

In looking at our fixture(s), we have found that our fixture evidently has non-shunted tombstones (funny reference when working with electricity).

Beyond the one question above, is there any other advice that we could get from someone that knows this stuff?

Thanks in advance for any help given.
Terry there is really 3 ways to wire them and all is correct and you can use the same bulbs as long as the have the built in starters.
I got all of mine at Locke's Supply and they were DirectDrive and they came with a wiring diagram with each bulb but check before leaving store cause the last i got they just throwed the diagram in the box
 

bulbboy

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There are three ways to wire the fixture and in every box of LED’s it will give you wiring diagrams for the way that brand needs to be wired
 

-Pjackso

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Replace the entire fixture. The cost difference is minimal.
If you account for the time required to modify/remove the old ballast, you could have already replaced the entire fixture.

If you're hard set not to replace the fixture, look for different LED replacement bulbs. Some replacement LEB bulbs do not require ballast removal. I think I got mine at Lowes.
 

TerryMiller

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Not having seen the videos in question, from what you say it sounds like what you said about the single-end and double-end lamps is correct. Single-end lamps have hot and neutral on one end only. Double-end lamps have neutral and hot on opposite ends. I would use the single-end lamps myself and wire accordingly. Use only the non-shunted tombstones.

Disclaimer: I am not an electrician. This is my opinion only and not professional advise.

In answer to KOPBET's comment, here is the first video that I watched where the guy just wires to one end. While he didn't say anything about the types of tombstones, he did happen to turn one of them in the early part of the film to where I could see that it was a non-shunted one. EDIT: I began the thought of single ended bulbs vs double ended bulbs when the guy in this video pointed out to use the one end at the wired end.



The second video was produced by a "lighting company." He also says nothing about whether the tombstone is shunted or not, and in this one, one cannot see one of the tombstones to determine what it was.



After watching the two videos, I ran across this article, which is one a Home Depot webpage. The description in this article seems to match what the guy in the first video did.

LED Retrofitting

We considered replacing the entire fixtures, but our son wants to be sure he has fixtures where he can replace the bulbs. All we could find at Home Depot or Lowes were fixtures that didn't seem to have replaceable bulbs. Also, these are on a pretty high ceiling and inside a wooden structure, thus since the old man here hates working over his head for very long, I think rewiring will be quicker and easier than trying to hold a fixture overhead and attaching it to the ceiling. Once we are comfortable with what we are doing, we will probably order bulbs online since we also want to have bulbs with a certain Kelvin color rating. However, before doing that, I'll follow rickm's advice and check out Locke Supply. I'll probably do that tomorrow.

Otherwise, thanks again for all replies.
 
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