Shopsmith Forums

We have wired the house with a cell phone booster so we can finally use our phones at home. Good bye Landlines.
And, continuing our journey to modernity, we replaced most of our incandescent bulbs in the house with LEDs. The difference is astounding. So much brighter and much less heat. So, we’ve decided to replace our aging florescent shop lights (4 each 8’ double tube) with LEDs. Our aging eyes need MORE LIGHT. I often cannot find my pencil marks, let alone a knife scribed line.
Customer reviews of the units we're contemplating claim a 40 – 50% increase in light, no buzzing, instant on and a 50%+ decrease in power usage. Some commercial users anticipate that they will pay for themselves in a few years. But, those are 24/7 operations.
The company, a U.S. manufacturer…Hyperikon…claims a 45000 hour life. Likely, more than I’ll ever need.
They don’t use a ballast, so some re wiring will be necessary. Can’t take the fixtures down, so some ladder time is in the offing. Hope the old legs and hips hold out.
As soon as the next chair and ottoman is done, we’ll do the deed. At about that time, Phyl is having surgery to replace a shoulder so, it looks like I’ll be on my own. Well, me and the dogs.

In my workshop I added a roe of T 8 lights last year and was not happy with them so I went along each side and added several flood lights. They helped but still not good enough. Last winter I was working in there and thought there had to be something better. I went to HD and he suggested LED bulbs. I bought 2 and now I have 12 in there and almost need sunglasses. I have 3 strips of 4 and I had to make it so I could I could turn each strip on seperatly. No more troubles lights needed

The color of the light makes a big differecence too. The closer to real daylight you get the better/brighter it seems to get.

I'd be interested in the shop LED stories people have.

Not so many years ago I updated my shop from the T12 old style fixtures to the T8. That produced results that I have been pretty happy with. Not only much brighter then the aging T12 but a lot more efficient as well. I liked the fact that I could get a much whiter light as well. The T8's are all electronic ballast so the flickering is gone, they come on much faster and have no problem with the garage/shop being cold(but still above freezing).

From the LED replacements I have looked at the color balance is more in the 3000K range where I like at least 6000K and they are quite expensive. With 12 fixtures worth to do things add up quickly.

We have pretty much replaced all the household bulbs with LED's now. A few that are on the X10 system yet can not be done as well as a few things with dimmers that don't work well with the LED's. Count wise we are at maybe 95% converted. So far we have been really happy with the bulbs and I can get the very white ones so they are better then the florescent ones we had before on that front alone.

Despite all of this our electrical usage has not changed that much with the LED bulbs. To many things that take more current like the AC and fan, winter heating etc so the small change from florescent 13W to LED at 8W just doesn't show up. And some of the LED's are 11W to get the light level we like.... so like I said I don't see much change on the over all usage.

Ed

Ed, one of my T8 ballasts has began to buzz on startup. That, and the telltale darkening of the tube ends, led me to the new LEDs.
The tubes I'm looking at are 5000K. I don't think they offer a 6000K.
Costs, compared to a good T8 tube is about double. But, not adding new ballasts makes it a bit more palatable.

Gene, I agree with you and would do it in a heart beat. I have a hodge podge of LED and florescent , but I am moving as fast as the budget allows to all LED tube style replacements. No comparison.

This is what I am moving to. They are cheap enough to be throw away units if they go bad and supposedly have a long life span .....
http://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-Pro-S ... n/50352822

Dick, you might want to check these out. The link is for 8 footers, but they have all lengths.
https://www.amazon.com/Hyperikon-equiva ... ed+frosted

Those fixtures are $50 each so to redo my shop would take $600. I'm not sure if I'm going to live long enough to get a pay back on that. The color temperature is just 4000K so that would not meet my requirements of at least 5000K and it would be even better if it were 6000K.

If I'm reading the information right it is a 40W unit. My current fixtures are 32W. While the lumens are a much higher number for the LED unit, in fact about twice mine strings are in rows so I would still need the same number of fixtures. It would be brighter but then it would also use more power.

Perhaps it is time to see what else is out there, if I could get 20W units with single strips with 1800 lumens and get 12 of them for more like $200 it might be worth it if they would have a color balance of at least 5000K. I've seen some where you rewire the fixture and then the bulbs plug in so that should be a lower cost option......

Like I said I'm interested in what others are doing in this area.

Ed

rjent wrote:Gene, I agree with you and would do it in a heart beat. I have a hodge podge of LED and florescent , but I am moving as fast as the budget allows to all LED tube style replacements. No comparison.

This is what I am moving to. They are cheap enough to be throw away units if they go bad and supposedly have a long life span .....
http://www.lowes.com/pd/Utilitech-Pro-S ... n/50352822

Last year I replaced the noisy fluorescent units with LEDs I bought from Costco (FEIT). I was looking at replacing a slew of ballasts so changed direction and just bought the LEDs. The light is generally better, but the instant on and lack of buzz and pop when the weather is cold is great. As the CFLs around the house go out, I am replacing them with LED, though with most of those I use a softer color.
I do have a couple better quality LED shop lights I bought at Lowes which go over the work benches.
The eye strain relief is very noticeable for me . I too like how knife marks in wood now stand out better!

Be well,
Ben

These are more of what I had in mind. Since they use less power with the ballast removed I think that might be the way to go. Not sure how much effort that would be but if I take them down to work on it shouldn't be a big deal. I also see they come in 6000K which I really like.

I think I'll have enough funds next month to buy a set of 4 and give them a try. Re-do the two fixtures that get used the most and then see how I like them and if I want to do the rest. Still a bit expensive but worth the testing anyway.

Since I replaced my lighting only a few years ago I have all newer T8 hardware, the electronic ballasts fix the flicker and other issues I use to have and they come on bright right away, the old heavy ballistic of the T12's had the 60 cycle flicker and the coming on dim in cold weather etc. So while I'm pretty happy already I could still be happier.

Ed

Gene Howe wrote:Dick, you might want to check these out. The link is for 8 footers, but they have all lengths.
https://www.amazon.com/Hyperikon-equiva ... ed+frosted