LED Light Fixtures?

[PbHurler]

I've recently moved. The new house has (3) porcelain fixtures in the garage which, I want to replace for better lighting (for casting) and other things.

At my last home, I replaced the ballasts in the fluorescent fixtures with 0 degree ballasts and they were fine. The garage door was insulated, and a double steel configuration.

My new home as insulated garage doors, but they are not double steel, and the insulation is minimal at best.

Are the LED fixtures temperature sensitive, and is this something I should consider when replacing the porcelains?

[44man]

I was given 2 LED shop lights to replace florescent lights. They are amazing. How they make 4' tubes like that confuses me. Cold does not hurt at all. They need no warm up and pop right on. Go for it.

[Three44s]

Don't go with the old florescent fixtures and change over to conversion LED tubes without some serious consideration.

They are better than Fl. tubes but not nearly as good as a dedicated LED fixture. However the differences can be subtle.

A tube by it's nature has light emenating 360 degrees of it's cross section. Part of the higher efficiency of LED dedicated fixtures is that the light is all going in the right direction .... towards the work.

A florescent tube will and a LED conversion tube may light all the way around and have to rely on reflection off the painted surface above the bulb and hope it gets back to the work. There are florescent to LED tube conversions that light in one direction. There are also some important considerations on how the LED tube in a florescent fixture is ballasted.

We put in a 5,400 lumen LED 4 foot fixture in place of a 4 foot two tube florescent fixture in our utility room and you dang near need sunglasses when you first turn it on! It's GREAT! It was not cheap ...... I think about 13 months ago my wife gave about $130 for it ....... worth it ...... especially with 60 year old eyes!!

So we just put the same fixtures ...... a pair in our uninsulated garage and it's runs great ........ lights up instantly with the garage temperature in the upper 20's (F)

We have LED substitute bulbs outdoors where ever we can place them and they all light up right now in cold weather ........ at least in our Central WA winters anyway!

There are some pretty inexpensive "shop lights" around in LED and you get into differences on how they are driven. If you want dimming capability you want to proceed cautiously because I suspect the lower the price, the less flexible they are.

Three 44s

[DCM]

IME LEDs work fine in the cold.
Personally I would rather install the direct wire non ballast 4 foot tubes at $8-9 a piece than buy a pricey LED fixture that I will likely not be able to get parts for or service in the near future.
I have installed all of these types of LED tubes in my unheated Wisconsin garage. I ordered the 5000K(white color temperature that is very close to daylight) high lumen lamps and ended up putting only one in each 2 lamp fixture as they are that bright.
The sources I have used for these lamps are Amazon.com and https://www.1000bulbs.com/
These retrofit tubes do not emit light in a 360 degree fashion like the florescent lamps they replace which is likely why they appear brighter than the floro tubes they replace.
You also mention that you have 3 existing porcelain lampholders currently, you may want to try high wattage daylight screw in lamps in those, Cree 100 watt equivalent from home depot maybe. They won't spread the light around like the 4 footers but I bet it would be a quick marked improvement. Just my .02

[DLCTEX]

I installed a 4' LED fixture last week that would hurt your eyes to look at it, cost $150. Life expectancy is 30,00 hrs. I regularly replace 4' fluorescent bulbs with Led bulbs that are wired directly to 120V, bypassing the ballast. I haven't had one go bad in the 2 1/2 years I have been using them. I do electric maintainence for 8 grocery stores and a car dealership as well as residential, so I do a lot of these. About 10% of the electricity consumed, little heat produced, and instant start even in freezers. Yes, I like them.

[dannyd]

LED's work great changed both my reloading lights to them.

[MaryB]

I have 4200 lumen led hanging shop lights in the garage, 4 of them light it up like you are outside in bright sun. My garage is 24x30 with a 10 foot ceiling so fairly big.

[PbHurler]

Thank you all for the information. It looks like I'm going to go shopping.

[corbinace]

I just today purchased three LED double tube fixtures from Costco. Not installed yet, but they were only $20 after a ten dollar rebate. They are on that deal until the 24th. I may get them up tomorrow and can report back if I do.

The fixture is very flimsy and is equipped with a five foot power cord and pull switch to turn on and off.

[BUCKEYE BANDIT]

Bought the same ones at Menards in that price range,11% rebate.Waiting for them to go on sale again,put two in the loading room,over a year ago and love them.Going to replace ALL the four footers in the shop as funds permit.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I don't have any experience with the 4 foot fixtures...
BUT, 2 or 3 years ago, I ordered some LED light bulbs (the standard screw-in kind) from Hong Kong via "deal-extreme", and they are temperature sensitive, just like the florescent bulbs...maybe even worst, as they run cool and never really warm up. ALso, they emit a fair amount of RF and make listening to AM radio impossible.

Fast forward to this year, I bought some sylvannia LED light bulbs (60watt equivalent, I think they are 800 lumins) to replace the Hong Kong junk. I can report the sylvannia ones are NOT temperature sensitive, checked them last night, it was 5 below zero. Also, no noticeable RF on the AM radio.

I just thought I'd share my experience.

[Lloyd Smale]

It gets cold here. Very cold. Its right at zero now and the screw in I put on my front porch comes on just fine. The florescent screw in bulb in it before wouldn't come close to working in these kinds of temps.

[jcwit]

LOL, I also have sylvannia screw in bulbs, package says "Made in China". Junk????????????

[NSB]

To piggyback on JonB's comment about radio interference: If you have a garage door opener and if you put an LED bulb(s) in it you will probably have problems with the door opener. The remote opener operates within a frequency range of the LED lights and you'll find you'll be having trouble closing the door after you pull out if the light's still on. Fix? Use an incandescent bulb(s) in the door opener. If you have other LED lights in the garage and they're on while you're opening or closing the door with the remote you may also have problems. Just telling you this so you don't go through what I did. OverHead Door wasn't even aware of this for a while.

[cleonard]

LOL, I also have sylvannia screw in bulbs, package says "Made in China". Junk????????????
I think that most LED bulbs will be made in China or some other low wage country. Just because it's from China does not make it worthless. Most of the cheap no name stuff is junk, but most name brands that you recognize will be decent quality.

LED is the way to go. I've replaced almost all of the lights in my home with them and they are so much better than the CFL bulbs. I'm replacing my garage florescent fixtures as they fail. Hope to be 100% LED soon.

Sent from my ASUS_Z00TD using Tapatalk

[Bob in St. Louis]

I installed a 4' LED fixture last week that would hurt your eyes to look at it, cost $150. Life expectancy is 30,00 hrs. I regularly replace 4' fluorescent bulbs with Led bulbs that are wired directly to 120V, bypassing the ballast. I haven't had one go bad in the 2 1/2 years I have been using them. I do electric maintainence for 8 grocery stores and a car dealership as well as residential, so I do a lot of these. About 10% of the electricity consumed, little heat produced, and instant start even in freezers. Yes, I like them.
Agreed. ^^^^
I volunteered to convert a few hundred florescent light fixtures (four bulb, four foot) into LED at Church. I'm still in the process, as I've only done a few dozen so far. I'm eliminating the ballast, re-wiring, and installing TWO bulbs in each fixture as opposed to four. It's plenty bright enough.
Now... It's in the basement/fellowship hall/cafeteria of the Church, so it gets cold down there, but nowhere near ambient outside temps, so I can't speak of that.
Aside from that, I wholeheartedly support the use of them. The bulbs we're getting were $15 a piece. With the money saved in utility bills, and long life, they'll pay for themselves soon enough.

[Down South]

I've been in the process of swapping all my lighting over to LED's, even my 12V DC lights in my RV. I'm finished in the RV. I have better light and I've only had to replace one light in about a year out of about 30 different lights. It had a bad card. Anyway I was replacing a standard bulb at least once a week out of the mix. Another good thing, little heat compared to regular bulbs.

I installed 120V AC 4 Ft shop lights in my boat house, Wow, talk about a lot of light.
I've got 5 more LED shop lights in the back of my SUV now to replace my recessed counter lighting in my kitchen.

It doesn't get that cold at my house and my boat house LED lights come right on at full brightness in near freezing weather.

On edit: I didn't know conversion of standard 4 Ft 2-tube fixtures was that simple or I would have done that. But, I got the 4 Ft LED 2-tube shop lights on sale at Costco for $20. Plus, they are linkable up to 4 fixtures which was a plus.

[jonp]

Ive switched all of my lights in my house and garage to LED's since the price came down and they now have soft white throwing out all but one CFL in the process and thats because of the price of a 100 watt LED. It has lessened the load on my 100amp box quite a bit and my electric bill went down some. I've read quite a bit on them and they don't seem to have a lower limit that they are rated to as they work differently from CFL's and Incandescent bulbs in that they produce no heat when on

In my house up north I first tried out CF curly que bulbs. Even though they had a lower temperature limit (+10 - +20) they were rated to I tested them in outside fixtures and in the dead of a Vermont winter at -30 they still worked fine. Took longer to warm up but no problems that I saw.

[dead dog]

How do LED's hold up to vibration? I can't get any bulbs to last in the laundry room,tried every kind of screw in types.

[Plate plinker]

I have also been switching over since the prices are dropping. So far so good. Now a crappy power company wants to raise the rates because they are getting less revenue. Lol. Funny because they push for energy savings then when they get them they whine.

[Bob in St. Louis]

How do LED's hold up to vibration? I can't get any bulbs to last in the laundry room,tried every kind of screw in types.
The 4' units are encased on a plastic housing "tube" that is semi-flexible. Since there is no glass and no element, in my layman opinion, I'd say they are darn near vibration resistant. maybe vibration "proof", as there's nothing to shake apart and break.

[Handloader109]

I put in three 4 ft troffers in my basement where there was poor lighting and I was adding an office area. With them on, there is no need for my other lighting. 4500 lumen from home depot.

[44man]

My florescent lights were wired direct and I did not want to go that way. I put an outlet up high to plug in the light. The light had a short wire.

[bullet maker 57]

Just installed 7 in my basement shop. Wow, lots of light! Changed out half of the rest of the house so far.