Home Improvement Today?

I’m converting 20+ 4 bulb enclosures to direct wire LED, have done 4 so far. Hence, I have a plethora of working ballasts but not sure on fitment. Happy to send you some if that helps but I wouldn’t put labor into old tech.

if you want to be lazy you can just splice in the yellow output of the working ballast to non functional bulbs using wire nuts and cut / cap / remove the bad ballast. I’m sure that’s against some code but it should get you full light with minimal effort.

It’s a fair bit of work to convert each one but also satisfying. And it’ll be a mild pain to carefully take all the florescent bulbs to the recycling location. Also, finding CRI numbers on direct wire LED tubes is difficult. Color choices seem minimal as well, I went with 5000k even though I’d rather have 3000 just to keep costs reasonable for now.

I have some of the tombstones with pigtails and some without and some high voltage white and black wire. Wago’s are helpful for solid to stranded when using the pigtails.

It’s a rabbit hole…

 

The Feit shop lights from Costco work great if you have an outlet for them.

 

I have two of them, too. Bought one of these to power them.

 

i recommend against ballast-compatible led bulbs mostly due to the multiple conversions happening, as well as still relying on the ballast for light output.

part of the idea with converting to led is energy efficiency and longevity. financially, if they don't last, or aren't more energy efficient, there's pretty much no benefit other than bragging rights and increased cold-weather performance.

led plug-in bulbs rely on the ballast to convert incoming power to high-voltage, low current, frequency-dependent waves to excite the fluorescent compound. and then the led bulbs need to convert that high voltage, low current, frequency driven output, to a rectified dc low voltage signal that the led's can properly utilize.

it's a lot of conversion and duplication of processes which easily negates any efficiency gains, as well as adding an additional failure mode in the ballasts that's overall unnecessary, and all that to save a little extra physical work and $2/set of bulbs--though different variations can likely be had for cheaper, this is just lowes-specific.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE/5013821001

just be warned, there's 2 different styles of direct-wire led bulb.
1. uses one side as the hot input, and the other side as the neutral input-- these are straight forward to convert to, and normally require almost no extra parts other than a few wire nuts.
2. uses only one side for hot/neutral. the other side is a 'dummy' end. these are just as capable, but require 'non-shunted tombstones'(each tab has a separate electrical connection, default t8 tombstones are shunted, where all the contacts are connected together within each tombstone) to be able to be wired correctly. most fixtures don't come with these connections, which means there would be additional cost in the conversion process.

i would suggest considering contacting your local electrical supply house--with the prevalence of led, many stock the bulbs and parts, and might be able to beat standard hardware store pricing. i've done a lot of deals with city electric supply, they're normally worth contacting if you've got one local.

 

^^ Good to know. My bulbs were non shunted and the majority of the cost. I do like the wiring though, all hot enters from the center and wagos do the split from one wire to 4. Then the ends are dummies. Since I have two pairs of 4’ end to end, this setup works pretty well and I think cleans up the wiring. But it’s a bit of labor, more than I expected.

@soundman98 any idea on bulb availability between the two styles? I guess I didn’t research that one enough.

 

i really don't. i started changing my own lighting a few years ago, and prefer to keep to lithonia 8ft led fixtures
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lithoni...-4000K-MNSL-L96-2LL-MVOLT-40K-80CRI/300263606

i always waited for them to go on sale for $60-75. all my personal needs i was either starting fresh or not happy with the layout of the lighting that existed, so i haven't had a need to install retrofit kits.

at work, there were many customers that wanted to retrofit the led bulbs, so the boss sourced bulbs from city electric supply. i have no idea of the cost or availability, only that at different times we'd get the two different types of bulbs based on what they had (many during covid), and some jobs were more complex due to having to alter the 'tombstones' as well as gutting the ballasts.

 

I ended up with these for my garage. They included non-shunted tombstones for my convenience

https://www.homedepot.com/p/toggled...Tube-Light-Bulb-2-Pack-D416-40321-2/308086232

 

Check https://www.superbrightleds.com/ for bulbs. They probably have some styles/models not available in the home centers. You might find something you like better.

I have 8' 2-bulb fixtures in my garage, and replaced the bulbs and ballasts with direct wire LEDs. Simple wiring change, much more light.

 

On today's episode of Let's Set a House on Fire! we find out why an outlet all of a sudden stops working!

Jokes aside, I had an outlet that all of a sudden didn't work. I knew there was a junction box above the ceiling tiles.

Welp, there we go. Wire's were never twisted together and the neutral stopped coming in contact with the others. Also that ground popped out just moving the wires.



New junction box and twisted wires together before nutting.



Bonus: I replaced both outlets on that circuit with proper 20 amp plugs instead of the $0.99 cheapo's. Found this lovely wiring job...



So now I got to go through all the junction points the guy who installed new ceiling tile and lights in the basement. Also found out that the lights are wired with 14ga wire connected to a 20 amp circuit. So much crap to fix...

 

And, the task is never done with one trip to the home store. I usually plan on at least 4 trips

1. First trip to get everything I need. I do not want to make another trip
2. Second trip to get the stuff I forgot or got the wrong size.
3. Third trip to fucking never go back again!
4. Fourth trip to return all the stuff I bought and didn't need.

 

This is why I started saving all the stuff I need to return, until I’m starting another project. Then I can combine #4 with #1 on the next project. Saving 1 trip

 

Our cat decided to do some home improvement sometime in the night. He decided the water bowl should be moved and the water dumped out.

 

So looking for advice, mostly wanting a retro fit kit if anyone knows of something easy. There used to be carpet here. I’m at a loss of how to do the edges on the stairs as the white board doesn’t go higher than the stairs.

I’m going to remove the handrails, but not until i have a plan in place for safety.




The top part above the stairs I was thinking just run the floor all the way to the edge as it sticks up above the subfloor. Of course filling the holes and leveling it out first.

 

what floor covering is planned to go onto the stair treads? thickness?

 

Looks like you've got LVP in that last picture. Does your LVP manufacturer have bull nose pieces? I can get you a picture of what I did- but basically, bull nose with a piece of lvp with the backing foam removed glued to the tread. I mitered the bull nose to wrap around the exposed edge of the tread. Looks nice. It was a PITA to do, but as I was installing my own flooring, I could take the time to do it. For the risers, I went with 1/8" ply primed and painted to match the base boards, glued and brad nailed in place (before the treads).

My railing (currently in the build process) only interfaces with the flooring on the vertical posts, I don't have those intermediate spindles running into each tread.

 

The floor I’ve been using is Mohawk LVP from Costco when it went on sale for $35 a box. My stairs treads don’t have to match the floor, but I’d like it to at least compliment.

I see videos of people doing LVP on stairs, but it’s always with a wall on both sides, my biggest issue isn’t the bull nose or the riser, it’s that exposed edge in the first pic.

Yes I bought the bull nose for the LVP. I would like a photo of what you did, but I need examples of that exposed side like in the first pic. I’m scratching my head on that one.

 

Check this out

 

Think I found what I need, Google “left return stair tread”

 

I am not saying it's the right way to do it, and I would change the way I did things slightly, but overall it worked out, and it looks much better than other LVP stair installs I've seen.

The LVP is NexxaCore, Everest, although I think this color is already out of production.

Here are some detail photos:

Doing these miters can be a pain if you haven't done something like that before. Just make sure you cut long and walk the cuts into the dimension you need. The miters were cut, taped together upside-down on the flat surface, and then I used Medium CA glue to glue them together.

You can see a small gap between the tread filler (this was just an LVP plank with the foam backer removed), and riser, I just caulked that when done. My bull nose didn't lock into the normal lvp locking system, but it did have a groove for the tongue, so I glued them with loctite clear super grip or something along those lines.

Once the whole tread was assembled and glued together I spread loctite construction adhesive on the back with a small notched spreader, put the treads in place, and set whatever I could find for weight on them. 5 gallon water bottles, weights, 60lbs bags of concrete, etc...



I glued every other stair as I was still using them during this time. Let them cure for a few hours before doing the next set.

Lets just say, I hope I am not the person who has to pull those off in the future.

Now for the top edge- I used the bull nose again, and just carried it around:


I very carefully cut the LVP, and in some cases had to create tongues with a router to fit into the bull nose.



And this is currently how the handrail is going:


Just gotta tack weld those bottom pieces in, and then I'll take the whole section to the garage to finish weld and install the remaining horizontal bits.