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Advice please: replacing fluorescent tubes with LEDs.
JMW - 13/9/22 at 08:33 AM

Has anyone here got experience replacing fluorescent tubes with a direct wire LED equivalent in the same fixture?

The LED replacement tubes I just got are single ended, i.e. one end is electrically redundant, the pins there just secure the tube.

What has bamboozled me is that the pins at the business end are marked Live and Neutral.

Since the tube can rotate in the fittings, (called tombstones apparently) surely this means it cannot be guaranteed that I get a Live to Live and Neutral to Neutral connection?

Am I right? Does it matter? what are the consequences of it connecting the wrong way round?

Any help would be appreciated.


tegwin - 13/9/22 at 08:41 AM

In this instance the live and neutral being reversed won't make any difference. I'm assuming its double insulated so there is no earth.

They do tend to be assembled with directional LEDs inside so you will want to mount them so the emitters point in a sensible direction.

Just pop it in and away you go


JMW - 13/9/22 at 09:14 AM

Brilliant, thank you.


gremlin1234 - 13/9/22 at 11:58 AM

with that sort of tube you have to modify the light fitting, and effectively remove the 'ballast'
see type B in this article

https://ledt8bulb.com/how-to-replace-fluorescent-tube-lamps-with-led-tubes


chillis - 13/9/22 at 02:08 PM

I did this with mine, had to re-wire inside the batten to take the transformer out of circuit and convert to only one tombstone powered. Othere than that it was simples and they give much better light at a fraction of the price (90watts instead of 400)


BenB - 13/9/22 at 03:33 PM

I did this at work. The need to removal the ballast depended on whether it was magnetic or electric. A simple way of checking is holding a mobile phone camera up to the light fitting (as if about to take a picture).

https://greenled.co.nz/content/10-how-to-tell-if-you-have-a-magnetic-ballast-or-electronic-ballast

Luckily most of mine didn't need the ballast removing. A few I did just because the old ballasts looked so corroded. The ones with electronic ballasts I usually just opened up spudging open the box and removing the inerds / replacing with straight wires.


David Jenkins - 13/9/22 at 06:42 PM

I must do this mod with the fluorescents in my garage - I'm fed up with tired old tubes and faulty starters...