good morning YouTube so in this video I wanted to talk about why I decided to bypass these
ballasts in my old lesson shop light fixtures to do that I used the type B LED tubes and the
type B tubes are designed to operate without one of these magnetic ballasts in there as you
can see there it says rapid start shop light ballasts so these are pretty old but that says
l86 so I think these ballasts were probably manufactured in 1986 so I think I installed
these in the garage probably about that time I think I purchased five of these fixtures
at the local hardware store and then hung them up in the garage and that later became my shop
these things have run for thirty years almost I did have a few of these that I replaced over
the years this one is still okay but some of the ones you could probably see in some of the earlier
videos the label here was badly discolored and these things were starting to run hot
and I think this one or the one next to it was starting to buzz pretty bad these things you know
they do have a lifetime and you can replace them this is twenty to thirty dollars for a new ballast
and you can get either the magnetic type or the electronic type for the same money you can just
get rid of this and put in the LED tubes and not have any of this additional wiring hooked up and I
showed you that in the previous video but there's another reason besides the the maintenance and
cost aspect these things use power they are not free now with fluorescent tubes you need to have
a ballast in there to get the light to start and then limit the current to protect it from being
over driven and that's why we have this ballast and you have all these extra wires and what I
have is I've got my Clif quick test here and I'm going to hook up the white wire and the black
wire to power I've got the wires hooked up so we got power there so here's the power meter here
and right now we're at 119 volts and I'm going to close the cliff quick test now that ballast
is connected it's not running anything it's just connected to power using five Watts 180 milliamps
and this is a really low power factor I think it works out to 0.22 and that ballast will get
fairly hot like I say that's no load and I found this page on natural lighting calm and they talked
about power consumption in ballasts and right down here energy-efficient magnetic ballasts
now I think mine is right before that they said since 1988 they came up with a slightly higher
efficient ballast but down there in the yellow you can see they consume 8 to 10 watts when operating
with the lamp in the circuit and ballast will consume about 4 watts when the lamps are removed
although the ballast is still energized so mine is probably least ten watts when they're plugged in
so that doesn't sound like much but figure these lights are in my shop so if you figure 40 hours a
week 50 weeks a year that's 2,000 hours times 10 that's 20 kilowatt hours and that's about three
dollars worth of electricity per year had to cut six wires to bypass this ballast or take it out
of the system and that saves me three dollars a year and then I've got five of these lights
that's fifteen dollars and it's been almost five years so that's like $75 that's been saved over
a time since I bypassed these ballasts there are LED tubes that you can use without bypassing the
ballasts they call them Direct Fit or type a tubes and then there's supposedly a type
D as in dog tube that'll work with or without a ballast in the system and they cost the same
you might look at that and say oh I can just swap out the two tubes and I'm done yeah but
every year you're burning up three dollars of electricity in this hunk of metal here and it's
not doing anything it's just reducing heat cut those four wires there those two wires there you
save three dollars a year and then you never have to replace this in my experience I think
I replaced a couple of these over roughly thirty years and I would probably be replacing the ones
I didn't replace previously I would probably have to be replacing pretty soon as like I say
one of these was starting to buzz one of the other ones was very badly discolored so it was
overheating now if you have the the later model electronic ballasts it's probably not quite so
bad but why not get rid of this because at some point it's gonna fail and you're gonna have to
get up there and take it out anyway so you might as well take it out now and save three dollars a
year then wait until it fails and if I where to plug the two tubes in here this would say
36 watts and I'd be getting so much light if I left this thing connected I'd be using 46 watts
and I'd have the same amount of light so if you had a choice of lighting your room for 36 watts
or 46 watts and it didn't cost anything I would get rid of this I even have it in your system
just cut the wires and take it out so like with my shop lights before usually every year I was
replacing a tube or two or a ballast I was doing something every year I had to get out the ladder
and climb up and pull out a bulb and change it or change two bulbs whatever the case was
since changing those lights to LEDs five years in the first time I touched those lamps since I
replaced them was when I did the previous video so for five years I've not had to do anything I
haven't had to touch those lights so that that's a really big savings you know that's five times up
the ladder that I didn't have to do and you know number one risking potential injury if you were
to fall off the ladder and I haven't had to have a box of spare tubes over on the side of the shop
I haven't had to have my extra ballast on hand in case I need to change one out so that's been
just a really big benefit that you don't realize getting rid of this ballast just help simplify
the system now the lights are just a metal box with two 4-foot tubes plugged in now that I've
done the conversion I just have to replace tubes as they burn out and so far it's been nearly five
years I think I converted them January 2015 not a single tube failure and I haven't had a ballast
fail because there's no longer any ballasts in the system so they anyway that's my thoughts on
why it's a good idea to bypass these ballasts it's a little more work but you're gonna save
roughly three dollars a year you know if these are lights that are on like forty hours a week
so yeah if you have any questions about that post up in the comment section down below and I'll
put links to the other videos over here on the left-hand side and as always thanks for watching