all right i'm going in
i've got the super nips now question here do i cut the pink other gray
just gotta ask yourself one question are you feeling lucky
i don't know gary but this this this could be the last this could be our last Phillips lighting project we
ever do this could be my last ballast disposal ever right i'm gonna go for the pink good luck
it's really not that difficult it felt like i jumped into a bond film from 1980s however
in a previous video we looked at the philips core pro led tubes from signify and we proved how with
minimal intervention you could save tons of money and we'll leave a link to that video
in the above our heads yeah now we on that video we got a three month payback just by
simply changing an existing fluorescent tube for the led tube now that
that is an amazing saving however we've got a few more tips today how you can save a bit more
money in terms of buying the tube itself and improve the reliability of the installation so
one of the options in there is to actually directly power the tube at the mains end cap
and remove the control gear in the body of the fitting well that where it becomes a little bit
complicated that's where we started the scene didn't we we're inside of the fitting and we're
wondering which of the conductors or wires we're going to cut in order to make that connection yeah
now there's two reasons you might want to do that the first one is in our video we use the universal
led tube right which works with conventional gear and magnetic gear great but actually if you go for
this version with a blue end cap that just works with magnetic gear or why direct the end cap you
can save a bit of money okay so there's a little bit of a saving now of course when i was in that
shop i went for the universal one i didn't want any risks and popped them in they worked straight
away we saved the energy straight away but if i was to go into say those electronic versions
and take out the gear which is even simpler in the process we're going to see during this video
i can save a few pounds on the old tubes yeah you certainly can okay so you do need
to take the electronic gear out of circuit to do that and there is yeah normally on an
electronic ballast there's only four wires two go to either end cap just a case of identifying them
and you're done so let's have a look at how easy it is to convert the magnetic version
to direct mains operation before we start the conversion let's just have a look at the anatomy
of a magnetic base fluorescent fitting so we've got a power factor correction capacitor in there
we're going to remove that because our neutral connection goes through it down here we've got the
magnetic ballast we don't need that and we don't need the starter so let's just retrace our wiring
uh what we want to do is power up one end so we've got this pink wire that goes to the end cap direct
from the um from the starter so i'm going to use that wire and we're going to use the neutral wire
that comes straight from the terminal block that's here but that's going to need to be joined isn't
it so you're going to pull it out of the capacitor and join them there yeah so i mean easy because
these are grab wire terminals I'm just going to snip first off there okay so they're out the way
so we're going to join those studios is that the wago 221 again it is, so i'll just use that one
that's the in-line version i'm going to use here so that'll bring the neutral from the connector
block down to the end cap and we're only powering one end of the fitting aren't we so the fitting is
polaritized isn't the tube yeah so it only has uh yeah you only power up one end that's a room with
those so that's the neutral bra from the connector that we're used to connecting our cables into all
the way to the end cap yeah and now you're going to play around with the pink one yes yeah those
were two two ones are great for that by the way so dead easy i've chopped those wires off there
um so now i'm going to take out the existing line connection okay yeah so they're coming out
can't really move the connector because obviously it's connected to the body of the fitting for the
protective conductor so our cpc will connect an earth the exposed conductive part which
is the light fitting itself the metal part of it and you're re-rooting this pink one as in
because it comes down to here and becomes our effectively our switching line conductor as well
anything you can do with that pink one you leave it just in there pink or sure we can
yeah the challenge here obviously you're inside of fitting so normally different regulations yeah
BS EN60598 but people will say we've just had a wiring regulation update and
functional earth are now known as pink colored okay so this is pink so we can
just put pop a bit of brown sleeving on there to sort of indicate that we're using it as a
switching line conductor so it goes onto a little brown sleeve at the termination point
are you telling me that's going to be pretty much it yeah i'm just going to obviously this wiring is
a little bit old sort of tricky to strip but it's a simple process then isn't it so we go mains only
pop that into there make our connections off and is that it yeah i'm just going to
tidy up the wire cut back the existing wiring so again i'll just remove that pink one there
okay yeah take a few bits out yeah so now if we look at our terminal so i've got our line and neutral
in you can see that the the pink that is now the uh the line conducted under the end cap and now
our neutral layer we've taken it and joined it where our power factor correction capacitor was
and that's direct to the end cap as well now now the debate there with what we've just done do you
leave the magnetic ballast actually in the body of the fitting okay there's obviously no risk from
doing that it's not going to do anything but heavy that gary isn't it oh imagine if i was taking out
quite a lot of these uh obviously that's a bit of iron you know we know that there's a little bit
of copper as well i'd be really interested in your feedback in the comments below if
maybe it's worth keeping these taking them down to our local recycling center and having a transfer
to the bank account it could be and there's also a small amount of copper cable in there as
well and we know the price of copper is in there that could uh make a little bit of a difference
to the bank balance on a big retrofit project but the other thing we thought we'd have a look
at actually does taking that out of circuit save any energy on the project so we just had a little
look at that so let's just have a quick look at how leaving the magnetic ballast in series with
the lamp as you'd find it in the fitting before you've altered it makes the power consumption
so just close our quick test there and we'll see we're getting about 20 watts
so let's now just disconnect the lamp and remove the ballast from the circuit
so that's why i like these uh these little wagon connectors because you can do this pretty quickly
so i'm just taking the uh that's the ballast gun so you're expecting this um wattage to
drop and therefore save a little bit more energy drop a little bit but you can remember a ballast
is just a lump of iron with some copper winged around it so it's purely resistive
uh losses in there that we're looking for so now we've taken the ballast out repower
so we can see they're taking the magnetic ballast out we've lost about half a watt
well i don't know is that reassuring there didn't seem a lot of energy difference between the two
but you've got your old uh casio iphone out there it's half a watt so if you think across the 30
000 hour life of this tube you know about an hour 25 pence a kilowatt that's about three pounds 75.
okay yeah okay it's not going to be every little helps doesn't it with your money saving martin yes
okay we've got this we could perhaps do something with it and there's another three pound say over
the life of finn yeah but it's more likely gonna do that with electronic ballasts because they
are more likely to fail lots of components in there they may have already had a hard life
during the installation and be at that end of that life so taking the electronic ballast out
here you'd have to do it to use uh this em version of the tube and the the direct domains version um
but you could also improve the reliability of the obviously installation post retrofit and so that's
probably a great option to look at you could also do that with the universal option as well and they
do have slightly higher light outputs as well so again i'll put a link in the description for
all of the versions and some link to some prices where you can have a look at to
obviously do your own paybacks but it's certainly not a difficult process and there is one other
thing to consider obviously with the tube that you put it in the mains end it's identified on
the end of the tube and that's the end of the threatened light fin that you've energized with
this conversion process we also included in our other video of whether we can or can't use a pack
maybe that's been changed to an emergency fit in one of these fluorescent light fins and then we
want to do a retrofit you've got some updates for us haven't you yeah so speaking of signify
on the data sheet and on the product says not for use with emergency conversions however we
have found out if you actually speak to signify if you've got a big project where you do need
to convert emergency existing fluorescent fittings to led tubes they do have some solutions we just
have to talk about them and i'll again i'll put a link below where you can get in touch
with signify that's good to know and across the two videos we've produced looking at the philips
core pro led tube from signify i think we've demonstrated in no time whatsoever
with little intervention that you can save a lot of money but can we save any extra money
it's all down to your feedback and how much these are worth we're always interested
in your comments and leave them below and we'll try and get back to as many as we can