"badgolferman" wrote in message
...
The 4-foot ceiling mounted flourescent light above the kitchen sink
would stop coming on reliably for a few months. I would leave the
switch on and eventually it would come on some time later. I had
changed the F40 tube before so thought perhaps it might be the ballast
instead. Went to Lowes and bought a replacement LED 4-foot light for
$35 minus coupons and replaced it this weekend.

The first thing I noticed was the old fixture's ballast was too hot to
the touch after turning it off. Not sure if that is normal, but I
didn't like the idea of it burning up and causing a fire.

I suspect the ballast was failing and the bulbs still had more life in them
that you thought given that slow start symptom.

I want to use something that's got easily accessible screw in Edison-type
bulbs with easy to remove diffusers. It seems that you can't do much better
than $2 per 60W screw-in LED but that's a lot of bulbs compared to the cost
of the tube type. The tube-type bulb doesn't eliminate the need for
broad-arm futzing and rotating (which Arthur Itis dislikes), either. Plus,
there's a ballast with every bulb. You can unscrew some in a multiple bulb
fixture and lower the light level and many 60W LED screw-in bulbs are
dimmable. I also don't know enough about the failure mode of tube light
LEDs to be able to tell if the whole bulb craps out or it just loses lumens
as individual LEDs burn out.

The next
thing I noticed is how much brighter the LED light is compared to the
old one. It is supposed to be equivalent to the old one but seems much
brighter. I also bought an LED 40 watt equivalent bulb for my desk
lamp and that one seems the same as the old one.

Those old 40W fluorescents shoplites were probably much brighter when they
new.

I don't like the idea of the ballast heating up so much and wonder exactly
how they are powering the bulbs from the impressive selection of ballasts
out there. Ballasts and bulbs now come in a wide array of types (especially
the energy-saving ones) and many combinations are incompatible. I am not as
keen as I once was with using LED tubes in shoplights because of your
reports and others. I wouldn't be surprised if you have ballast that's
failing and about to fail completely. I suspect you're going to find out
soon, especially if it's getting so hot that you can smell melting plastic.
Soon follows the escape of the magic smoke and if you're lucky, it's
accompanied by a loud pop. That's how one died. Another began putting out
a 120kHz RF signal on the powerline that completely obliterated the X10 RF
signals I use for home automation. Had to buy a Volpmeter to diagnose that
very gnarly problem. Turned out the shoplight was plugged into an outlet
that was connected to the circuit panel with just 10' of cable. From there
the RFI went to the panel coupler and repeater and shut things down.

Some of the new LED bulbs I've purchased appear to effect the X-10 signal
negatively but it's not so bad that it's unliveable. CFL's were the same
way when the first hit the market and hopefully LED makers will follow suit
and build them not to emit RFI in the X10 band or worse, filter out the X10
signal complete. The savings is worth having to install some filters or
even reject some bulbs.

For now I am slowing down my switchover until all my CFLs die far short of
their claimed lifespan. (-:

--
Bobby G.