I recently did a mini review of an LED light fixture from Home Depot. The way it is marketed really upset me to the point I would never buy it. Here is that thread: Mini review of an LED ceiling light fixture, no bulb required
So I figured I would convert an old Florescent fixture to LED.
First a little back story on the fixture. Just as the fixture in the above thread was subsidized, so was this one. About 15 years ago, The State of Connecticut and United Illuminating teamed up with Lights of America to promote what was back then more economical lighting. On special weekends at various Malls, tents would be set up and florescent fixtures, lamps and CFLs would be sold to the public at subsidized prices. Let me tell you, I bought a lot of them, as they were only $5 each. Nice desk lamps, florescent torchiere and this florescent fixture. Here is a pic of the box.
AS I said I bought a lot of them, I knew then as we all know now that the weak point of fixtures like these are the ballasts and the bulbs. Both are expensive. At the time I figured I was buying what ever number of fixtures that I would eventually use and the rest were just for spare parts. Each bulb or ballast is worth aleast $20 each if I had to buy one.
Made in the USA! you don’t see that very often anymore. Notice it claims to have a 7 year bulb, more like 2 from my experience.
This light IS UL listed.
Our home was built in 1937 and is still pretty much original. Any changes I do with the light fixtures, I try to keep with the retro style and actually box up the original fixtures and put them in the attic. I have installed 3 of these fixtures in the house and over the years I have raided all the others that I had in stock for ballasts and bulbs. Yesterday the bulb went out on one of the 3 and I had to do something. I wasn’t about to pay full price for a new bulb, I thought let’s convert to LED
No bulb in this box, I have already taken it for a replacement!
New fixture and ballast and shade, but no bulb
Old fixture with blown bulb
Fixture stripped of bulb and ballast.
What it is being replaced with.
I got the dual socket from an old bath light fixture.
Only took a couple of minutes to do this
The Cree fits also, I didn’t think it would. But actually it sits too close to the globe and messes with the diffusion. The flat Philips are better.
The fixture back in place, pure retro!
The diffusion is not perfect, but not so bad that anyone other than one of us would notice.
I will do the other fixture in this room when that florescent bulb goes, could be any day now.
Yeah, those LOA bulbs and fixtures were the worst EVER. There was no motivation to build quality as the buyers were buying on price.
I know a lot of people that saw this mod thought it so simple as to be even trivial, so why even post it?
I did because on this site there are all kinds of skill levels and this is one that would be good for someone of limited skills or time. Besides, I WANTED to keep that fixture going, I like it. Also I forgot to point that modding it with round 2 of the subsidies, it just begged to be done. Using the current subsidy on the LEDs to improve round 1 of the subsidy on the original florescent fixture.
That 3rd fixture is in my electronics workshop and it never emitted enough light. Even though the bulb is still good I am going to mod it with a total of 4 of these Philips bulbs. That will give me 3200 lumen, that should be enough.
This time the sockets are coming from this fixture that I got for free from a used home parts store. The original fixture is so ugly and dated that they don’t sell, so they gave them away. In fact I got several, knowing that someday I could use the parts. That day has arrived.
I had already used the other 4 sockets in a work light I make from an old floor lamp.
Each socket just clips into 2 holes
This is how I will mount them, If I angle each bracket slightly, I think I can get them to fit.
Now it’s off to HD for 4 more bulbs.
Now look what you’ve done! I gotta go get me some of those flat LED light bulbs now and mod some lights! I’ve got some small incan dome fixtures that only have one bulb in them. Now, I can add a second (and maybe a third) socket and put more bulbs in them to get more light! Sweet!
edit: Hey wait, can we mod those bulbs with brighter LED’s to get even MORE light? Hmmm…
Good job. A while back we were looking for flat single-sided LED bulbs and that didn’t generate much in the way of help. We also recently got one of the flat Phillips as a test, and quite like it. But they’re about $9 each here for only 60w, so we could use a deal on those!
5 or 6 years ago I bought 11 of these fixtures
They were selling them cheap because they didn’t sell, I presume because of the proprietary CFL. Who would want that?
I bought them to mod to an ordinary E27 base. They are decent fixtures with glass globes and as I said they were cheap.
$1.50
I wish there were more one-sided 110v illuminators for ceiling mounting. I find them like computer screens, a sheet of acrylic with LEDs around the edge pointing into it.
But duh, why not point them down into a diffuser? Maybe that would make the whole thing too thick to go flat against a ceiling.
Those mods aren’t very efficient though. A lot of light from those flat bulbs is wasted because it faces upward. Especially with that 4 bulb solution (lol that’s an interesting one).
Those flat ceiling lights don’t mount against the ceiling. You cut a hole in the ceiling and put them in there. The springy clips on the sides holds the fixture up into the ceiling.
I know what you are saying, but it is no less efficient than the original florescent that it replaced. Or most any other ceiling light fixture for that matter. Some light fixtures use a reflective foil and this fixture happens to have a nickel finish. Not quite as good as the foil but some light is reflected.
BTW, right now in Connecticut, Home Depot is sell a 3 pack of those flat bulbs for $4.97
And Lowes is selling 40W equivalent Osram-Sylvania bulbs for $1.98
The 60W Equivalent are a little more, $2.98
No wonder Cree has recently decided to EXIT the bulb making business, or at least useing their own Cree emitters in the ones they sell
One of my clients is in the rental business and he buys all manner of stuff only because the initial price is cheap, so I have installed quite a few of these and other oddly lamped fixtures in his houses. I tried to educate him regards this silliness but he doesn’t want to listen. When they quit, his tenants take the light apart, see the odd bulbs, then promptly lose the removed parts so on their moving out my client has to pay for another fixture and it’s installation cost. And if the odd bulbs are bad and the fixture intact he installs a new fixture anyway because he doesn’t want to pay for the odd bulbs either. Often the new fixture has odd bulbs too. You can sometimes educate the ignorant, but there ain’t no cure for stupidity so there ain’t no point in trying to do the impossible.
Whatever, I make money doing his fixture installs and that’s easy bux for me
Yeah, I see that’s how they’re designed to be installed.
Where I live now, the code requires an electrical box —- all the wiring nuts have to be inside the metal box
(it’s an area that gets significant earthquakes, things get shaken up)
The boxes flush with the ceiling are attached to the ceiling joists and support the fixtures
(Also, for our climate and code, we air-seal with caulk to fill gaps around the boxes —- that stops warm moist air rising up through penetrations, condensing in the attic insulation, and growing mold during cold months)
Just saying, where I live I need to adapt these spring-clip-in-a-hole to mount on standard flat ceiling box. It won’t be hard to add an extension to the box.
