4 Foot T8 Or T12 Retro To LED

Video Transcription

Hi this is James Abraham with Warehouse-lighting.com. I’m going to show you in this video how to retro an old t8 fixture over to LED tubes using one of our two kits, and the two kits are a CS bracket kit which is pictured here or an RSX 8 kit which is actually used for an 8-foot fixture, but you can remove the centerpiece and only use the two end pieces. Basically, what happens with this kit is you break off the pieces and you can fold this around the fixture. It can get up to about a six-inch fixture and then our other kit is just adjustable with slides which is back to the CS kit comes with quarter turns, comes with tombstones on the LED conversion, though the tombstones are going to be unshunted, which basically means it has four holes on the bottom, so that you can jumper from one to the next lamp.

You also need some jumper wires which you can usually take this from the old ballast that’s internal of the fixture. This is the jumper from one lamp to the next on a two-lamp fixture. You also need to bring some wire nuts. The kit is also supplied with quarter turns you can have, there’s several kits where you can have the option of either a ballast cover which is pictured here or a reflector kit and you can get that in a mirrored material or a white material. So, today what we’re going to do is we’re going to retrofit a four-foot fixture with two LED lamps. So, basically taking a four foot t8 with 32 watts and dropping it down to anything under that which would be, in this case, it’s two 20 watt bulbs saving you about 12 watts per bulb giving you 44 watts altogether. What I’ll do is, I basically rigged this fixture up with a power cord and plugged it in, so that we have power on it.

What I’m going to do first is I’m going to disassemble this fixture. What you want to do first also is disconnect the power which is disconnected on this particular fixture. Again, when first disassembling the fixture, you want to remove the ballast cover that’s there, exposing the ballast and the wires, and you want to use a screwdriver to remove the ballast that’s already there, usually one screw or two. Then you want to remove the tombstone ends. Sometimes you can utilize these with the new tombstones, but in this case, I’m going to just use our brackets to show you. It’s as easy as that, clearing out the fixture and all we have back left is the power lead, the ground, and the negative.

When retroing the fixture I’m going to use the CS bracket. It’s a little easier to use for me. Just because is already predetermined in the size. You’re going to install the unshunted tombstones which would be for LED use or program start ballast. You snap those in and then what you want to do is connect the dead end which is the end without the power to the end of the fixture. There’s going to be no wires run to the end of a two-lamp fixture. The only time you would run wires down is if you were using an 8 foot fixture, which we also have a video on, and you would use a jumper to go from this side to the other tombstones that would be sitting on the end of this or you would bring it in and run the wire from one end to both center tombstones, so that you wouldn’t have to use the jumper, but in this particular case, what we’re going to do is we’re going to use our turn screws to attach this side of the fixture which like I said before is the dud. We can dispose of the old ballast cover.

You can use the old ballast cover if you want to tech screw the ballast cover to the fixture, but these aren’t going to line up with your old ballast covers on this particular side. What we’re going to do is we’re going to take our tech screws, you’re going to run them into this fixture as so. Okay, so the one side’s attached. Now what we have to do is take our other bracket and attach our tombstones for the powered end. This is a single end powered lamp that we’re using, LED lamp that we’re using, so everything’s going to be on one single end. There’s also a duel end power option to have fixtures wired to, but they aren’t UL approved and these are. So, that’s why we’re going through these.

So, as I’m hooking up the other side which is the powered end, there’s a couple things we want to look at here. We want to use our jumpers and one jumper we’re going to run from the regular power line. We’re going to use our wire nuts to attach this. Putting some electrical tape that end also might not be a bad idea. Then we want to use one of our jumpers also to go form the negative side. And by the way, this probably should be your last thing to hook up but our power is disconnected so we know we’re safe there. And then we want to attach our ground directly to our fixture.

Now what we want to do is take the positive and our negative and we want to run it into one side, cut this off because it’s a little long. The starter side of the tombstone on one end and then we want to take our negative and we want to put it in the other end. This is just a hair too long too. Just like that. Now to power up this tombstone we want to utilize our other two jumpers. One to go from negative to the other negative directly across in the same position and then the other one from our positive directly across to the same position to look like this. If we had an 8-foot fixture, we would take this post that’s left on both sides here and run it all the way to the other end of the fixture or the center of the fixture. So now what we’ve done is we’ve finished wiring our positive side which is the only side we have to do on a single end fixture like this. We’re going to tighten these up.

So, as I’m hooking up the other side which is the powered end, there’s a couple things we want to look at here. We want to use our jumpers and one jumper we’re going to run from the regular power line. We’re going to use our wire nuts to attach this. Putting some electrical tape that end also might not be a bad idea. Then we want to use one of our jumpers also to go form the negative side. And by the way, this probably should be your last thing to hook up but our power is disconnected so we know we’re safe there. And then we want to attach our ground directly to our fixture.

Now what we want to do is take the positive and our negative and we want to run it into one side, cut this off because it’s a little long. The starter side of the tombstone on one end and then we want to take our negative and we want to put it in the other end. This is just a hair too long too. Just like that. Now to power up this tombstone we want to utilize our other two jumpers. One to go from negative to the other negative directly across in the same position and then the other one from our positive directly across to the same position to look like this. If we had an 8-foot fixture, we would take this post that’s left on both sides here and run it all the way to the other end of the fixture or the center of the fixture. So now what we’ve done is we’ve finished wiring our positive side which is the only side we have to do on a single end fixture like this. We’re going to tighten these up.

What I usually use is a lamp to tell you what your distance is supposed to be so you know where to tech screw the other end to and then you grab a tech screw and another tech screw on the other side. Now remove the lamp and by the way, these can be wired on the floor and then taken up and just tech screwed in which I find is easiest for electricians on the move. Take your ballast cover if you’ve chosen that option and we’re going to put it on top of the fixture. What you’re going to notice is that there are holes at the ends that lines up with the slides that are there and you can use your quarter turns to attach that reflector to the fixture itself and you’ve just retrofitted an LED fixture to your old T8’s and we’ll show how they light up.

We’re going to install our lamps. Remember, your powered end is usually the end with the writing on it. Slide that in and twist it down. Then you’re going to the same with this one, power end, slide it in and twist it down. Now we’re going to plug it in and there you go.

It’s as easy as that with our kits you can call us you can us questions. This will give you an idea of how to do a regular four-foot fixture. If you have more lamps in the fixture, all you do is use more jumpers and you go from one tombstone to the next tombstone. You always want to remember, you use unshunted sockets to do this on a single end LED lamp like the one that was just shown. You want to remove all the components from it. You want to recycle everything, a big proponent on recycling. You can always call and ask us questions at 888 454 4480. Thanks for coming by and watching how we do this. Thanks, and have a great day. Bye bye.