Fluorescent light question, can i remove 1 of 3 bulbs?

[jimmyj]

I have a retail store and it was just remodelled. The engineer recommended against LED lighting, which I wondered about as there are a LOT of light fixtures. The fixtures are brand new 4 foot long, each with one electronic ballast and 3 T8 32 watt bulbs (with a reflector). There are 311 bulbs in total.

The engineer said the extra $7000 to go LED would never have had a pay back, but my electric bill has gone insane since we did this. (The old store had 184 of the same bulbs and ballasts).

Do any of you know, can I remove one of the 3 bulbs in each fixture? I read the ballasts inside and they seem to say they are good for either 3 or 4 bulbs which makes me think I cannot get away with it. Any thoughts?

 

[LD1]

What ballasts? Info on them would be great.

I have 6-bulb fixtures in my shop, each with two ballasts. the ballasts power 3-bulbs each. the red wire is common to all 3 and go to one end of the bulbs. there are 3 separate blue wires for the other ends of the bulbs. One wire for each bulb.

Sometimes when the ballast fails, it will only fail to fire a single bulb, but will still fire two just fine. When I replace said ballast, I keep the old one, cut off the blue wire that fails to fire, and now its a two bulb ballast that get used in my 4-bulb/2-ballast fixtures.

But as far as just taking out a bulb......Dont know. What if a bulb burned out? Would you think "man I better get that changed right away before my ballast goes out"?

 

[JPRambo]

Through my workplace account with Grainger I purchase LED tubes. They work with electronic ballasts and use about half the power. And they operate cooler, so a saving with A/C. They also seem to put out more light because they and 4000*k instead of the 3400*k of normal fluorescent tubes.

 

[grsthegreat]

I agree on the never paying for themselves. You cannot simply remove 1 lamp if they are a 3 lamp ballast. Newer and better fixtures would have had 2 ballast, the inboard ballast switches 1 lamp and the outboad ballast switches the other 2. This way you can switch off 1 lamp in daytime hours.
Only thing i can think of is to rewire existing lights so you can switch off some entire fixtures as daylight reaches inside store. We do this with computerised controllers in larger stores, but u can do ut with manual switches also. I assume you have windows to get daylight in?.

I worked on one service station that swapped out all florescent lights for led lamps. The results were horrible. Weird shadowing. If you looked directly into fixture, it hurt your eyes, but that light never made it to the shelves. It was hard to read labels.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My last workplace converted the entire building to LED, never had a problem. Sounds like your engineer wasn't the brightest, he should have calculated each option for you and let you decide.

 

[JPRambo]

Depending on the fixture (you say brand new) you can remove one tube and it will work just fine. I have some at work the the ballast is smart and will turn off the internal circuit for that tube (it thinks the tube burnt and will not try to start it.

 

[mddorange]

We had a grocery store here switch to LED fixtures and every said the store was much brighter and the owner said his electric bill was cut in half and would pay for itself in 9 months.

 

[GaryM]

Not commercial but residential and I replaced the tubes in three, 4 tube florescent fixtures with LED about two years ago. The units I bought at the time required pulling the ballasts and replacing the tombstones with non shunted units because the LED tubes were fed with line voltage from one end. No more ballast hum and nice even light with a color temp my wife likes.

I replaced four tubes in a different fixture with LED units that did not require removal of the ballast nor replacement of the tombstones as they were direct replacements. They work with or without ballasts, your choice.

The grocery store where I normally shop is gradually replacing all their accent lights with LED. These are in the produce and meat departments, but the manager says they will eventually be all LED even in the stock areas. They have about 15 stores so someone must have done the math.

 

[pmsmechanic]

You can also get LED fluorescent replacement bulbs that don't use a ballast. You rewire the fixture to eliminate the ballast and install the appropriate LED bulb. I've talked to my local electrician about doing this and as far as I'm concerned it only makes sense as it eliminates the one source of troubles with a fluorescent.

 

[jimmyj]

The engineer called an electrical specialist and he said I can take out 1 of the 3 bulbs safely. He said the other bulbs will have a life reduction of possibly 15 to 20% but I'll save over $3000 a year with just the one tube removed so I'm going to do it. Over time I will be swapping the other two fluorescent tubes with the LED ones but I can't afford it just now. Thanks for the feedback fellas.