Fluorescent to LED in the Kitchen

Okay, we’ve been in this house for >14 years. While I’ve transitioned to LED bulbs in most of the fixtures—certainly the commonly used lamps and bathroom vanity—I hadn’t tackled the fluorescents in the kitchen, for a variety of reasons:

• First, fluorescents are inherentlly much greener than incandescent. Not for nothing were the first subsitutes for incandescent the CFLs (compact fluorescent light, if you didn’t know).


• Second, there were no LED substitutes for fluorescents for a good many of those 14 years. Only recently have practical and affordable fixtures become available.


• Third, and not insignificant, the four existing two tube fixtures gave us really good light in the kitchen. I might have replaced a ballast or two along the way, as well as a tube or two, but eight 48" “bulbs” produced plenty of lumens.

However, having run across an LED fixture replacement for fluorescent video on YouTube, I learned, not only the availability of such a thing, but the relatively reasonable cost. Okay, just under $50 each, but I’ll never be in the ceiling again, and wait until you see the results. A reminder—and I’ve said this many times in woodworking fora regarding shop lighting—your eyes, today, are as good as they’re ever going to be. It’s all downhill from here. Or, to put it another way, there is no such thing as too much task lighting. Mood lighting is another subject.

There’s a but, of course. I have never had a successful “bolt on” project in my life. Everything has always required some modification or adjustment. For example, 48" fixture, right? Replacing a 48" fixture, right? We should be so lucky. I did buy just one fixture to see, figuring even if I had to butcher it and it still wouldn’t work, I could still make use of it, say, in the shop.

So here’s the process which proved to be successful. I opened the fixture (which one would have to do anyway) and then stripped out all the unnecessary items. There were two wire junctions inside with seven wires each! They couldn’t even use a Marrette®, they had to crimp them with a metal sleeve and plastic cover. I only needed three connections each for the two junctions. That left the line feed connection into the two power supplies.

I also stripped out all the ground wires. Per the NEC (electrical code) in effect in the ’70s, when the house was built, such fixtures weren’t required to have a ground. Moreover, the NMC (non-metallic cable—Romex) feeder didn’t have a ground wire. I wasn’t about to rewire all the way back to the panel.

Li’l history lesson: back in the ’60s, NMC was identified as 14/2, 12/2, 10/2. The number before the slash is the wire gauge, and the number after is the number of conductors. If you wanted wahr with a ground conductor, you had to ask for 14/2 w/ground. I don’t remember which NEC first required a ground for new construction (the code is updated every two years), but you can guesstimate the age of a house (or the not earlier than date) by checking the receptacles. Two prong, earlier than the ’60s. Three prong (groud connector added), ’60s and later. Even then, there were exceptions, for example, 240V water heater could be wired with two conductor wire for quite a while afterward—into the ’70s, if you use my house as a sample. Anyway, somewhere in my young adulthood, they quit labelling “w/ground” because all NMC was sold with same. 14/2 became an actual three wire cable.

Back to the project. Then I had to do surgery. It seems 48 doesn’t really go into 48 evenly. I calculated that shortening the new fixture by 3/8" would do the trick. That was a little more than necessary, but I needed some slop to get things fitted. But, that 3/8" had to come out of the sheet metal housing, the extruded top plate, and the two plastic tubes. I actually used three separate tools for the trimming—aviation snips for the sheet metal, jig saw for the extrusion, Dremel for the tubes. Fortunately, I didn’t have to touch the LED strips at all.

Got the first one done, worked out the process for installing it, et voila! we had a new light that was noticably brighter than the fluorescent next to it. Slighly less warm, perhaps, maybe a couple of hundred ° K, but certainly a positive step. Back to the big box where I picked up three more, and we’re off to the races. Enjoy the show. As always, click on the thumbnail pic for a larger view, then leave it up, as each subsequent click populates the same pop-up.

Fluorescents on	Looking through my original images from 2003, I find I don’t really have a specific image showing the lights in isolation. Here, however, is an interim image during construction which gives you the idea of how they look when on.
Fluorescents off	Further searching found this image of the fixtures in question but dark. This isn’t from that time frame, but that’s not the point. Also, I can tell it’s from the last couple of years because I have the pot rack up over the range.
Replacement box, left	This is the box the LED fixtures come in (left side). Basically a big box item.
Replacement box, right	This is the right side of the box.
Fixture unboxed	This is what the fixture looks like. As you will see, the long tubes merely simulate the look of a two tube fluorescent fixture. They are merely half pipe plastic and are nothing but cosmetic. In fact, given where the fixtures are going, I probably could have left them off.
Fixture broken down	This is what it looks like inside. Not all of that will be used.
LED strips	Those two strips of electronic nubs provide all the light. They are surprisingly bright.
Inside stripped down	The modified fixture. Removal of redundant wires and removal of ground wires (only two wires in the feed to the fixture—1973 NEC). Yet to be done is removal of about 3/8" off the end.
Old fixture	Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, here are your basic F40/T12 fluorescent lights. The swing down lenses are the reason I might have been able to leave the covers off the new fixtures. To ease your mind, you should know that I at least cleaned those lenses back in aught 3, and I may have repalced one or two, so any murk does not date back to ’73.
F40/T12 tubes	Tubes out, inner cover off, ballast and tombstones revealed.
Clear palette	All the innards have been gutted. Just the line feed remains, we’re awaiting the replacement fixtures.
Modified base in place	Replacement fixture in place, awaiting hookup.
Ready for LEDs	She’s all wired and awaiting the cover with the LEDs. Those two orange wire pairs dripping down from the power supplies connect to similar pairs leading to the LEDs. Clever bit of engineering to ease the installer’s plight.
Finished	Here they are, all done. Although I usually always use flash when photographing, even outdoors, I didn’t this time, because I wanted to capture the intensity of the lights. I did, but there’s a bit of bloom in the image, probably because the CCD (charge coupled device—the “film” in your digital camera) might have been overwhelmed. And that might be outside of our visible spectrum, but the CCD could be sensitive to it.

Last updated: 30 November 2017