T12 36 Inch replacement light?

I'm pretty new at this.

I noticed one of my florescent lights in my kitchen was going out. I tried replacing the bulbs, but no luck . It seems the ballast is going. I tried searching around on google and discovered that T12 lights have been banned?!

So now I need to find a replacement.

My current lights in my kitchen are T12 36in dual bulb lights, running 6500k bulbs. I have 4 of them. What is the current recommended replacement for this type of light?

I see some people recommend switching to a T5, but I haven't been able to find a good dual bulb 36in T5 suitable for mounting and replacing.

Is there something else I could consider?

I'm no expert, but I think T8s are significantly cheaper than T5s, and any advantage T5s have over T8s are pretty small.

I'm in a similar situation: lots of shop lights in my basement, and they are all T12. It looks like my options will be to either buy a new ballast and rewire the fixtures for T8s, or buy whole new T8 fixtures after the bulbs burn out.

An alternative might be to cut the ballasts out all together, and run LED tubes.

wws944 said:

An alternative might be to cut the ballasts out all together, and run LED tubes.

Click to expand...

Sure would make life simpler, but it would be much more expensive.

From the Orange store:

$15 - 1 two-lamp ballast (Phillips)
$20 - 2 Phillips 36-inch T8 bulbs
---------------------------------------
$35 - total cost (excluding your labor)

or

$92 ($184 for 4) Sylvania 15-watt bulbs (I think you need to rip out the ballast and rewire)

The Sylvania led bulbs have half the lumens, but are downward firing, which should partially make up for the loss

Convert to t8 if you don't want to replace the fixture. That is the simplest. If you want to replace the fixture get whatever you like for the price you want.n I would only do t5 if it was a whole lot of lights left on for long periods of time or you really like the idea of t5 and wanted that. You can't convert a t12 fixture to t5 without modifying it. t5 takes different sockets and the lamps aren't the same length. I would also venture to guess that t5s are always going to be more limited on selection than t8 because they haven't been around long and led pulling ahead of them.

Sorry, in your last thread I guessed wrongly that you had 48 inch fixtures. Yes, you may have a hard time finding 36 inch T5s. They do make 34 inch T5s (2000 lumens/21 watts) but you'll need to replace the fixtures. With T8s, you can change out the ballasts and the tombstones if you know how to do some electrical work. If not, it might be cheaper to replace the fixture than hire an electrician. It would be nice to know if your 8 bulbs you want to replace are all side by side or in a series/parallel configuration in the box where you can replace 4 2 bulb or 2 4 bulb fixtures with 2 2 longer bulb fixtures or not. If this is doable, it might cut down on your costs and installation to replace 36 inch fixtures with fewer 48 inch or longer fixtures.

MattPete said:

Sure would make life simpler, but it would be much more expensive.

From the Orange store:

$15 - 1 two-lamp ballast (Phillips)
$20 - 2 Phillips 36-inch T8 bulbs
---------------------------------------
$35 - total cost (excluding your labor)

or

$92 ($184 for 4) Sylvania 15-watt bulbs (I think you need to rip out the ballast and rewire)

The Sylvania led bulbs have half the lumens, but are downward firing, which should partially make up for the loss

Click to expand...

It can be a little better than that. There are numerous 4 ft tubes in the $30 range (easily findable via google). So really about $75 for two. And yes, there is a requirement to 'rewire' by bypassing the ballast. In the shop lights in my workshop/garage this would only take a couple of minutes per fixture to do as the ballast and wiring are easily accessible. In other fixtures YMMV.