Preheat ballast for two (2) 40 watt T12 lamps

Jake,

My son-in-law just replaced all his garage lights with LED strips and man what a difference! Super bright and at a savings in current consumption! I'll check with him to see if he has any old ballasts.

Happy Dad,

First, happy birthday to Mrs Happy Dad! She must be a supportive and loving wife or you would not be so happy!

The LED garage lights are amazingly bright and last a life time according to the Chinese maker. I've already thrown away one LED bulb less than a year old, with a suggested 20 year life span, so I will take the Chinese maker's words with a grain of salt!

If the Chinese are our friend, I sure don't want to see our enemy!

Bill

smooth_bill wrote:Jake,

My son-in-law just replaced all his garage lights with LED strips and man what a difference! Super bright and at a savings in current consumption! I'll check with him to see if he has any old ballasts.

Happy Dad,

First, happy birthday to Mrs Happy Dad! She must be a supportive and loving wife or you would not be so happy!

The LED garage lights are amazingly bright and last a life time according to the Chinese maker. I've already thrown away one LED bulb less than a year old, with a suggested 20 year life span, so I will take the Chinese maker's  words with a grain of salt!

If the Chinese are our friend, I sure don't want to see our enemy!

Bill

Not the LED bulbs for the garage. The smaller ones admin was talking about. The 40watt jobs smaller in diameter, but just as bright.

   Still working on the backyard project. Never can seem to please her. We are the same age.

Less happydad until I finish the brick steps I put in 15 years ago. Ants and gophers have made a mess of it and just finished repairing the gopher holes and flattening the holes. I went to get the polymer to put between the bricks, $27.00 for smallest size, 1 gallon bucket, I need maybe 12ounces. Then waited for 1/2 hour for someone to load an 8foot railroad tie onto my truck bed, $22.00. I will spray the whole area with weed killer, the one on TV that causes cancer of course, then after it dries pour the polymer into the cracks and work it into them until they are full, then spray with a misty water. In theory the polymers expand and fill the voids and no ants, bugs or weeds can get thru ever again. So say the salesmen.

   Happydad will be happier if that happens.      

Admin wrote:Right now, I have a 40 year old rapid start ballast pulled from one of the fluorescent lights that were removed from the kitchen over 20 years ago. It's working fine, but we'll see how it acts when the temperatures get down near freezing. A newer T12 4 ft fixture is hung over the workbench takes quite some time before it gets up to full brightness and quits flickering when the temps are below ~40-50 degrees. This old fixture always started with no flicker and pretty decent brightness with temps below 0°F.



Yes, I could always put an electronic ballast in it and convert it to T8 lamps or LED, but I'd like to keep this fixture as original as possible. My grandpa got it many many years ago from when they were replacing fixtures at the railroad where he worked.

The fluorescent ballasts are rated for minimum temperature at which they will be able to light off a set of bulbs. I installed a set of residential quality (big mistake) fixtures in another garage I had 25 years ago. At higher elevation, we got really freezing winters. It would struggle to light off during colder temperatures below freezing.

I really don't know where you can get a legacy transformer ballast, they are now basically NOS stock. Much of the problem has to do with using old oil filled capacitors that go bad with time. The stability of the materials used age and degrade. Some of those will leak PCB oil when they go bad, requiring care in handling because PCB is a known carcinogen. So, even if it is NOS, there's a possibility that the ballast may already be bad or will got out shortly after you start using it.

You'll probably have to go to a modern T-12 electronic ballast. For example,

Amazon: Universal Lighting Technologies B234SR120M-A000I Electronic Ballast, Fluorescent, T12, 2-Lamp, 120V, Black



Cost, $16.00; minimum starting temperature 50 deg. F, which is not what you are looking for in a garage. (Rated for indoor heated space use or southern Florida only.)

This next one I believe is the one you are looking for:

Robertson 3P20132 Fluorescent eBallast for 2 F40T12 Linear Lamps, Preheat- Rapid Start, 120Vac, 50-60Hz



Cost, $13.45, minimum starting temperature is 0 deg. F.

I know this is not the historically correct ballast, but once the fixture ballast cover is in place, will be out of sight with fixture assembled, will still provide the historic appearance desired.

Here's a T-12 ballast for two 40-Watt bulbs rated down to 0 deg. F starting temperatures that is even cheaper, $10.95:

Amazon: Keystone Two lamp T12 Rapid Start Electronic Ballast KTEB-240-1



The ballasts I've been showing are for the standard 2 pin per side T-12 four foot long 40-Watt bulbs. I could not tell from the first photo, Jason, if your fixture uses these types or the odder single pin (rectangular end or larger single pin) bulbs.

I've used Keystone and Robertson ballasts before, they seem to be good commercial quality.

Those look like good ballasts George. If the one I have in the light now fails or doesn't behave how I'd like this winter, I may have to look into one of those. That is if I don't find an old fashioned preheat ballast first.

This is what I have in it now:

Admin wrote:Those look like good ballasts George. If the one I have in the light now fails or doesn't behave how I'd like this winter, I may have to look into one of those. That is if I don't find an old fashioned preheat ballast first.

This is what I have in it now:

Sorry, Jacob wifes b'day comes first. I looked at the bulbs, 40 watt cool white, but i have to disassemble my tool bench to take the lights down. couldn't find the old fixtures so they must be gone. 1 or 2 of the old ones left. tomorrow for sure??

happydad        

Admin wrote:Those look like good ballasts George. If the one I have in the light now fails or doesn't behave how I'd like this winter, I may have to look into one of those. That is if I don't find an old fashioned preheat ballast first. This is what I have in it now:

You're welcome, Jacob. Yes, I've had Advance magnetic ballasts similar to the one you have. In fact, you could buy those up until may be 15 years ago, Lowes and Ace Hardware had them in stock. My residential garage has 8 foot tube fixtures, replace those older style magnetic ballasts several times (think they blew or weakened by lightning strikes, until electric company improved the substation and infrastructure. At one point also blew out the ceiling fan capacitor, replaced with new then blew again. Also had to have the furnace serviced, blew out the controller circuit board). Last is modern electronic, going on 7 years now without problems.

The modern electronic ballasts are an improvement. No longer are heaters required, they fire the bulbs instantly. Operate bulbs at 400 Hertz, eliminating 60 Hz. flicker, easier on the brain.

The older technology was the best available when they came out. Little improvement was made for a long time until the electronics.

Since T-8 bulbs have the same pins, I upgraded our kitchen T-12 fixture to T-8 ballast and LED replacement bulbs. The LED's don't have a warm up period. (Fluorescent bulbs OTOH come on slightly dim, they warm up to full light intensity after a couple minutes.) I printed a label from my label printer and attached it to the fixture, stating, "USE T-8 BULBS ONLY".

It was my project 17 years ago at one of the military bases where we did about a million dollars worth of work in multiple buildings, upgrading lighting and in a few upgrading their mechanical environmental equipment, including hangars. Contractor replaced T-12 ballasts with T-8, retrofitted fixtures with custom reflectors changing 4 bulb fixtures to 2. The T-8 with mirrored reflector put out the same amount of light as 4 T-12 bulbs.

Then several years later, I'd walk into a building, wondering what happened to the quality of the lighting. Found the facility manager airman for his building had replaced the worn out T-8 bulbs with T-12's from base supply. The T-8 ballasts put out a different voltage level. T-12's will fire, but they glow at reduced brilliance.

Murphy's Law applies to military bases.