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Post by determined1 on Jul 20, 2016 17:25:09 GMT
For those who aren't aware there are LED replacements for all sorts of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. The cost to light this is about half of a standard bulb. The bulbs themselves are about 3 times the cost of a standard fluorescent but the ROI is about 6 months. You can pick up the bulbs at Home Depot for a reasonable price. I would advise against going with a company which comes in and replaces your ballasts. The cost for that is much, much higher.
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Post by davesnap on Jul 20, 2016 19:23:03 GMT
Don't I have to replace the fixtures to use the LEDs
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Post by determined1 on Jul 20, 2016 19:42:45 GMT
No, even the fluorescent bulbs can simply be replaced using the existing ballasts. Home Depot sells the bulbs for about $10 each. Pay attention to your lumens and the color (daylight, natural) which work out best for your club. We started with one, found it not to be as bright as we liked and switched to a different one. The bulbs at HD are 18w. You can find ones with lower wattage, but they seem to be much more expensive. Our electric cost used to be in the range of $800 to $1000 per month 2 years ago. This has dropped to a range of $400 to $650. Another recommendation is that if you have T12 ballasts to replace them with T8s. That switch is relatively easy. Again HD sells the T8 ballasts and has contractor packs which lower the cost of the ballasts.
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Post by determined1 on Jul 21, 2016 14:31:23 GMT
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Post by supercool on Aug 19, 2016 19:37:31 GMT
For those who aren't aware there are LED replacements for all sorts of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. The cost to light this is about half of a standard bulb. The bulbs themselves are about 3 times the cost of a standard fluorescent but the ROI is about 6 months. You can pick up the bulbs at Home Depot for a reasonable price. I would advise against going with a company which comes in and replaces your ballasts. The cost for that is much, much higher. This brings to my mind how I had a salesman come in last year and try to get us to "convert" to LED. I'm sure a ballast conversion was part of his quote. Why would that be needed, though? I have already replaced many light bulbs in my house with LED ones, and I didn't have to change out any fixtures.
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Post by determined1 on Aug 19, 2016 22:00:12 GMT
At one point the only way to switch fluorescent systems to LED was to replace the ballast. That was costly when you're talking about 100 or so ballasts. However, if you read one of the annual reports from CREE, a leader in LED lighting, they warned that margins would be coming down dramatically as replacement bulbs made their way into the market. I brought this up to our sales person and he told us that was years and years away. Uh, not according to CREE. Sure enough those replacement bulbs made their way into the market and started showing up at Home Depot, Lowes and Costco.
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Post by Snaplongtimer on Sept 1, 2016 22:58:11 GMT
I remember a few years back getting a quote from some company through Snap wanting to replace my lighting in my 3200 sqft gym for $7,500. Good grief. I replaced them myself last year. I believe I paid around $11 per bulb and now they are $6 per in quantity (50,75) which you would want anyway. I am not talking about 17W bulbs from Home Depot or Lowes. I got 28W bulbs overseas. Now I see they are around $6 for a 28W LED bulb including shipping to your front door. In the standard 4 fluorescent bulb fixture, I stripped out the ballast (omg get rid of it) and inserted 2 28W bulbs. Done. Haven't had a bulb go bad yet. I leave them on 24/7/365. If you don't know how to wire them, ask a friend to help. Very simple and you will be pleased I am sure.
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Post by Amy on Sept 7, 2016 14:16:22 GMT
Snaplongtimer...can you share the distributor of the bulbs for the pricing you are talking about?
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Post by greenergrass on Sept 8, 2016 2:49:13 GMT
I absolutely remember corporate suggesting a switch to LED lighting and it was very expensive. I think it would have been a bad decision to spend $7500 on a change to LED lighting. We need to be smarter about how we spend our money in order to stay strong in this industry. And we need better advice than this from corporate.
Not knowing if I should believe everything I read on the internet, is the following true:
"A T8 bulb is considered end-of-life at 60% of its light output, which equates to roughly 14,400 hours.
LED replacement bulbs on the other hand, calculate the end of life at 70% which is approximately 50,000 hours.
In order to keep up with LED, you will have to replace the T8 bulbs 3.5 times"
Because if it's true, the 3x the price is offset by the longer life of the LED.
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Post by snaplongtimer on Sept 8, 2016 21:08:48 GMT
greenergrass, what you listed is mostly true although if you use motion sensing for your club lights like all the clubs used to do (not sure anymore) that's a different story. The worst thing for electronic devices is typically the inrush of current which means turning them on..off..on..off and can shorten the bulb life by quite a bit. With the cheaper LED bulbs available, I would replace them all in a heart beat. In my club not one bulb has gone bad after installation and it has been over a year now. I do leave my gym main area lights on all the time. I recommend this very much so.
Amy, I order through dhgate.com. There are many sellers on this site. I have ordered bulbs from different sellers and it's usually free shipping to your front door. Shop around. I have ordered commercial building LED lights as well for my landlord and replaced them for him. You can email the sellers and ask questions and they are always looking for good reviews and will replace one that may not work in the batch, but for $6 for that bulb I wouldn't sweat it. That's pretty cheap and you'll have extras in the lot you order. I have the standard 4 bulb t8 fluorescent fixture in my club. With a little simple rewire, throwing out the ballast and the 4 bulbs, I inserted (2) 28W LED bulbs per fixture trying to get away with as little power consumption as I could. I think that would be the minimum I would do honestly. Never had a complaint. You can always add an extra bulb if you want for light. Since I was using ceiling light panels, I ordered the clear glass not frosted. Make sure you include notes with your order like: 28W cold white 110vac clear lens etc...if option was not selected already. When you receive them, you probably won't believe you are getting these bulbs for $6 per.
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Post by determined1 on Sept 24, 2016 0:02:58 GMT
I found the easiest solution was to simply pop out the 34W florescent bulbs and pop in the 17W LEDs. Home Depot had the rebate already built into the bulbs.
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Post by determined1 on Sept 29, 2016 16:36:42 GMT
Just an update: Going through Costco yesterday I see they're selling the 4ft 17w LEDs now for $15 for a 2 pack. Also, now sure if I've mentioned it, but our electric bill has dropped from $800 - $1200 per month to $500 to $700 per month. I'm sure snap is trying to make some of the energy providers snap "preferred partners" and our bill will go back up to $1200/month.
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Post by supercool on Oct 4, 2016 18:44:22 GMT
We just had an electrician install drop-in replacement LEDs. Total cost for having around 170 bulbs installed was about $2500. We could have done it ourselves, but we also had a handful of ballasts that were no longer functioning. It was worth my time to have someone else do it professionally.
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Post by Dale on Oct 7, 2016 14:57:57 GMT
Supercool...is there a difference in brightness with the new led's? we had an electrician put one in to show us but they seemed really really bright. Plus it was going to cost us about 6-7 thousand. If anyone has a good website for explanation/instructions on how to do the changeout that would be great.
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Post by supercool on Oct 7, 2016 15:59:20 GMT
Supercool...is there a difference in brightness with the new led's? we had an electrician put one in to show us but they seemed really really bright. Plus it was going to cost us about 6-7 thousand. If anyone has a good website for explanation/instructions on how to do the changeout that would be great. They are very bright...but I wouldn't say they are obnoxiously so. There shouldn't be much you have to do with the changeout. Just open your fixture, take out the current bulbs, and pop in the new ones.
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