Retrofit LED lamps compared to new fixtures

[MiElectrician]

My church is planning on changing all of their fixtures to led. They got a quote for retrofit lamps that have the driver in the lamp. Are these of decent quality or should I push them to get new fixtures?

 

[Jolted]

We've been installing a lot of self driven lamps the last while. To the toon of hundreds in big box stores. So far they've been fine, no major problems.

Makes retrofitting a breeze as we just remove the ballasts and replace the lamps.

 

[Martin B]

My two cents: If you like the looks of the old fixtures than just repace the bulbs. I'v done both types of jobs and other that the obvious cost diferance I prefer just changing out the bulbs. I recently had a job to repair a 5 year old LED parking lot fixture. The manufacturer had discontinued that fixture and we weren't able to buy parts for it either. We ended up replacing the light with one that looked different. That my have been a bigger problem if the light was in a nice space like a church with a bunch of matching fixtures.

By the way, What voltage are you dealing with and what type of fixtures are they? CFL?

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[MiElectrician]

Just old 2x4 and 2x2 for most of the building. They have a really cool lighting system for the auditorium that's halogen but I think it's staying.
It will be quick to retrofit, and most of the ballast are pcb so I'm going to tell them to just leave them in the fixtures.

 

[JFletcher]

The older the lights/ballasts, and harder they are to get to (do you need a manlift?), the more I'd push for line voltage replacements and/or new fixtures, reason being labor isnt free and having to get to hard-to-reach luminaires a second time in short order to replace an old ballast isnt good for the customer's budget.

LED quality is all over the place depending imo more on the manufacturer than type of retrofit lamp installed.

 

[tw1156]

250W Halogen Replacement

250W Halogen Replacement

We used the following at my church to replace 250W Halogen Lamps at ~30ft in the air at only 28W. We used the 25 degree beam spread and see comparable light. http://www.solais.com/Product-1-LR38/LED_REPLACEMENT_LAMPS-22-52-2 It was compatible with the older existing dimming system as well and we have not had any issues with them (installed for a little more than a year now).

 

[kwired]

My two cents: If you like the looks of the old fixtures than just repace the bulbs. I'v done both types of jobs and other that the obvious cost diferance I prefer just changing out the bulbs. I recently had a job to repair a 5 year old LED parking lot fixture. The manufacturer had discontinued that fixture and we weren't able to buy parts for it either. We ended up replacing the light with one that looked different. That my have been a bigger problem if the light was in a nice space like a church with a bunch of matching fixtures.

By the way, What voltage are you dealing with and what type of fixtures are they? CFL?

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That is one thing I don't like about LED fixtures, something goes wrong with it and they have discontinued it you will be changing others that match it or dealing with one that looks different.

And there isn't much out there that has been around for all that long, they find ways to improve it and then discontinue the older model. Incandescent, HID, and most linear fluorescent fixtures you could always replace critical components as they were fairly standard no matter who made them and still keep the fixture.

 

[steve66]

What type of lights?

If they are T8 fixtures, you probably won't get any energy savings just by replacing the lamps. One of the huge benefits of LED is that you can direct the light where you need it, and you don't have to rely on reflectors to redirect half the light back down. So with linear T8 LED lamps, you are still loosing a lot of light in the optical system of the light fixture.