I'm looking at replacing the old florescent lighting in my bus with LEDs. Currently I have 6 foot single tube fixtures (phillips F72112 bulb). Trying to get idea of how many led strips will need to put in to replace each light with close to equal light. Looks like 3- 20 inch led would be just over half as much. Am I on the right track?
I am in the process of doing the same thing I have purchased 15 ft strips of leds using 2 light strips replacing one floresent tube. it maybe a little over kill but you can always add a dimmer to tone it down a little, seangie posted pics of his leds on an earlier post, the led options are limitless!
Many ways to do this depending on how you want to mount them. I'm assuming you want to replace the flourescent bulb with 3 smaller LED tube type replacements. LEDs are not as bright as flourescents. What they do to make up for it is cram as many LED chips on a fixture as they can possibly fit. Buy the bulbs that have the most chips on them (5050 chips are the newer larger, brighter chips) and they should come close.
LEDs can also be found in different color temps. Color temps with LEDs are often used to describe the 'tone' of the light not necessarily the actual color. To keep it simple LEDs under 2.7k are more like an incandescent bulb. These are what I used in the front of my bus. Softer on the eyes, often described with a "yellow" tint. 3-4.5k is more of a neutral color. Not as much tint but not pure white. Above 4.5k is more like a white flourescent bulb. Bright white. Good for a work area. I used these bright white LEDs (5.7k was what temp mine came in) for outside under the awning.
You should buy a dimmer for them so you can adjust the brightness in the coach. This made a big difference in how we use the lights in the coach. Sometimes its nice to have ambience more than full lights.
Also- think about how you are going to use them. 120v vs 12vdc. Ours are all 12v. If you use 120v fixtures you'll have to plug them all in using a 120v to DC rectifier (all wart) or wire them into a junction box (with a switch?) If you go 12v you can run on batteries (without the inverter) and wire them with a lighter gauge wire (18ga -16ga) to a DC post or terminal block which should have a smaller footprint.
-Sean
Fulltiming somewhere in the USA
1984 Eagle 10S
www.herdofturtles.org (http://www.herdofturtles.org)
They do make a tube LED, we use them to replace the florescent in our transits. I think they are 4 footers. Cheers Gerry
The Philips 6 foot tube is fairly bright at about 5500 lumens when new, so you need quite a few led fixtures to provide equivalent light output. However, the led light is directional whereas the fluorescent tubes are not, so my experience has been that as little as 50% of the lumens may be sufficient. A lot depends on your perception and how the lighting is used, e.g. general room lighting vs direct lighting on a work area (the galley countertop, for example). The leds provide a lot more focused light.
In my own coach I've replaced twin F15T8 fluorescents (about 700 lumens each) with a single Revolution F15T8 led replacement tube (http://www.rvledbulbs.com/product-p/18-0125.htm]see [url]http://www.rvledbulbs.com/product-p/18-0125.htm (http://see%20[url)[/url]) and found the light entirely adequate. And this is in an open area for general lighting.
You could use the 20" led strip (about 600 lumens each) and it would theoretically require 9 of them to equal the Philips 6 footer, but I'll bet you could do with a lot less. Here's one example: http://www.rvledbulbs.com/product-p/hp-rs20-10.htm (http://www.rvledbulbs.com/product-p/hp-rs20-10.htm)
I've replaced all the fluorescent lights in both my bus AND my shop with the 5 meter rolls of LED tape that have adhesive backing and run on 12 volts. Best thing I ever did!! For example, my shop used to have 1500 watts worth of noisy fluorescents that broke every time I swung a (too long) piece of metal around...oops... but now I have the same amount of light, virtually indestructable, draws 250 watts total, with the LEDs.
There is a trick or two though. First get the rolls ( from ebay or amazon) that have either 300 or 600 LED's- the more the merrier, you can dim them but you can only make them brighter by having more...
2nd trick and IMPORTANT... the leds come in two flavors of white.... warm white and cool white. I've found that the "warm" ones are a bit too weird, the color has a hue that could be considered a bit greenish, but not so comfortable to be in, and definitely not something you'd want to work in. On the other hand, the "cool white" ones are waaay to harsh- feels lile you're in an ice building. Not fun.
The solution: one strip of each side-by-side!! Doing that, the color balance is excellent, and quite nice to be in both for working and for relaxing.
(https://busconversionmagazine.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heartmagic.com%2Fleds.jpg&hash=4dbea18d85203e2bfb0b236e30957f91526c3184)
2013-11-04_11.17.36
OK, Speaking of LED lighting, have a look see at this crazy LED fetish.....
Makes me wonder what happened in his past that created this craze ?
I count 24 stop/run, turn, backup Lites.
Dave M
You can buy the T-8 for LED from E led Lighting I purchased 2 for around 40 bucks each and fwiw I hate them
Quote from: boogiethecat on April 01, 2014, 10:03:27 AM
I've replaced all the fluorescent lights in both my bus ...
I had already installed "puck lights" with halogen bulbs; nice light but *HOT* and wattage hogs. I replaced the bulbs (they have the double wire prong plug in bases, G4 type) with LED's. I went with the cool white -- really nice with my blue/blue/grey interior color scheme. Love them -- and they don't even show up as pulling wattage on my Outback power meter (I think that the meter doesn't show when less than 100watts are used as "pass through" power, but not matter -- they use very little power).
Doesn't matter much in relation to the idea of fluorescent fixtures, but my LED's are great. (BTW, The Management likes to read and she loves the light to read by -- and when The Management is happy, everyone is happy.)
That was me trying to post a pic!!!!! I gave up and don't post any more pic,I cant resize all my pics!!!!!!