Hi all. My landlady is contracting me to upgrade the fluorescent troffer fixtures in the apartment building, which are currently magnetic F40T12. I've convinced her to go with electronic F32T8 rather than LED, which I'm still not entirely sold on outside of Edison-screw bulbs.

I would like to go with program start ballasts, but I can't find anything but instant start in the local stores here or on Amazon. Does anybody know of any 2-lamp or 4-lamp F32T8 120V program start ballasts currently on the market?

Thanks!


Edit: So far I've found the Fulham IceHorse, which are special purpose and way too expensive, and apparently there's a program start version of the Fulham Workhorse, but it's either discontinued or only available to certain markets. 

Has Advance, Sylvania, and GE ended production their programmed start ballast?  My searches are finding a few, but not many, and some are labeled as discontinued.  On a side note, if there's anywhere you could use instant start, I have a box of them I'd like to get rid of for no more than the price of shipping.  Feel free to send me a PM.  Many of them have short leads because I used the wire for other projects, but most of the ballasts are brand new.  I swapped them out for PS/RS/Pre-Heat ballasts.

I hate to say it, but maybe it's time to go with LED.  I prefer fluorescent myself, but when taking cost and efficiency into consideration, it's hard to justify retrofitting to T8 and this point.  If cost is a consideration, you could go with LED tubes for T12 ballasts.  Savings would probably match that of T8 fluorescent, and it'd be a quick and easy lamp swap.  Another possibility would be to use T8 instant start fluorescent, with the assumption that the next set of lamps will be LED T8s for electronic ballasts.  The long-term benefits of programmed start are reduced if it's unlikely the lights will remains fluorescent for more than one or two lamps changes anyway, given that LED T8s will last equally long on either kind of ballast.

I hate to say it, but maybe it's time to go with LED.  I prefer fluorescent myself, but when taking cost and efficiency into consideration, it's hard to justify retrofitting to T8 and this point.

The fact that you say that makes me think that maybe I'm being too timid towards LED replacement tubes. Years ago I saw a lot of drop-in/permanent LED fixtures that would fail, but admittedly we installed about 50 LED T8 tubes at the TV station last year, and they've been problem-free. So maybe that's the route I'll go after all. Save my landlady a lot of money and me a lot of labor wiring up new ballasts. I'll go direct-wire since the 22 year old magnetic ballasts are buzzy and a little leaky, at least in my fixtures.

I recommend MaxLite if you want to go LED. The State Fairgrounds here used thousands of them and not one has failed. They were bright, made of glass, and they even resemble the fluorescent tubes they replaced, both lit and unlit. But they're Type A tubes, so they work off of the existing ballast. The Type B (direct-wire) tubes that I saw online didn't look the same, but they were made of glass.

Yeah, unless you can get T8 ballasts for free or cheap, LED will probably have more or less the same initial costs as a LED retrofit now, if not cheaper. LED direct wire lamps are around $10/lamp in quantity so around $20 for a two lamp retrofit. A T8 retrofit for a two lamp fixture will cost $10 in lamps, plus another $25-30 for the ballast. If you're concerned about failures, you could always buy some extras at the time of retrofit to account for earlier failures. I suppose you could spot replace failed tubes but that runs the risk of the original model tube being unavailable and having to use a different model which might not match perfectly. Direct wire LED tubes also don't have standardized wiring so you also might have to rewire the fixture if swapping to a different model tube. (some wire hot and neutral on the same end, some require the pins to be shunted and wire to hot to one end, neutral to the other end)

Since the ballasts are old, direct wire would probably be the best option. IIRC some LED tube kits even include a set of prewired tombstones for direct wire so you can pretty much ignore and remove the old wiring and tombstones instead of spending time rewiring the fixtures.

What I don't recommend are those slim LED panels that go in place of troffers, they might look nice at first but tend to have diffusers that degrade and fail making them look splotchy. I also find them more glary compared to either "real" LED troffers or fluorescent troffers retrofitted to LED with tubes. Plus I don't think they were designed to be serviced.

I too would recommend just going with LED retrofit tubes...infact I hate to say it, but I'd even go as far as saying "don't waste your money on fluorescent" (reason being since some US states are banning fluorescents, its just a matter of time before that spreads to other states & even outside the country)

I'd also check to see if your electric utility or city or province is offering any LED upgrade rebates! Could end up saving the landlord a nice chunk of cash on the project...