I'm visiting my son (AKA dilettante here) and grandson. He has an office in his basement with old T12 fluorescent tubes. I decided to do a mitzvah and change the flouros for LED tubes. Following recommendations I saw on this very site, I got Phillips direct replacement tubes from Home Depot.
I installed one tube, and it lit up right away. However--it flickered very seriously. I thought (why did I think that?) well, maybe it just needs to warm up (because that's what you think about flouro tubes, right? I did NOT follow the directions that said if it has problems such as flickering when first turned on, turn it off (idiot) and remove from fixture.

Went back to the basement, and that fixture with LED was now off, two other fixtures previously on were not on, and there was a faint electrical smell around the fixture in which I had put the LED tube. One flouro fixture remains on.

The LED tube is supposed to be compatible with 40W/48T12 fluorescent tubes. The tube replaced is a Philips F40T12/C50 40 watt.

I am experienced in installing ballast bypass LED tubes without any problems.

Should I do that next? Or bail and call an electrician? This is not my house, remember, it's my son and my precious grandson lives there too.

Thank you in advance for your help.

T12 LED either doesn't work or works poorly. Magnetic ballasts and LEDs don't play well, plus you still have the ballast noise. Replace with direct wire LED (120v) or replace the ballast with T8 ballast and replace with ones made to operate with a ballast.

Just buy a new fixture and use direct wire t5 or t8.
They are so much more efficient and bright.
The ballast is the part that is most trouble so getting rid of that is a big plus.

New LED fixtures are so much better. Ballast = bad. Commercial Electric and FEIT are affordable.

I replaced 10 2x4 fixtures with these. Ballasts are removed.

Toggled LED

No issues, great light.

Pull the ballast, rewire the tombstones, and put in 120V LED tubes. I have done this for several fixtures (mostly T8) with great success. Bright, well behaved lighting. Be aware that there are two types of LED tubes, those that take hot at one end and neutral at the other, and those that split the pair within the tombstones, either will work, you just wire them differently.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Just buy a new fixture and use direct wire t5 or t8.
They are so much more efficient and bright.
The ballast is the part that is most trouble so getting rid of that is a big plus.

Yup. I have a T8 fixture wired up above my reloading bench, and it's the best thing ever. I replaced the fluorescent bulbs I got when I got the fixture (it came from an old job when they were closing the doors for good) with direct-replacement bulbs to offset the horrible EM interference fluorescent bulbs produce because of my scale/dispenser units. What a difference it makes.

Upgrade, you/he won't regret it. The only downside is the increased bulb cost - 6 Phillips LED conversion bulbs ran me $100 or so at HD in '21.

Another supporter of re-lacing the old fixture with a new LED one.
I recommend getting LEDs in the 5000K range