It seems that a number of our fluorescent bulbs went out all at once. In our house, this means 10 or more at once; four or five fixtures with two or four tubes. We had some left in the last bulk puirchase we made, but fell short of filling all of the fixtures with new bulbs.

The last time we had cause to shop the hardware store, I noticed they had "LED replacement" bulbs. I've used some to replace CFL and incandescents, and thought that would be pretty slick. They run a bit more efficiently, and last much longer, so even if they cost a few times more than their fluorescent counterparts, it might be worth it. Really it's the "last much longer" promise I'm interested in; the year or two between replacements doesn't seem long enough to me.

The wife ran to the store and grabbed some, and then swapped them for some of the right size. She had grabbed some T-8, which are just a little smaller diameter than the T-12 we had, but this bunch said "not to be used to replace T-12 bulbs." My (somewhat limited) undertanding of the differences is the diameter of the bulb, and (probably directly related) the difference in output ranges. The T-12, presumably because  they're larger and contain more gas, can cast more lumens. Of course,  you can get smaller-output T-12 that will match the T-8, but..really...whatever. It wasn't right, they kindly swapped, and all was well.

She went to then plug them in, and the instructions contained all kinds of rewiring details. She turned it over to me.

When using an incandescent bulb, it's essentially wired directly to the bulb. CFL replacements contain small electronics to handle this load and convert it into whatever the bulbs need. Likewise, the incandescent LED replacements do the same.

When using a fluorescent fixture, there's usually a "ballast," or the bits needed to change the direct load into whatever the bulbs need. This, evidently, doesn't work with the LED replacements. I checked online, and there are "direct" LED replacements for fluorescent bubls, but they cost $80-ish each. Not worth it when rewiring the fixture is really about cutting wires and bypassing the ballast.

A small bit more than that. The typical fluorescent bulb has power on one end and ground on the other. The tube of gas lights up as it conducts the electricity from one end to the other. Really, this is how an incandescent bulb works, too; the filament on the inside just gets intensely hot and gives off light as the electricity passes through it (on the outside of the bulb it's from the big twisty screw part to the little metal nub at the bottom. The LED replacements have all of the power bits on one end, one of the prongs is hot and the other is ground.

This means that in addition to removing the ballast, you need to replace the end of the fixture (the "tombstone") so that there's a separation from the left and right sides. In the typical fluorescent bulb, the end is constructed so that the whole end is  one big connector. The LED replacements came with new tombstones with separated ends, so those also needed to be replaced and wired in.

So today I had time. I disconnected the wires coming out of the ceiling tht were attached to the ballast. I cut the wires from the ballasts (there were two in my fixture, one per pair of bulbs it seems) to the tombstones (ultimately an unncessary step), and removed the ballasts and tombstones from one end. WIth some of the ballast wiring, I cut bits to correctly connect the new tombstones directly to the wires coming out of the ceiling. I mounted the tombstones in place of the ones removed, put in a bulb and was disappointed it didn't turn on.

I toggled the power a couple times and waited. Then I did what everyone has done since the invention of fluorescent tube lighting--I resetaed the bulb and it flickered to life. Bright and white and happy, even though it was all alone in the fixture. Often you need to have all of the bulbs in before they'll turn on, but these are independent, which is also nice. Putting all four into the fixture seemed to bring the sun into the closet.

Start-to-finish, including time to look for tools, carry ladders, and open packages, it was about 20 minutes of work. The hardest part was getting the old tombstones out of the fixture, just because they needed to slide out at an angle that was counter to any way I could seem to hold my arm; a little wiggling and swearing did the trick. In hindsight, I wouldn't have cut any of the ballast-to-tombstone wires; it just caused a bunch of pieces that could have been moved as a bundle. There was enough other wire at the ends of the ballast to do the trick (and i happen to have some wire from other projects that I could have used, but didn't because I scavanged off the old stuff), and the bulbs came with enough tombstones to replace them all (I only replaced one end).

The new bulbs came with stickers to remind you which end is "hot," but since only one end has wires, it's pretty self-evident; it's still a nice reminder that there's no ballast in there so that whoever tries to put fluorescent bulbs in there in the future will be less frustrated. I put the ballast cover back on (over just the wires now), and replaced the fixture's cover. The light was still brighter than I remembered--a nice bright white, just a little muted with the cover on. I picked up the pieces of wire and other parts, put the ladders aside, and called my electric work for the day done.