Fluorescent light ballast replacement

April 13, 2020 1:39 PM

What would be an appropriate replacement for this fluorescent lamp ballast? Was installed about 15-20 years ago. I need four, each powers two lamps. I'm assuming symbols on the left are for neutral, ground and live. How concerned should I be that it's got no red or blue or yellow wires? Do the three white plastic terminals on each end accept bare wire and clamp it down or should I plan on cutting and splicing during replacement? These light fixtures are on the same circuit as my home office, so I've not had the time to turn it off at the breaker and fully remove and cap to inspect further.
posted by now i'm piste to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

Best answer: Have you considered replacing the tubes with LED tubes? You can then splice out the ballast and have no more ballast problems.
posted by alexei at 1:59 PM on April 13, 2020 [9 favorites]

I believe that ballast is itself a replacement, which would explain the discrepancy in the output wire colors. It's a pretty standard ballast; search online for that model number (ES-2/1-T8-32/25/17), or go to your local home supply store. Depending on what you replace it with you'll either be clamping and screwing stripped wire (as you suggest) or you may be splicing.
Here's an almost exact replacement at Amazon.
posted by achrise at 2:00 PM on April 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The important bits are that it's an "instant start" type, and that the ballast you buy is appropriate to the type and number of bulbs that fit your fixtures. T8 means tubular bulbs 1" in diameter (eight eighths of an inch). The wattage varies with length; 4' fixtures use 32w bulbs. The color of the wires doesn't matter; just follow the diagram on the new ballasts. Most will have leads coming out of the ballast rather than screw or spring terminals, so expect to have to use wire nuts.
posted by jon1270 at 2:09 PM on April 13, 2020

What Alexei said, but also have you considered swapping out the whole lamp for an LED? You don’t ever have to fiddle with anything ever again.
posted by kerf at 2:25 PM on April 13, 2020

Do the three white plastic terminals on each end accept bare wire and clamp it down

Yes. But the replacement ballast that achrise links to has fixed wiring, so you need connector blocks of some sort. I'm often using ones like these (the two-lever version, in this case).

Have you considered replacing the tubes with LED tubes?

In that case check that the LED tubes you buy are indeed meant to be hooked up without a ballast, as there are also tubes that are meant as a direct replacement without having to change the ballast, and these in two variants: for conventional (choke) ballasts, and for electronic ones.
posted by Stoneshop at 2:38 PM on April 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

Another vote for LED tubes, which let you choose a much softer light color than fluorescent. There are plenty of guides to the swap online.
posted by Dashy at 5:12 PM on April 13, 2020

Best answer: You can get pretty much any 2-lamp T8 ballast, so long as it is designed for the intended wattage of lamps, which should be printed on them. (32W or lesser, but Some High Output lamps go up to 54W)

example ballasts

Or, if you are in there anyway, you could consider tearing the ballasts out and using 120V led's that are in a lamp shape.

replacement tubes.
posted by nickggully at 6:17 PM on April 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

LED light can feel sharper, but I much prefer it to fluorescent, it saves electricity, and no worries about ballasts and mercury.
posted by theora55 at 6:26 PM on April 13, 2020

Response by poster: I really like the idea of LED replacements. Avoids the future ballast repair and may even drop the cost of the overall project. Thanks to all suggesting it.

achrise, thanks for you insight that the one I examined may already be a replacement. As it turns out the one you linked isn't identically wired. ES-2-T8-32/25/17-120-AMT-IS isn't a model number, but a Compatibility spec consisting of number of bulbs to drive (2); bulb size (T8); and bulb wattage (32/25/17).

Stoneshop, I like the idea of a LED bulb that can be installed without removing the dead ballast but I don't quite follow the rest of your answer. There are two kinds of ballasts?
posted by now i'm piste at 6:07 PM on April 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I just put 4 of these Philips Mainsfit in a fixture with 2 dead ballasts. Cheaper than replacing the ballasts. There are other types of LED retrofit but they are either a two part system with an LED driver and a strip of LEDs or they are LED tubes designed to work with a fluorescent ballast. The tubes I am recommending run on line current so you are bypassing the ballast and connecting the supply wires to the wires that go to the lampholders.
posted by Pembquist at 9:23 PM on April 14, 2020

I like the idea of a LED bulb that can be installed without removing the dead ballast but I don't quite follow the rest of your answer. There are two kinds of ballasts?

There are 2 types of ballasts: conventional/“choke” and electronic. The electronic type are lighter-weight and typically cheaper, but also possibly more failure prone. For fluorescent bulbs they do basically the same job, but accomplish it by different means.

There are also LED replacement bulbs that can use the power supplied by a ballast, and other bulbs that are connected directly to line voltage. If you choose the latter type then you don’t need to buy a replacement ballast, but you do need to remove the existing ballast. My guess is you’ll want to use the same bulbs for all the fixtures, in which case to avoid future ballast issues, you’d need to remove all the ballasts and use line voltage type lamps.
posted by jon1270 at 2:15 PM on April 15, 2020