# 84,000 hour T8 bulbs



## daveEM (Nov 18, 2012)

*84,000 hour T8 bulbs* :thumbsup:

Lets see... 24x365=8,760 
84,000/8760=9.6 years.

As I'm old, getting older, there is a good chance I'm never going back. 

 I've got a couple of customers that have a problem with replacing tubes. Then they have a problem with my rate for changing them. It's easy, warm, dry work so I don't have a problem. Still in the next 9 years they should be able to find a person at 1/10th my rate to change them out again.

One candidate is good... T12s. I like LEDs but looking around I originally was going to replace all the fixtures. Thought of retro fit kits but not sold on that idea.

So I fire off an email to one fixture manufacturer and say... what happens in 50,000 hours when your fixtures start failing? << All is very quiet. Bic Pens come to mind, but crap you can't be changing out fixtures every 5 years. << Especially if they are screwed to the cement ceiling.

Not sure if the anti-LED poster still posts but what do you guys think of these long lifers? Pull the T12 magnetic ballasts, new ballast, and these tubes...
http://assets.sylvania.com/assets/documents/FL083%20OCTRON%20XP%20XL.bc74ac49-8157-44fa-8138-461c57ffc768.pdf

Anybody ever try them? I guess for the other customer... they have T8s already so the hour count goes down but no ballast replacement required.

Still have to price this stuff out.


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## Black Dog (Oct 16, 2011)

daveEM said:


> *84,000 hour T8 bulbs* :thumbsup:
> 
> Lets see... 24x365=8,760
> 84,000/8760=9.6 years.
> ...



Nice:thumbsup: till the ballasts kick the bucket :laughing:


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## Ontario (Sep 9, 2013)

Sounds good. Until you realize the ballasts are not designed for 84,000 hours of service.


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## Electric_Light (Apr 6, 2010)

Neither LED ballast nor electronic T8 ballast last forever. Ballast case temperature is a huge factor. The output parameters are different, but gas tube fluorescent and LED(solid state fluorescent) lighting ballasts are nearly the same thing. 

Super long life lamp is a good idea with brand new ballasts. If your ballasts are already 12 years old nearing 100,000 hours of use, I would expect the ballasts to be the weak link too. RE80 T8 lamps have a proven lifetime lumen maintenance of over 90%. This is proven from field data. 

Dust accumulation will reduce output, both LED and fluorescent. 

LEDs are often rated for forecasted hours to 30% degradation. Some are now advertised as 90% to 60,000, but it's a prediction. 

The service life of T8 fluorescent lamps are longer than T12 in general, because of the system configuration. 

Take one hundred 120v 60W bulbs and wire them up to run them in 50 sets of 2 in series on 240v. For each lamp that burns out, two shuts off. Set up another circuit but run them all in parallel on 120v. Only the ones that burn out will shut off. So the time it takes before 20% of lamps are shut off is longer with the second example.


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