# LED Cooler door lighting



## wendon (Sep 27, 2010)

I'm just wondering if anyone has experience with LED retrofitting on reach-in cooler door lighting. I'm bidding on one now and the challenge is that someone hacked in T8 lighting (open high voltage splices etc.) and now they want to go to LED lighting. Are there any enclosures available for the power supplies? My local supplier handles Sylvania but I could go with something else too. To qualify for a rebate, it has to replace the existing fixture and can't be the lights that install in the existing tombstone fixtures.


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## thoenew (Jan 17, 2012)

I'm also interested in this. My father wants to do the same thing.


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## 360max (Jun 10, 2011)

ask BBQ he did the below cooler/freezer


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## BBQ (Nov 16, 2010)

Ahh ........ wear long sleeve shirts. 

The one in the picture 360 provided was not really a retrofit, in that picture they added doors were there had not been any so all we did was bring branch circuits to the 1/2" FMC whips hanging out of the pre-fabed door frames. We did this in about 60 stores.

However ........ we have installed literally thousands of LED strips in place of existing florescent lamps in frozen food cases.

Fun times ....... :jester:

We have never needed any enclosures for the power supplies, we pull the ballasts out and replace them with the LED power supplies. We also reuse the existing wiring between the power supplies and the old lamp socket locations. 

Where are the ballasts located? It depends on the case manufacturer and model of the case. The ballasts may be outside the case on top, outside the case at the bottom in the kick plates, or very often in the door jambs.


A typical night (yeah you really can't do this with the store open, if you try your time will be much longer) goes like this.

Pull out all the lamps from as many as you think you can do. 

Pull out all the lamp sockets, any mounts for them etc. Sockets may be in with small screws but much more often riveted in. Luckily the rivets are soft and with a beater screwdriver and linemans you can wedge the screwdriver behind the mount and shear off the two rivets. DON'T hit the wires for the socket while doing this, you need them and if you goof them up you will be doing much more disassemble to repair them.

Pull out all the ballasts. This is pretty easy once you figure out where they are. Many case makers stopped making their own doors and use 'Anthony Doors' 

http://www.anthonyintl.com/en/Products/DoorsFrames/101Series.aspx 

Anthony doors install the ballasts inside the door jambs. To get to them you need to pull off plastic / vinyl corner moldings, treat them kindly, you have to put them back. Once you pull off the moldings you can pull off the thin metal cover strip. Treat this gently too, it bends in your hands and only makes putting it back harder. By the way, as you do all this you will have to keep opening and closing the doors.

Install all the new power supplies

Install the mounts and LEDs, splice the two conductors from the old lamp socket onto the LED strip, we usually did this at the top end of the strip, it is a splice in the case. Butt splices work OK, but I started using a crimp connector that was gel filled. keep the leads as short as you can, twist them up / fold them up as tight as you can and tuck them out of sight the best you can. (If this open splice really bothers you your option is to do much more case disassembly to hide the splice inside the door jamb. It would be hard to be competitive with this method)

Power up the power supplies and check your work, reassembly all you took apart and clean up. 

I can do 20 to 35 LED strips in a 8-10 hour shift, you can too once you get it down, you will be no where near this at first. I would not count on more than 2 per hour for a while.


A note about pricing, we are always asked to give a price 'per door' I always change that to 'per LED unit' and here is why.

A two door case has 3 LEDs, two ends and a center, a five door case will have 6 LEDs etc. A row of frozen foods may have four 5 door cases or it could be ten 2 door cases. You will end up getting short changed. 

Also the 'end' LED strips are lower wattage than the center LED strips (Last ones I did had 13 watt ends, 23 watt centers) In a row where cases but up to each other you have two end fixtures side by side.

Another issue is who is supplying the power supplies. We often use more power supplies than we really need due to the fact we do not rewire the case. If the ballast we are replacing only supplied two lamps the power supply will only supply two LED strips so that our 100 watt supply is only loaded to 46 watts (2 x 23=46) If we rewired the case we could load it more and use less of them. But we are not paying for the supplies so we choose to save labor.

I have to run, ask questions and I will do my best to answer, I will try to find some pictures to post showing some of this.


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## wendon (Sep 27, 2010)

Thanks for all the info BBQ!:thumbup::thumbup:
First of all the ballasts are mounted on the surface about the door. Someone has hacked in T8 lighting and not all the splices are in an enclosure. The ballast mounts on the surface and there is a cover that butts up to the end of the ballast on some of them. Do you prefer any specific brand? What color do you prefer. Some of them offer a 4200k or a 5000k I believe. The Sylvania ones I'm looking at only can power 2 strips per a ballast. They have a different strip for the end mullions but it requires the same wattage. They installed a new beer cave and love the LED lights in that so they want all the lights changed now. Do you move all the racks or do you work around them? Thanks for your help.


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## te12co2w (Jun 3, 2007)

*led*

Great info


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## Harborbreeze (Sep 3, 2012)

I have check your link, it really helpful for me, I am trying to do this for very long time, but don't get a batter idea. Thank you so much BBQ.:thumbup:


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## Cletis (Aug 20, 2010)

*Led*

We have done a couple of these http://www.gelightingsolutions.com/Refrigerated-Display-Lighting/id-1000/Immersion™_RV40

http://www.gelightingsolutions.com/Refrigerated-Display-Lighting/id-1000/Immersion™_RV40


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## Cletis (Aug 20, 2010)

*how to*

How to video 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEOXk3MiHzo


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## MHElectric (Oct 14, 2011)

Excellent post BBQ. Lots of good instruction.

Good video Cletus.


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## yarlkon (May 31, 2013)

We now have internal ballast in these bulbs. No need for mounting a ballast. Tear out the old stuff and just add power.


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## petermohan (Jul 25, 2013)

I m also looking for LED door lighting.Where we can find the best LED lights??


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## yarlkon (May 31, 2013)

Give me your email address and I will send you some pictures. I have a great solution.


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