I think I'd better get this question in before Tech Week. (And I'm really glad that Monday kicks off tech week.) I understand DC car electricity OK, but not household AC current. I want to wire some fluorescent lights into existing incandescent bulbs. The incandescent lights are the standard ceiling sockets, if you know what I mean. Is there nothing to it? The fluorescent lights won't overload wiring that was intended for a single overhead incandescent bulb, will it? Is there anything else I should know (besides the obvious safe stuff) before adding on the fluorescent lights? Thanks in advance, Matt
Electrical devices are calculated by how much amps watts they need. Incandescent lights need more watts than florescent lights. If u have been using 200 watt lights with no problem u could possibly switch to 200 watts worth of florescent lighting. As long as your wiring and service, breaker box are up to the job. If u get breakers constantly kicking off u might be overloading those circuits, then u take out some of the lights untill its not overloaded.
You should be ok. As stated above, flourescent lights use less juice than incandescents. They require most of their amps at start up. The way you worded the question made me think you wanted to put flourescent bulbs in incandescant light fixtures. Ofcourse they have new energy savers that do that now too. But I think what you were trying to say is can the wiring support a new flourescent light fixture. Generally, the answer is yes. When buying the lights look at the amps loads on the box and compare that to what your breaker in the service panel has. Probably not more than 15 amps.
If your house/garage says "I'm old, I have fuses. What's a circuit breaker?" Rewire it, and run the third ground wire. If it's got wired third ground wire it's probably new enough not to worry about it. I only rewired the garage, with 220 heavy enough for a welder, since that's where all the "valuable" stuff is anyway.
If you have been using incandescents, you really should not have a problem with fluoerescents. Like Roadkat said, you can match wattages. You can figure overall capacity, too. Watts=Volts x Amps. So a 20 amp circuit on 110 could theoretically carry about 2200 watts, a 15 amp circuit could handle about 1650. Check your breakers. Remember that a 20 amp circuit needs 12 ga wire and a 15 amp circuit uses 14 ga wire. Indoors,you can use type NM wire -something like 12-2 with a ground. You can always use a bigger wire with a smaller breaker,ie 12 gauge with a 15 amp breaker, but not the other way. As for the wiring, are you using the standard octagonal junction box with a porcelain light fixture? Do you want to keep the incandescents or subs***ute for them? If you are adding new lamps,just run your wire into the junction box and splice it into the existing white, black and bare copper wires. It should be fairly logical which ones go to the lamps and which ones carry current on through. There should be a clamp inside the junction box, or you may have to add a connector to the box to secure the wires. Use lots of staples to secure your wires-they make a nifty color coded plastic wire staple now-a bridge of plastic with two parallel nails that makes it really hard to piece your wire or crush it in hammmering the staple in too far. You can make the attachments inside the box with wire nuts. Oh, and when attaching the wires, keep careful track of what's attached where to the bulb socket. Sometimes if the lamp is switched, there is a white wire and a black wire both going to the switch In this case,the white wire to the fixture is probably HOT and was used as one of the wires to run down to the switch and back. If you are subsituting lamps, just run the wire, take off the old fixtures and wire the new fluorscent leads in their places. Make sure everything is grounded to the box or the fixture terminals and use a metal cover instead of the porcelain socket. Have you bought your fixtures yet? Most fluorescents don't do well in cold weather, but you can buy special cold weather fixtures and bulbs that will work at temperatures you won't want to. More money, but worth the cost. Sorry if this is too simplistic. I don't mean to be insulting. I had a long 13 hour day at work and I'm probably just babbling. Best of luck.
No, not tooo simple at all. It's exactly what I need. Yes, I'm using the standard octagonal junction box with porcelain light fixtures, and I want to keep the incandescents. I think I'm all set now. Thanks to everyone for their help! --Matt
Like 5window said regular fluorescent lights don't do good in cold weather. If you want the better ones ask for "high output" lights. They have a zero degree ballast in them, and the bulbs will be marked with an "H.O." on the ends. If your garage is heated you shouldn't have a problem with the regular ones though. Later Count
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