[Shop-talk] Dimmable CFLs at Home Depot

[Doug Braun]

What's a good source of reasonably-priced well-made ballasts? I assume you are replacing magnetic ones with electronic ones.

My garage has a couple of fluorescent fixtures that each have two 8-foot high-output bulbs.  There is tons of light, but the cheapo ballasts get pretty warm.  I wonder if it is cheaper to replace just the ballasts, or just get new fixtures with better ballasts.  The fixtures themselves are quite basic, just a long skinny metal box with a couple of sockets at each end.  There is no reflector, which is OK because the ceiling is bright white.

Doug


--- On Tue, 2/24/09, Randall <tr3driver at ca.rr.com> wrote:

> From: Randall <tr3driver at ca.rr.com>
> Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] Dimmable CFLs at Home Depot
> To: "'Shop Talk List'" <shop-talk at autox.team.net>
> Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 1:43 PM
> > What do you do with the old ones?
> 
> Not sure if I should admit this in public, I've been
> just tossing them in
> the trash.
> 
> >  Is there any scrap metal or recycle
> > value to them?
> 
> Some, probably.  But they are potted in a very unpleasant
> tarry substance
> and I doubt there is more than a pound of copper in each
> one (if it's copper
> at all).  Most of the weight is probably the iron cores.
> 
> The price of scrap copper does appear to be up, it's
> now some $1.60/pound
> ... still not worth it to me to try to salvage the copper
> from them.  And if
> I saved them up and sold them as-is to a scrap dealer for
> barely enough to
> cover my cost of transporting them; they would probably set
> fire to the tar,
> which would likely be just as bad as in the landfill. 
> That's the usual way
> of recycling copper wire and so on.
> 
> Randall
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