I Need Electrical Help!

   / I Need Electrical Help! #1  

Bird

Epic Contributor
Joined
Mar 20, 2000
Messages
43,753
Location
Corinth, Texas
My 21' x 25' shop building has 8 light fixtures in the ceiling. Each one has two 48" florescent tubes (see first attachment). Half of them are on one switch and half on another switch. All are on the same 20 amp breaker, but nothing else on that circuit (as far as I can tell). They all had two 34 watt Damon tubes when I bought the place and all worked. One tube burned out, and the others all were getting black on the ends, so I replaced all 16 of them with 40 watt Philips daylight tubes on 2-17-07. Everything worked fine for a couple of months, until 4/24/07, when the 2 tubes in one fixture didn't come on. Later in the day, they came on. For several days, everything was working again. And then weird things have been happening the last several days. Different ones will fail to come on at times. Sometimes if I leave the switch turned on, ones that didn't come on will later come on; sometimes they don't. And sometimes one of the two tubes in a fixture comes on while the other does not.

So this morning, I opened up a couple of them. Everything looks OK, and the ballasts are labelled "Advance Mark III Energy Saver, Class P Type I Outdoor, for two F40 tubes, 120 volt, 60 hertz, .73 amp standard bulbs, .63 amp energy saver bulb, etc. (see second attachment).

I'm completely baffled; any ideas???:confused:
 
   / I Need Electrical Help!
  • Thread Starter
#2  
Oops, I forgot the attachments.
 

Attachments

  • P5070002 (Small).JPG
    P5070002 (Small).JPG
    42.2 KB · Views: 254
  • P5070004 (Small).JPG
    P5070004 (Small).JPG
    40.5 KB · Views: 215
   / I Need Electrical Help! #3  
Id say high humidity and dust on the tubes - but looks too clean. I dont know. My similar symptoms were due to such moisture situation.
luck, larry
 
   / I Need Electrical Help! #4  
All I can tell you is that yo are using about 6amps.. so you are not overlaoding anything.

Usually when i have flourescent fixtures going out.. i check if it has replaceable starter.. if not.. it is usually the ballast.

Also.. some ballast and lamp types are not compatable.. like fast start types.. etc..

soundguy
 
   / I Need Electrical Help! #5  
If they are hard wired , check for a loose netural hot wire. I had that happen in my shop same type lights. somehow my netural wire in a couple of lights got loose.
 
   / I Need Electrical Help! #6  
Also be sure that there is a good attachment of the equipment (green) ground to the shell.

Vernon
 
   / I Need Electrical Help! #7  
sounds like the ballast is starting to go.
 
   / I Need Electrical Help! #8  
   / I Need Electrical Help! #9  
I can't help, only sympathize. My fluorescent fixture in my garage also acts up. On occasion, it will not come on. I turn it off and on a couple times and it MAY come on and may not. I may try again a short time later and it works fine. Sometimes it will go for months and work fine. Right now, I can't remember the last time it acted up, but it has been months. I have checked my connections, replaced bulbs, and finally just learned to live with it.
 
   / I Need Electrical Help! #10  
Bird said:
They all had two 34 watt Damon tubes when I bought the place and all worked. One tube burned out, and the others all were getting black on the ends, so I replaced all 16 of them with 40 watt Philips daylight tubes on 2-17-07. Everything worked fine for a couple of months, until 4/24/07, when the 2 tubes in one fixture didn't come on....
I'm completely baffled; any ideas???:confused:

Bird, I can't say for sure, but since you replaced all the bulbs at the same time and you are having intermittent failures in random places all at the same time, I'd sure suspect those tubes you put in. It seems like as soon as they get a little age, they become faulty. Since you bought them all at the same time, you probably got all the tubes from the same manufacturing lot. Just for grins, I think I'd try to find a GE bulb or one of the original bulbs and see if the problem won't go away.
 
 
Top