I recently had to replace my old 5 ft. fitting (choke blown) and picked up an el-cheapo B&Q Eterna.
It's very slow to start up and will often blink on and off for minutes after switch on. I have tried a new tube and starter (in various combinations) to no effect.
Anyone know of common design or manufacturing defects which I could correct?
Thanks.
common causes are wrong type of starter, faulty starter, faulty tube.
NT
Cold temperature affects them
Interesting that. Do you happen to know how cold?
I changed quite a few on Monday at the local Uni halls of res. They were stored in a steel container outside & quite a few did that blinking, but seemed to settle down later - I guess when they warmed up?
It's a problem with 8' tubes in the cold on 240V mains. If your mains is down to 230V, this will make it much worse, and you generally can't start 8' tubes on 220V even at room temperature.
Tubes shorter than 8' shouldn't have any problems on 230/240V mains, unless they're extremely cold (like in a freezer).
A second issue is that they won't run efficiently in the cold, because the mercury vapour pressure will be too low. They either need a thermal jacket so they will warm up, or you used to be able to get them specially made with different mercury/argon dosing for low temperature operation.
I think I've found the trouble. The bayonet socket used by the starter allows too much rotation so that, when the starter is fully turned clockwise, the starter pins have passed the contacts in the socket and make only intermittent contact. No trouble since I took it back about 10 degrees.
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