I bought five Homebase fluorescent strip lamps a year or two back, a couple of months back the ballast in one exploded with a big bang and clouds of acrid, PVC smelling smoke; the same's just happened to a second.
Anyone else had this? They are 5' 58W single strips.
2 out of 5 and fairly close together is grounds enough, in my book, for them all to be returned as "not fit for purpose". Always assuming that your mains supply is within tolerance max allowable is about 254v.
NT
It boils down to the "reasonable man" test. Would a reasonable man expect a light fitting to fail after 2 years or use or 10? I've got florry light fittings here that are probably 20 or 30 years old they still work. Ones I fitted maybe 8 years ago are also fine. Not Homebase ones mind, came from CEF made by Tamlite it says on the side.
I'm not sure thats a question one could answer with any certainty.
For the OP, magnetic ballasts are a lot more reliable than electronic.
NT
Yep these were both electronic.
Not if you include starters and tube life. And buy good quality electronic ones.
bof write:
Right... its just another electronic appliance.
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
Tube life depends on how theyre started. Glowstarters dont behave well in this respect, but thermal starters do better than electronic ballasts. Shame theyre so hard to find today. A time delay relay could be used for the same result.
Quality counts of course, but doesnt come close to giving equal reliability. You've got a chunk of iron wound with thickish copper wire, which is inherently immune to most failure modes, and gives over a century life expectancy, versus a small electronic circuit, that no matter how well built cant come anywhere close reliability-wise.
NT
Out of curiosity, what make/model? Are they in a particularly warm area (e.g. my loft would be unsuitable for electronic ballasts as it gets too hot)?
At work, we have thousands of office fluorescent lamps with electronic ballasts. There's one guy who seems to spend half his time replacing failed electronic ballasts in these.
In message , Andrew Gabriel writes
Sorry can't say now as it went back to HomeBase.
Nope, it's a cool dry basement and they're stood off about 8mm from the ceiling.
Do they actually fail with a bang and smoke, or just fail? both of mine went bang and melted:
from memory the previous one failed at the same part of the ballast.
Don't you 3 more that are yet to explode?
Don't know. I suspect they get replaced because the maintenance guys see the light has gone out.
I can't tell which part of yours failed -- you'd have to remove the cover. The ones I see mostly seem to be the HF transformer has burned out and is a charred lump. I would imagine it smelled when doing this. This may be a secondary effect, resulting from a switching transistor shorting, or could be due to excessive secondary voltage and insulation breakdown triggered by a dead tube and the ballast failing to detect this and shutdown. These units will all be about 7 years old now.
That's the main reason for posting here, I was wondering if I was just being unlucky or there was a systemic fault.
I'd have though if my 40% was typical there'd have been some ME TOO or replies.
'The Bill' set has a large number of fluorescent overhead lights - many electronic ballasts and dimmable. (Those long walking talking shots showing the entire set mean 'film' lighting just isn't possible - so practical lights are used) And I've not known one fail. I've got a few at home - Osram ballasts and dimmable - and again non has failed. Despite being on for long periods. They are, however, well cooled. The other florries I have around the house which are non electronic - workshop and cellar - seem all to have blackened ends to the tubes and regularly failing starters. And tubes, come to that. But they are commercial fittings.
Osram is a good make, but not cheap. I would guess the Homebase ones are probably some far easterm make I've never heard of -- I just can't see them putting Osram (or Tridonic, or Philips, etc) electronic ballasts in. The fittings would be too expensive for their target market by the time their normal markup was added.
Sounds like you have mismatched tubes/starters/ballasts, or grotty tubes. That's not normal. Starters in particular should hardly ever fail in residential use where they aren't left trying to start dead tubes for weeks on end.
Got to admit that 2/5 with the same fault is odd and the lack of response also a bit odd. Sort of makes me wonder if there is something "odd" about your supply, fast high peaks that damage/stress bits of silicon that a magnetic ballast wouldn't even see.
Well, yes / no.
Solid state semiconductor ballasts are dodgy.
The less you pay for them the dodgier they are.
If you are prepared to pay 50 x the DIY shed prices they are totally reliable and a delight (*) to work with.
(*) Weedy pun, I know.
Derek
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