Hi,
You may remember me posting some questions about kitchen lighting and also non maintained emergency lights. Here's a quick update, followed by a new question about starters:
The bulkhead could be non-maintained or maintained depending whether or not a link was fitted across a pair of terminals. I fitted a wire to make the lamp maintained and found that the tube was flickering and obviously needed replacing. I don't know whether:
- the dying tube killed the battery
- the dying battery killed the tube
- the tube and battery dying were entirely independent and coincidental
I never got any further at diagnosing the problem, due to a lack of time and round tuits.
I had an identical unit still boxed that SWMBO would not let me fit above the stairs for aesthetic reasons, so I simply fitted that instead.
As for the charging LED getting brighter, that was an embarrassing red herring, which I wish I had not mentioned! The new unit's led is just as bright. I think because the nights are darker, earlier, the led is more noticeable than it was in the lighter summer nights.
Regarding the kitchen, in my limited experience of fluorescent tubes, they tend to come with white starters that blink the tube a couple of times before the tube strikes. I read somewhere - most likely here - that this blinking wears the tube out, so in the past I have bought electronic starters, which were green. These make the light go from off to on in one go with no blinking.
Wickes sell this:
The starter included is not the green starter that I am familiar with. (Ok, the green is only the plastic body and they could use any colour of plastic for that). This starter looks a bit like an RCD as it has a little button on the top. It is branded Osram.
I looked on the Osram web site and it says it is a resettable circuit breaker that trips when the tube dies. Rather than have the tube blinking like a strobe, the breaker will trip.
The curious thing is that the Osram site says it is "almost like an electronic starter", implying that it is not an electronic starter. Possibly someone has pointed this out to Wickes, which is why their online description has changed?
The starter is not living up to their claims and the tube does blink each time I turn the light on. I put one of my green 100% electronic starters in and the tube strikes first time but there is a hum before it does so. I have never had a hum when using an electronic starter in any other light before. So my reason for waffling on about all this is to ask: will it be ok to use the "proper" electronic starter in this light fitting or is the fact that it is humming telling me something is not quite compatible?
I notice the first review for the 5' version:
One last daft question: if the starter is Osram does this mean they make the whole fitting, or is made by someone else and the only Osram part is the starter?
The tube supplied is 3500K, which in earlier posts I said I did not like but actually, I have got used to it.
TIA