Here's a shot of the hallway where the HO troffers in my previous pic were. The lights here are a bit run down as around a quarter of the lights were completely dead, I guess this place must have been bright when it opened in the mid 70s though.
They probably did what my grandpa did: buy twice the amount of light needed so you can wait much longer before it's too dark and you have to change the lamps. Now he has me who offers to change the lamps every time i visit. He and I went to hD to buy lamps. we bought a 10-pack of full-wattage Philips T12 daylight lamps and guess what! They were NON ALTO!!!! No green endcaps, no Alto markings, and NO eco markings! They're brand new lamps too!
Heh, speaking of Altos, the subway seems to be filled with them. I've seen them used in the tunnels, on the platforms, inside the subway cars, and behind the destination signs. In fact I saw some lights being relamped with...Alto IIs today.
Why is that odd? I think it's a good thing they used Sylvania's over Altos. The non-alto philips lamps my grandpa got seem to be very well made. Unlike the sylvanias, the phosphors are spread evenly and smoothly and the etch is a lot cleaner and high-res than on sylvania lamps.
Not only the Sylvania HOs are still full-mercury, they are still made in Canada! xD But yeah, their Drummondville, QC factory tends to have somewhat grainy phosphors since they switched from organic to water-based solvent in the 1990s.
Even the F20T12 lamp in my closet light which is a canadian Sylvania has a spotty/runny phosphor coating. It's from the early 2000's and still works! It's the last original closet light lamp out of the three. My brother's lamp still worked but it was switched with the replacement lamp in my parent's closet since they didn't like the flickering of the GE EcoLux. The EcoLux lamps wouldn't even start on my closet light! (i converted my closet light from TS to preheat) i noticed no matter what starter i use, the lamp rectifies for a few seconds before coming on totally. Is the lamp on it's way out or is something probablt loose inside the fixture?
I thought it was the cooper starter so i switched to a GE/HN starter and it worked fine for a few days and now it's jsut starting to rectify. The cooper started started off doing that with the lamp for a few seconds but then the lamp would keep on rectifying unless you flicked the switch after about a minute of it being on. It has a tube guard on it if that means anything... Did you mean the lamp or the starter is junk? The lamps has high hours on it but minimal end blackening. I may try a different lamp and see if the problem's solved... will anything be harmed if the lamp is rectifying?
On preheat fixtures rectifying normally causes no harm, unlike leaving a completely EOL tube! Since the preheat current is higher than the running current, the ballast may burn out after a while if the tube keeps blinking and preheating without starting.
The lamp does start. I thought the starter wasn't giving a strong enough start to start the lamp but maybe it's actually the lamp... I opened up the starter and there's this thing that looks like a christmas mini light that's very silvery looking in the middle. The other thing is this whitish looking cylender that's very small. It has a wire on either end. One wire is connected the lamp pin and the other is free. Both ends of the "mini light" are connected to the lamp pins.
Yeah, I prefer full mercury Sylvanias over Altos too, anyways I've noticed that some older Sylvania merc lamps also have grainy phosphor too.
Oh and Mike, the Christmas light bulb in the starter is the glowbottle which controls the preheat time, the silver-white cylinder should be the capacitor...that's used to suppress RF interference and to help the glowbottle fire. Not all starter have a cap inside though, the Super Starters tend to be capless.
I've had that problem with lamps rectifying in my preheaters too, mainly with newer lamps and starters though.
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Oddly these HO troffers use Sylvania lamps.
a) One filament has too little emitter.
b) The starter triggers too easily (which seems to be recurrent with many modern starters)
c) It's plain junk
On preheat fixtures rectifying normally causes no harm, unlike leaving a completely EOL tube! Since the preheat current is higher than the running current, the ballast may burn out after a while if the tube keeps blinking and preheating without starting.
Oh and Mike, the Christmas light bulb in the starter is the glowbottle which controls the preheat time, the silver-white cylinder should be the capacitor...that's used to suppress RF interference and to help the glowbottle fire. Not all starter have a cap inside though, the Super Starters tend to be capless.
I've had that problem with lamps rectifying in my preheaters too, mainly with newer lamps and starters though.