Here's a mysterious one for you guys: Anyone have any idea how replacing tubes in a florescent light can cause a direct short and fry the compressor in a chest freezer?
That happened at a friend's house. They recently moved into a house that had been unoccupied previously for like 13 years, so I guess the wiring could be suspect after sitting that long.
Anyway in their pantry there is a florescent light (just a cheapo residential-grade shoplight attached directly to the ceiling and hardwired). Anyway the fixture had a pair of near-EOL/rectifying GE "Plant&Aquarium" tubes. I gave my friends a pair of warm white GE Mainlighters to replace them. Anyway, now if you go in there and turn on the light switch, (the house is off the grid) you can hear the generator rev up like there's a huge load. It happened to me, too. Of course I turned it off immediately. Anyway apparently it killed a chest freezer.
One other thing: this is 120v, no 240v involved anywhere in the system (so I think we can eliminate a bad neutral unless that happens with 120v). And nothing else in the house seems to have blown up.
Any ideas you guys?
I did once have a shoplight identical to this one (which was sitting for years in a vacant house first as well) that had an Advance "Benchlite" LPF ballast fail in such a way that after replamping the light (had been in use for awhile already) with Sylvania Cool White Plus lamps it quit working after a few days. It would light the cathodes, but touching/wiggling tubes didn't make a difference or replacing tubes (although I do believe it was ungrounded). Finally it would just buzz and draw lots of power like there was a short somewhere in the ballast. Since this light is identical it might have the same ballast; are those known to fail spectacularly?
I have another fixture in use at my house (probably with a Benchlite ballast), and now I'm wondering if I should discontinue it until I find a different ballast....