|
ballast fire aftermath
|
I 1st tried a new lamp (100W MH) and nothing, this is 120V and right as I open the fixture I bumped a wire and the 277V tap which is unused didn't have a wire nut over the end and touched the cube ignitor terminal on the red TAP/lamp and started smoking so I backed away from it and as soon as I get off the ladder it caught on fire! I ran stright for the electrical room to shut off power, I got there in 3 mins and the breaker wasn't even tripped! I guess that's what makes secondary faults scary!
|
|
I SWEAR someone wiped off the light and car, but my dad didn't do it and no one else could have. The weirdest part is that I found a towel with wet black fluid on it and it smelled like PCBs!!!! But my dad said he didn't wipe up anything and I know he didn't because he would have gone ape-sh!t crazy if he saw a drop of tar on the car. Actually, I never told my parents, but there was a drop of tar on the car but fortunately the PCB oils kept it thin and runny so it wiped right off. Plus the car is black so it blended in. But the side of the reflector looked as if it were wiped clean. That light was toast though.
I salvaged the starters and two lamp sockets off the light and stuck them in a plastic bag and they still stink because they're in the bag! It's my way of preserving the smell to show others lol. It smells the same way but it doesn't have that lung-gripping affect that leaves you lightheaded. I actually had to take a couple breaks trying to remove the light because I thought I'd pass out on the ladder. The garage door has to be closed to remove the fixture because on end is above the door when the door is opened. So the smell was trapped in the garage. So I unplugged it on one trip, removed the lamps on another trip, and then pressed the button to open the garage and quickly unhooked it before the door opened all the way and ran to the yard with it. Then I opened it up and just gasped at what I saw inside (you know, since you saw the pics ) Then I put the reflector back on the fixture and put it at the curb. Then a scrapper came and took the light for scrap just as I planned (since trash pickup won't take anything not in a barrel) I got a pair of bolt cutters and chopped the cord off from the outside of the fixture (didn't unwire the cord and take it off in once piece since the whole inside of the fixture was covered in PCB oil, so I just chopped the cord off just outside the fixture to reuse it on a new light). In fact, the Harmony House fixture from my grandpa's shop has the same lamps and cord as the long-john did! I forget if I used the starters from the long-john fixture or if I used the ones that were in the fixture.
Not sure if the reverse is true (like 277v>120v) but I imagine it is. Maybe I should try it...
But how does that work? I mean how does the ballast know that the HID lamp is not lit? I have never seen both lit only when the HID is either dead/EOL or the after a power interruption and the aux lamp will go out when the HID lamp re-strikes