4 pin compact fluorescent lamps

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Getjiggywitit

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Silsbee, Texas
I was trouble shooting a job today and found 26 can lights that the lamps were pink...as I was troubleshooting, they got brighter and stayed like that for bout an hour...then they gradually reduced to a pink color again...this did that the whole three hours I was there about four times...I checked the neutrals made sure all was connected and tight...voltage is good at brightest and at pinkest...the system is old using pipe as ground but have been recently remodeled with no ground stingers in the j boxes...the mc's have grounds in the can light...I'm thinking not grounded and bonded correctly...but even that... I've never seen all 26 fixtures dim pink all at once...any ideas would be very appreciated as I am the 7th electrician this customer had...
 
ActionDave

ActionDave

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Welcome to the forum.

I'm not sure what the problem is but I'm confident it's not a lack of green wire in the conduit.

What is the voltage? Any other problems in the building? How long has this been happening? What has changed? And most importantly, what happened to the other six electricians?
 
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JFletcher

Senior Member
Location
Williamsburg, VA
Getjiggywitit said:
I was trouble shooting a job today and found 26 can lights that the lamps were pink...as I was troubleshooting, they got brighter and stayed like that for bout an hour...then they gradually reduced to a pink color again...this did that the whole three hours I was there about four times...I checked the neutrals made sure all was connected and tight...voltage is good at brightest and at pinkest...the system is old using pipe as ground but have been recently remodeled with no ground stingers in the j boxes...the mc's have grounds in the can light...I'm thinking not grounded and bonded correctly...but even that... I've never seen all 26 fixtures dim pink all at once...any ideas would be very appreciated as I am the 7th electrician this customer had...
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Welcome. Since all the lamps did the dimming thing, I would look for voltage sags/dips at the panel, or a forgotten about dimmer. The grounds/bonds or lack thereof arent going to be the culprit, tho losing a neutral upstream of the circuit is a possibility. . Is this a commercial or residential customer? Any heavy cyclic loads, like AC, operate during the time you were there? Is voltage high/low elsewhere?
 
iwire

iwire

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Pink lamps usually indicate the lamps are due for replacement.

Have any of the seven electrians tried putting new lamps in place?
 
brantmacga

brantmacga

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Georgia
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Former Child
peter d said:
I'll be very happy when the last CFL is removed and thrown away. :happyyes:
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It gives us sooooo much service work though.

Seriously though, LED has taken a significant chunk out of lighting maintenance.



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peter d

peter d

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New England
brantmacga said:
It gives us sooooo much service work though.

Seriously though, LED has taken a significant chunk out of lighting maintenance.
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Indeed. Admittedly, I was on the anti-LED bandwagon up until a few months ago when I finally "saw the light" (pun intended.) I was anti-LED for the very reason you mention as well as being highly skeptical of manufacturers claims of longevity and durability. But, there is no denying the light quality and energy efficiency of LED's is vastly superior to HID, linear and compact fluorescent. Yes, we will lose work from maintenance in the long run but there's also a ton of work still out there to retrofit or replace all that junk that's still operating.
 
Solanaceae

Solanaceae

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Location
sangamon county, IL
Ugh. Led retrofits SUCK! The corn cob bulbs are trash and not fit for use replacing hid, even with the ballast removed. Reason? Heat buildup. Some of you may say "blah blah open fixture provides venting blah" but in actuality, no. The heat sinking on those are terribly inadequate, and when the individual dies start to cook, they tend to short out and cause a runaway effect. The fluorescent drop in ones, esp for CFLs, are terrible about trapping heat and not radiating it away from the driver, causing it to turn into a mini toaster oven, but with blinding glare lights for the display.
 
brantmacga

brantmacga

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Solanaceae said:
Ugh. Led retrofits SUCK! The corn cob bulbs are trash and not fit for use replacing hid, even with the ballast removed. Reason? Heat buildup. Some of you may say "blah blah open fixture provides venting blah" but in actuality, no. The heat sinking on those are terribly inadequate, and when the individual dies start to cook, they tend to short out and cause a runaway effect.....
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I've been using some to replace HID in signs, and they all have built-in cooling fans.

I've got several that have been working with no issue for over 2 years now. Usually we'd have lost at least some of the HID lamps by now.


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Solanaceae

Solanaceae

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sangamon county, IL
brantmacga said:
I've been using some to replace HID in signs, and they all have built-in cooling fans.

I've got several that have been working with no issue for over 2 years now. Usually we'd have lost at least some of the HID lamps by now.


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That's some planned obsolescence. Sylvania mercs are the best of the big three today, but the companies don't compare to themselves from thirty years ago. Those mercs were built to last. Some westy lifeguard lamps have done 25 to 30 easy, with about 20 ish percent depreciation. The LED flyswatter lanterns that are going up here have started to turn green and dim out after pert near a year. I didn't intend to spin this so far off topic, but still. CFLs come in a yuuuge variety of color temps, while all the led retrofit tubes are that harsh Arctic blue color that makes everything look South Pole ish. I've yet to see one in use that's a warmer color (</=4100k).
 
peter d

peter d

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Location
New England
Solanaceae said:
That's some planned obsolescence. Sylvania mercs are the best of the big three today, but the companies don't compare to themselves from thirty years ago. Those mercs were built to last. Some westy lifeguard lamps have done 25 to 30 easy, with about 20 ish percent depreciation. The LED flyswatter lanterns that are going up here have started to turn green and dim out after pert near a year. I didn't intend to spin this so far off topic, but still. CFLs come in a yuuuge variety of color temps, while all the led retrofit tubes are that harsh Arctic blue color that makes everything look South Pole ish. I've yet to see one in use that's a warmer color (</=4100k).
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Mercs in 2016? :lol::lol:
 
Solanaceae

Solanaceae

Member
Location
sangamon county, IL
peter d said:
Mercs in 2016? :lol::lol:
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Yes, actually. A majority of the streets here built in the 90s have hpsyndrome, no LEDisease on the west side except for a few test lamps, which are again greening and dimming out. Actually, the town still services mercs, I've seen some 60s LM unistyle fixtures receive new lamps and PCs. The light distribution in the led fixtures are awful, I could barely see anything out in front of me, While MV and MH provided better color rendering. I have a 1956 Westinghouse ak 12 bucket light that ran from the late fiddies to recently. The old boy still works too, let's see your semiconductors cold soldered to low quality boards do anything like that??.
 
iwire

iwire

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Massachusetts
Solanaceae said:
Yes, actually. A majority of the streets here built in the 90s have hpsyndrome, no LEDisease on the west side except for a few test lamps, which are again greening and dimming out. Actually, the town still services mercs, I've seen some 60s LM unistyle fixtures receive new lamps and PCs. The light distribution in the led fixtures are awful, I could barely see anything out in front of me, While MV and MH provided better color rendering. I have a 1956 Westinghouse ak 12 bucket light that ran from the late fiddies to recently. The old boy still works too, let's see your semiconductors cold soldered to low quality boards do anything like that??.
Click to expand...

Funny how LEDs seem to be working fine here. I have installed literally 1,000s of them by now.
 
Electric-Light

Electric-Light

Senior Member
Pink is what you see when you run an arc through argon and it usually happens when all the mercury gets bound up and not available to the lamp and if it's happening early in life in quantity, it's usually a manufacturing defect affecting that lot. Check to see if sections near the base are extremely blackened. This is usually due to miswiring. If it's a dimming ballast, have them run at full power for 3 days around the full clock. If that does not permanently resolve it, pick up a few lamps from Lowe's or something and relamp and that should give you an idea of what to do.
Don't use spare lamps from the same lot as the troubled lamps.

If that resolves the issue, it's likely a bad batch and all lamps should be replaced. Hopefully under warranty.
Unfortunately, some lighting supply houses stock generic lamps almost exclusively.
 
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