High Bay Light Repair

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KWH

Senior Member
I have some jobs that require a lift rental to repair some 400watt metal halide high bay fixtures typical scenario, they wait until several are not working then schedule us in. I have been changing ballast and lamp each time out without checking to see if it is just the lamp. The repairs are usually several months apart meaning some of these fixtures have been operating without a fired lamp for some time, does this damage the ballast or shorten its life. I guess what I am looking for is what do you guys typically do in this situation.

Thanks
 
tshea

tshea

Senior Member
Location
Wisconsin
Great opportunity to make a sales to hi-bay fluorescent 6 or 8 lamp fixtures. If 1,2,3 lamps go out, no big deal. At least they still have light!!

If customer does not want to change lighting, order some replacement HID fixtures. On repair day, go up swap the fixture and move to the next one. If 10 are out, swap out 10 fixtures! Labor (time) is low, fixtures are brand new with lamps (nice markup) and you are out of there to the next job.

Recycle the old fixtures!
 
B

Barndog

Senior Member
Location
Spring Creek Pa
I would personally check the lamps first. we have approx 700 Metal halide fixtures that we will be changing in the next several months. the first thing we try is the lamp. if it dont light we change the Ballast. alot easier to just change a bulb and hope for the best. but i do agree talk to then about a change to flouresants. They will notice it in the Electric bill. Our pay back in our change is like a 1.2 year ROI. just makes sense.
 
cadpoint

cadpoint

Senior Member
Location
Durham, NC
May be it bit much, but it could be a sales pitch...

May be it bit much, but it could be a sales pitch...

Don’t your have to build some sort of maintenance map or drawing when you change out a few every time?

I realize that a light and ballast have life limiting characteristics, to me it’d be just loopie not to note exactly what the service was, when it happened, what you found as you serviced on, like rust, bugs, internal failure or the lamb base broke, just about any characteristic having to be serviced could be maintained in written form.

There are various other things that might have been an issue, that cause a situation; like failing circuit wirings, failing quick connects, maybe even the wrong circuit wire sizing. My favorite is the Grey on the Green!

How can you charge anything to correct any found situation if you don’t have evidence and documentation?

If it’s a large company I can’t understand why their engineering dept isn’t all over this one application.

Yes, it’s not cost effective for an EC to do this, just hire a draftsperson and bill their time but it should be a maintained or presented information; IMHO.

Seems like lettered columns and rows of numbers on a database might be a big sale!
 
augie47

augie47

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Tennessee
Occupation
State Electrical Inspector (Retired)
Great Link, Bob........


Back in my "contracting" days we have several customers for which we performed this service. We found it to be to everyones advantage to do a "group relamping" on a scheduled basis. Once a lamp or two went out after a prescribed time, we relpamped all the fixtures.
In the long run it was a money-saving task.
 
stevebea

stevebea

Senior Member
Location
Southeastern PA
:mad:
augie47 said:
Great Link, Bob........


Back in my "contracting" days we have several customers for which we performed this service. We found it to be to everyones advantage to do a "group relamping" on a scheduled basis. Once a lamp or two went out after a prescribed time, we relpamped all the fixtures.
In the long run it was a money-saving task.
Click to expand...

I agree group relamping is the way to go but have yet to find a customer willing to do so when more than a few lights are involved.
 
B

Barndog

Senior Member
Location
Spring Creek Pa
stevebea said:
:mad:

I agree group relamping is the way to go but have yet to find a customer willing to do so when more than a few lights are involved.
Click to expand...

If going to talk to them about relamping I would personaly talk to them about retrofit to flouresant as well will be more money up front. But will pay for its self in a matter of years on the electric bill. Depending on old VS new ROI maybe just over a year!!
I know that would be a hard sell as well but with electric rates increasing might not be as hard as you think.
 
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