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Thread: Rolling light bulbs

  1. #1

    Rolling light bulbs

    I am building a new shop and the electrician installed 15 - 6 bulb fixtures and 4 fixtures have bulbs that look like the northern lights. The effect starts about an hour after they are turned on. The electrician has run out of ideas everything wired right. The lights are not on the same circuit. Replaced 2 fixtures and same thing. Ideas?

  2. #2
    Try different lamps or move them to different fixtures? Are they name brand like Phillips, or Sylvania, or are they off breed lamps. I purposely left GE off the list due to issues w/ them in the past, Feit, or Utilitech are a couple of examples of off breed brands.


    Edit #2, The issue w/ GE was excessive failures out of the box.
    Last edited by Rollie Meyers; 09-02-2014 at 12:13 AM.

  3. #3
    A couple of thoughts. Fluorescent lamps are temperature sensitive and cold air blowing across the lamps (like from a nearby air conditioning register) can cause the problem. Another possible cause could be loose phosphor inside the lamp. Remove the lamps from the fixture and with the lamp held vertically gently tap the end on a piece of wood several times to settle the loose phosphor. Not sure if this is the cause of your problem but it's easy to try and see what happens.

  4. #4
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    I'd say the ballasts are no good. You can get the same effect when temps are really cold, as Rollie suggests, but at normal temps it means the ballast is usually not able to keep a good running voltage. Sometimes it's the bulb, and that's an easy thing to check, but I'd heavily suspect the ballast in the Aurora fixtures.
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  5. #5
    Problem solved, purchased 3 sylvania contractor packs of 30 bulbs and 1 full box of bulbs was bad. Bought some phillips bulbs and problem solved. Thanks guys for the help, Bruce

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