# Swapping ballasts



## Wirenuting (Sep 12, 2010)

CDN EC said:


> Got a call from a customer's neighbor last week saying that she had smoke and a bad smell coming from one of her fluorescent fixtures.
> 
> Opened the fixture and the one next to it and found this:
> 
> ...


WD 40 cleans the tar real easy. 
I hate that stink.


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## CDN EC (Jul 31, 2011)

Wirenuting said:


> WD 40 cleans the tar real easy.
> I hate that stink.


Nasty eh?

Should have smelled it when we had smoke pouring out of a 24V 500VA transformer in UL labs


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## Wirenuting (Sep 12, 2010)

CDN EC said:


> Nasty eh?
> 
> Should have smelled it when we had smoke pouring out of a 24V 500VA transformer in UL labs


We had our old 4160 transformer cans inside most of our older building. Man it stunk when one would go up. The fire would be contained to the vault, but the pipes chased from building to building. Had a couple that even chased into some of the houses here. They had used the old steam line chases. Now that's how you wake the admiral up at 5am. LoL


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## CDN EC (Jul 31, 2011)

Surprised no one's commented on the crazy wiring in there..has anyone seen this kinda hack before??


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## user4818 (Jan 15, 2009)

CDN EC said:


> Surprised no one's commented on the crazy wiring in there..has anyone seen this kinda hack before??


Yeah, is that romex running through the lights?


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## CDN EC (Jul 31, 2011)

Walks like romex, talks like romex and shorts out like it too :jester:

I've never done tandem lighting like this before, is splitting the sheathe and wrapping the ground around the cover stud an acceptable method for wiring these things? :laughing:


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## Lightwebb (Jan 17, 2011)

Replacing with T8 ballasts is not a bad job. They will run cooler quieter and very little heat.


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## CDN EC (Jul 31, 2011)

The efficiency improvement really caught the homeowner's interest; it'll be a ten pack that will replace the old magnetic single-lamp T12s.

Can't believe how inexpensive and small they are, too - such a nice improvement from the single-lamp bricks they will be replacing.


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## greenman (Apr 20, 2012)

Can you master and slave t8s like t12s ??? 
I have not done any lighting in 10 years.


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## CDN EC (Jul 31, 2011)

greenman said:


> Can you master and slave t8s like t12s ???
> I have not done any lighting in 10 years.


That's the plan on this one..better than installing 18 ballasts when each can run two lamps.

They're single strips anyway, nothing complicated about the conversion, just have to pass the load side to the next strip and the line through it.


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## Lighting Retro (Aug 1, 2009)

If you really want to confuse the next guy, tandem wire 4 Lamp T8 ballasts in there.


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