# CF and T5 faluires



## Wingnut (Jan 31, 2010)

We installed around 200 t5's 2 lamp fixtures about 5 yrs ago in a plant and have replaced allot of the ballast any time the lamps would go out the ballast would follow.:blink: 
The T5 fixtures and ballast we have put in last year and this year we haven't had any problems with.


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## Lighting Retro (Aug 1, 2009)

seems like dimmable always have more problems....


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## Electric_Light (Apr 6, 2010)

Shockdoc said:


> I have an account that has widespread failure of ballast , and sockets throughout the main chapel. These are dimming T5 ballast(7 out of 24) , CF40 bi pin ballast and sockets. My main idea of these for these failures is poor manufacturing. The building has a 1200 amp u/g service, is properly grounded with its own Transformer pad 15' away. There are no mw neutrals feeding these lights. I'm recommending these fixtures all be changed to T8 fixtures.


Although its getting better, this problem still comes up from time to time. 

We both order a cocktail and yours come in glass, mine in rigid plastic. Table tips, both drops to ground and only yours break. 

Did it break because your container sucks, or because you dropped it? My personal opinion is neither. 

The glass will last a long time as long as it is not dropped, but to use them in a club where patrons rough house and expected to get dropped is not a good idea. 

In commercial and industrial installs, surges are expected, and earlier electronic ballasts lasted fine, as long as they were fed clean power, but once subjected to surge, they broke, like a glass that got dropped. 

They realized getting bounced around was expected, so they made them more resilient, but not quite as durable as magnetic. 

Your ballasts are either sub-par in abuse tolerance, or your installation is exceeding abusive. 

What is the voltage on ballast, and what other loads operate on the same transformer?

T8s have had this issues. It's not really T8/T5 things, but T5s are new and they still haven't got the kinks worked out.


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