We installed 10 surface mounted 4 bulb flourescent lights with magnetic-transformer style ballasts in a basement suspended ceiling. There is a fairly noticable cool weather hum with the ballasts working harder to keep the gas lit.
Is there any wild idea solution to this? With the ballasts screwed to the metal case then hooked to the suspended ceiling there is a “drum amplified” effect. This is a wild idea I had- what if the ballasts were suspended in nylon “slings” rather than screwed to the metal amplifier? I wouldn’t try this without some sound technical counsel, but it seems like there is surely a solution.
The supplier mentions now that electronic ballasts wouldn’t do that. It’s not practical to change all the lights at this point.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Replies
Do not suspend the ballast!!! it needs to be grounded!!! The only times we have had problems with hum was either cold temperatures, improper grounding or cheap fixtures. Replace the ballasts & lamps with electronic T8 type and you will have no problems. Ballasts cost about $13.00 ea and lamps about $1.40 ea.
Am I correct in assuming it is a simple matter to replace the mag ballasts with their electronic counterparts? No need to change out the entire fixture, right?
>> Do not suspend the ballast!!! it needs to be grounded!!!That's good to know, but the two are not contradictory. It shouldn't be that hard to acoustically decouple the ballasts but still keep them electrically grounded.Of course there's still the question of whether supspending them would help much with the noise.
While it may be true that electronic ballasts in general are less noisy than magnetic ballasts, the only reliable way to know how noisy they are is to go by the sound rating of the ballast. If you do buy new ballasts, get them with a good, quiet sound rating, regardless of the type.
Fonzie,
Good grief! Magnetic ballasts? Who uses those these days?
Re-ballast the fixtures with Class "A" electronic ballasts. Class A is the quietest class of ballast.
The building owner will save lots of energy and so money in producing the light, and for most of the year will also save some $ by reducing the heat load of the building (I'm assuming the fixtures are in a temperature-controlled building). Magnetic ballasts produce much more heat than the electronic kind.
Send the magnetic ballasts to a third-world country.
Cliff
Thanks, guys. Didn't know all this. In fact, I didn't trust electronic ballasts. I'll have to check into the exact cost and see how bad they want to get rid of the hum.