Got a case of new bulbs to replace a bunch that are maybe 30 years old. 8-foot fixtures. Old bulbs are GE. New ones are Phillips. New ones flicker a lot and have little black bands everywhere. Not any brighter than the old ones. Old ones have dark bands at the end and are really dirty, but work better. The ones I have not broken anyway. These are junk. What should I get that will actually work?
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Most likely you have the wrong type of bulbs.
There is a lot more to specify than the fact that they are 8ft.
What is the label on the old bulbs, barring that which is the information on the ballast?
What is the label on the new bulbs?
Assuming you matched the type of tube to the ballast. T-12 versus T-8 primarily. I suspect you have a burn-in issue. The darks spots are likely spirals running down the tubes primarily caused by not properly burning-in the bulbs.
Ideally when you replace these lamps you should turn on the fixtures and keep them on for several hours in warm conditions. The reason is that there is a compound within the tubes that aids starting and even light output. This compound used to be mostly mercury. Today, with the realization that the mercury was a real hazard when the bulbs were disposed of as it doesn't go away or decompose, the total amount of mercury per bulb has been reduced.
Other chemicals were added and mercury sharply reduced. This is good for the environment and our children who have to drink water downstream of the dump but it can cause lamps to be harder to start. Especially if they are not burned-in properly. I hear that modern ballasts have a slightly stronger starting pulse to compensate.
Additionally the compound, especially if the lamps were stored on end, is likely not evenly distributed within the tube. Burning-in gives the lamp time to get up to operating temperature long enough for the compound to migrate within the tube.
The answer is to turn on the fixtures, preferably when it is warm, and to keep them on for a few hours. Usually two hours will do it but when I replace these lamps I tend to turn them on and leave them on. The HO can turn them off when they get home. Likely no permanent damage has been done but failing to burn-in florescent lamps can greatly reduce the expected life of these units. Particularly if they are in a cold location where starting is harder and condensation of the mercury within the tubes, these are the black rings at the ends of an old lamp, much more of an issue.
Bob,
Like the other Bill said, you probably have the wrong bulbs. I have some old fixtures at home in my garage and when I replaced the bulbs a couple of years ago, I had to go to an electrical supply house to get the correct ones. Most of the bulbs you find at Home Depot etc are designed for the newer energy saving ballasts and plain dont work right in the older fixtures. Take one of your old bulbs to an electrical supply house and they will tell you which ones you need.
Bill Koustenis
Advanced Automotive Machine
Waldorf Md
I can't claim to know what I'm doing in this area, but did manage to get the same bulb type. New and old are F96T12CW. Only had them on for a couple hours today. I'll turn them on and leave them on all day tomorrow and see if it helps. The box does say they're low-mercury tubes. I'm not keen on cool white, but that was the only flavor they had in stock. I went to an actual electrical distributor. The home centers around here don't sell 8-footers.
To be precisely correct, the tubes you bought were lamps, not bulbs. In electrical terminology bulbs are what gardener's plant.
When talking to fellow electricians I try to use lamp. When I first started this game I had journeymen who would stress this terminology. Given a lot more experience I am less strict in my normal usage than they were. Particularly when dealing with normal folks, as opposed to those who have absorbed a lot of current.
Say 'lamp' to most folks and the think table lamp. Instead of taking time to explain the specialized usage, and coming across as snooty, I adjust my terminology to meet the expectations of the audience. I think of this as good customer relations. Less 'correct' but friendlier.
On the other hand stressing a particular terminology is great for giving helpers a hard time.
So what's the proper terminology among the cognosenti for the thingy that holds the new circular florescent lamps - the thing we civilians call a "floor lamp"...
Thingy.
Although Doohickey, whatchamacallit and thingamabob are acceptable alternatives.
Always pays to baffle them with technical jargon.
Amazingly enough both Doohickey and thingamabob are in the spell checker database. I even spelled the later correctly the first time. Isn't technology grand?
I knew I'd get more comments on this than on something important. I'm glad we don't take each other too seriously. This site is as much entertainment as it is anything else.
What we'd call a light fixture, or a lamp, in the industry is called a luminaire. It's "a complete lighting unit consisting of a lamp or lamps, together with the parts designed to distribute the light, position and protect lamps, and connect them to the power supply." -- GE Lighting Catalog.
Looking in a commercial catalog I'd search for luminaires, but it would sound silly at home to say "put another lamp in the luminaire." The orange folks in Home Depot would look at you funny, too.
Most electricians know what a luminaire is but use that term on most job sites and people start looking at you funny. About like showing up with boots with toes that curl up and have bells on them. Festive but not the tone your going for. The lighting designer uses the term but he also wears paisley prints in lime green and day-glow pink.
Most just call them fixtures.
Absolutely, the only time I use the word "luminaire" is to find the right page in a catalog. I call them fixtures even to the supply house. And I would call an incandescent lamp a bulb, but I never call a fluorescent tube a bulb, it sounds wrong to me.
I enjoy learning new words, so these things interest me more than normal people. Sometimes I use them to amuse, but if being understood is paramount, I choose words the people I'm talking to will understand. All part of the peregrinations of life, I suppose.
I finally got to use that word in a sentence!
The lamps in my luminaires have mostly stopped flickering so I can now see my bulbs. Although I eschew gratuitous verbalization and notwithstanding this brief forray into arcane terminology and electrical erudition, this discussion did yield valid insights into my original query and validated my possession of the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary which has reposed relatively unscathed since its original acquisition. However, upon the next occasion of a question in the form : "Yo, Cleetus, what about them bulbs?"; a less verbose reply would perhaps be beneficial for the etymologically-challenged.
I really like those shoes with the bells on them.
Now I'm confused. How long do I need to leave them buried in the garden before they stop flickering? I can't say "light bulb" any more? "Light lamp" doesn't sound right. Anyway, I bought them by pointing to the ceiling and saying "gimme a case of them-there thangs - the long kind".
I was given an amarylis once. That was a heavy bulb.
An ex-boat builder treading water!
Probably not the case if only 30 years old, but most older (40-50 year old) fixtures are starter type vs "instant start", and, even though a claim of compatibility is made, the "newer" T12 bulbs don't work well in starter-type fixtures.
But new T12 bulbs do seem to need "burn in" before they run without flicker and banding.