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I ran into that doing janitorial. There were some sort of a power outage, weirdly the building I worked in half of the building went out and the other half didn’t. They didn’t look like they were coming on quickly so I went home for the day because I was done when this happened, and the next day I came in and oh boy, the lights that were dead. Not fun. I called my husband and he came over and it took us probably almost an hour to change all of those lights that were out working together. And we went through a case of 40.
Tally, are you saying that half the building spontaneously blew their bulbs at one time, or that half of the building really did lose power, and in the process blew all the bulbs in that half of the building?
Tally and bfrabel, thanks for the responses earlier. To be on the safe side, I'll continue to use incandescents in my embedded fixtures.
OP, remember that the strength of the lighting is measured with the lumens not the wattage.
Tally, are you saying that half the building spontaneously blew their bulbs at one time, or that half of the building really did lose power, and in the process blew all the bulbs in that half of the building?
Tally and bfrabel, thanks for the responses earlier. To be on the safe side, I'll continue to use incandescents in my embedded fixtures.
OP, remember that the strength of the lighting is measured with the lumens not the wattage.
I'll try to shed some light on the issue.
Most homes have split single phase power. The transformer on the power pole has an output winding (coil of wire wrapped around an iron core) with three wires attached, one wire at one end, one at the other end, and one tapped into the middle of the coil. The one in the middle is grounded to a metal stake in the ground, which is a safety.
If you connect a light to one of the end wires and the center tap wire, it has 120 volts. It doesn't matter which end you choose. If you connect something to the two end tap wires, that device has 120 + 120 volts, or 240 volts.
When a storm or whatever causes the power to go out, ALL the power goes out.
Larger buildings have three-phase power. It is much more complicated in concept - beyond the understanding of Edison, and required the genius of Tesla to develop. It can supply large amounts of power very efficiently. To try to describe how it works is too complicated to try here, but the important aspect needed to respond to your question is more simple.
With three phase power, there are three power wires and a ground wire. That is also the way power companies deliver power. Look up on most power poles and there are three wires up on top, and maybe a traveler wire for strength and lighting protection.
If ONE of those wires fails, there is still power between the other two wires. That causes all sorts of strange problems. A transformer downline may not put out proper voltages. A part of a building may have no power, while another part has some power. Equipment can often be damaged.
Tally, are you saying that half the building spontaneously blew their bulbs at one time, or that half of the building really did lose power, and in the process blew all the bulbs in that half of the building?
Tally and bfrabel, thanks for the responses earlier. To be on the safe side, I'll continue to use incandescents in my embedded fixtures.
OP, remember that the strength of the lighting is measured with the lumens not the wattage.
This particular building was on two different circuits. I don’t know if that’s the proper name. If transformer A blew, the left half of the building went out, if transformer B blew, the right side of the building went out.
While most of the 4 foot tubes came back on, a lot of them didn’t. A 4 foot tube has a life of about I think 12,000 hours. About a year and a half. I haven’t been in janitorial for three years so I don’t know that stuff anymore. So it ends up to be about a year and a half when something is run 24/7 like hallway lights in a building.
So the lights that were really old — like over two years, so I couldn’t remember changing them. And I changed the lightbulbs all the time, and I had to remember which ones I changed in case there was a ballast problem and I didn’t keep changing the light, have it come back on and then the next day have to change it again.
Those really old lights refused to come back on when the electricity came back on. Those lights were dead. This building had about 292 4 foot tubes. Since it was half the building that means 146 lights. So, when something weird like that happens, it is October — it wasn’t unusual to go through a whole case of lights.
And fluorescents work by igniting gas inside. And it has a mercury vapor which is why they have to be recycled and not thrown out. It’s a heavy metal. So essentially there’s enough mercury to keep it going while it’s on but it’s near the end of its life anyway, so when you have a surge of electricity that pops the breakers, when the electricity comes back on, there is not enough juice in that lamp to reignite and turn itself back on. So it’s not technically a blown light. Which to me means that there’s something wrong with the physical light itself and you’re worried about a fire. That’s not how a fluorescent light works.
And I’m not sure what kind of fixtures you have, but the best light is LED. It is the lowest wattage. So you use much less electricity. I’m actually not sure if incandescence are available in much of anything except for like night lights. And they do have LED night lights. But if you’re using a 4 W nightlight or a 4 watt LED not a lot of difference except price. But the good thing is with LED lights, you can toss them in the trash. They don’t have to be recycled.
A lumen was defined as the amount of light coming from a single standard whale oil candle that fell upon a 1' x 1' rectangle at a distance of one foot from the candle. It was alternately called a foot-candle.
However, there is a new "lumen" on the block, used on the internet without proper reference to what it is, and so unreliable that it is completely worthless. The ANSI lumen was created to provide a measurement of the light output of projectors, such as those little projectors the size of a shoebox. That lumen is related to the ability to distinguish between two slightly different light levels on a screen at a certain distance from the projector. In practice, it has no relationship whatsoever to reality. Projectors that are abysmally dim claim high lumen output with impunity.
They must be an inferior LED brand. I have the Sylvania LED 60 watt equivalent and there is not flicker to those, have over 25 in the house.
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Solly says — Be nice!
