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Re: Aquanetics UV and things that go Tink inthe night




Paul Krombholz made the excellent obsrvation that I messed:
> My guess is that the orange light that flickers is the filament at
> the end
> of the tube which heats to high temperatures until the arc through
> the
> mercury vapor is established.  You can see the same thing happening
> in an
> ordinary fluorescent tube that is operated by a starter---the little,
> 2
> inch aluminum "can" thingey. 

The spark of the starter wouldn't be visible from outside the Lamp
casing (as I implied in my prior comments), but the hot filaments would
until the bimetallic switch in the starter gets hot enough to snap the
switch open.  

Paul's insight sparked some further thoughts:

If orange keeps showing up without stopping when the lamp is turned on,
then the starter is bad -- it's failing to open and cut off the current
to the filaments.  Test it by replacing it -- it's only a buck or so.

If the orange is momentary and keeps going on and off, then there is
probably a bad connection that is causing a voltage drop that keeps the
bulb from staying lit after the starter switch opens, so the switch
thinks (pardon my anthropomorphism) the bulb is off, closes, and heats
up the filaments again, gets hot, closes, repeated.  So check, in
order, the wall socket, the bulb pin connections, and if it's not those
things, check the bulb for cracks or broken filaments, it's probably a
bad bulb.

If this didn't reveal the problem I'd let Aquanetics or an electrician
look at it.  An internally-shorting choke coil (ballast) is possible
but the last thing I'd suspect in this case.  You could check the DC
resistance to test for an internal short but you'd have to get the
correct value from Aquanetics (or whoever made the coil).


Scott H.

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