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Re: AllGlass Light Fixtures
On Fri, 1 Feb 2002 Paulio said:
> I made a somewhat interesting discovery. All-Glass 48" twin tube fixtures
> come with the Fulham Workhorse 5 ballast.
Very interesting..... I have been searching for some time to find an
affordable ballast here in Canada which could drive 48" VHO tubes. This
would then retrofit nicely into my existing canopy which houses 4 x 48"
NO tubes. I ruled out the IceCap because at Big Al's in Canada it sells
for $499.00! (Canadian of course) I searched the net for manufacturers
of ballasts across the world, sent out some e-mails and came across this
company called Fulham, which makes the Workhorse Ballast.
They told me that the Workhorse 7 (model WH7-120-L) will drive VHO's,
but only one lamp per ballast. I was then directed to a "local
distributor" and found that there are several in Canada, and that the
closest was only about 5 miles away. When I called on the price it was
remarkabely cheap at only $54.00 Canadian ($30.00 US). At that price,
even having two of them driving two VHO tubes was still very affordable.
Now here is the interesting part. There are many wiring diagrams on
Fulham's website (www.fulham.com). I was advised to use diagram 12 with
VHO, but elected to use a conventional diagram (wiring diagram 11) with
conventional NO tubes, just to see if it would work. This is something
that I thought was worth checking out because the normal output daylight
tubes sell in a local hardware store here for about $3.00 Canadian!
Lo and behold, I discovered that the high powered electronic ballasts
doesn't immediately blow out the normal output tubes like I thought it
would. They are driving them quite nicely, and in fact I am getting
about twice the light output from each tube that I was getting from a
standard magnetic ballast. Even if the tubes last only three months
each, at the price, they are immensely more affordable than running
VHO's. I had initially intended to run 2 x 48" VHO's and 2 X 48" NO's,
but now I have decided to run 4 x 48" NO daylight tubes driven on a high
powered electronic ballast. I get roughly the same light output at a
fraction of the cost.
If you are interested in such things, go the Fulham Website for a start
(www.fulham.com), contact them, and then find your local distributor,
which will also be listed at the site. If you are cheap like me, there
is nothing more satisfying than getting the same job done at a fraction
of the price that the "specialist" stores want! :)
Ed Dumas
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