Re:Re: JBJ Comments -- or - Lying SOB comments & my arrogant AK comments

["Robert H" <robertph3 at attbi_com>]

Scott said:
>>My personal but sincere opinion is that the JBJ guy is flat
out lying or incredibly ignorant about fluoresecent lamps,
there's no third way.  I have been around fluorescent lamps
for years, worked with all kinds of sockets -- twist in,
push on, click over, push and twist -- and all kinds of
them get caught on the pins sometimes and some are worse
for this than others.  But I have *never* seen one get
caught due to the heat from the bulbs, netiehr the
temperatures nor the amount of heat are enough to do it. <<

Well, Scott, I won't argue the point, because I really don't know anything
about it one way or the other. I can tell you though that although I am
somewhat of a clutz. (the reason I had to replace these Brightlights was one
I knocked over onto the floor and broke, and the other two my cats knocked
the fixtures inside the aquarium!) I really do not think I inserted all
these bulbs incorrectly, and they had been running for a year or more. But
regardless, these snap on connectors are wonderfull!<<

>> JBJ fans have very small diameters and don't have much
impact on bulb or tank temps, imo.  About 90% of the air
flow from a tube-axial fan is at the blade tips -- so
diameter makes a tremendous difference in airflow.  Very
small fans must spins very fast, wearing their bearings
quickly, to move any air at all.<<

I disagree with that. The JBJ fixture on my 55 has four 55 watt bulbs. I ran
the fixture for a week without the fans on, and the fixture was very hot to
the touch, and water level went down about two inches. The second week I
turned the fans on and the fixture was much cooler to the touch and the
water level only went down by one inch. I would call that a significant
difference.

>>Ther is one report that a JBJ rep said they only put fans
in their lamps because people seemed to want them but they
don't really do anything useful.<<

I love hearing annonomys reports! :)

>>In a merry sport, I reply: Archives here and on other
boards have nuremous postings by folks with complaints
similar to Penny's.  I deeply doubt any of them mistreated
the lamps.  But I'll bet a number of them were jumping up
and down on them after getting frustrated with the failures
and what JBJ wanted to charge to fix what shouldn't have
failed in the first place -- all of this my own immodest
opinion ;-) <<

This seriously does concern me. I bought a number of these fixtures for my
own use, and bought a few extras to sell. In order to get a good price I had
to buy as a dealer! :) But I was happy to sell them because they seemed like
a good quality product. If there really is a serious track record of a
problem I want to know about it. I don't have a huge amount of money
invested here, and I don't want to sell junk.

But, I worked in the computer industry for years. I know a little about
failure rates. No product is totally free of break down failures. Only JBJ
knows for sure what their actual failure rate is. Since you posted this I
did do some searching, and I couldn't find much on the internet either in
APD or the usernet about JBJ complaints. I did find a number of favorable
comments. So I have no doubt some people have had problems, I just can not
determin how widespread it is. How common is this? I don't know!

I can tell you in the last two years I had to send back three Brightlight
fixtures to Champion lighting because of ballasts that caused flickering
lights or complete burnout within their first week. But I havn't heard this
to be a widespread problem with them either. Years ago I used to sell
commercial lighting to janitors, building maintenance people. GE fluorescent
bulbs would have about a 20% failure rate right out of the box. Now that was
frustrating!

 So I am not ready to give up  here yet!

Robert Paul Hudson
www.aquabotanic.com
Join the AB forums