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

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Robert H quoted some comments by me and Penny Crowley re
fluorescent lamps and heat and then replied.  I had said
that lamp heat would fuse lamp matierials and the stuck
bubls were likely due to the bulb pins being caught on the
socket contacts.  Penny said her JBJs suffered multiple
failures.

> Well I don't know if I am using the right terminology or
> not... fused,
> sockets... but none the less when I tried to remove the
> bulbs from their
> holder, the glass tube immediately broke clean from the
> base, and the base
> would not pull free from it's socket or holder, whatever.
> This happened with
> three bright light fixtures, one 48" and two 24"
> fixtures. It also happened
> to two lamps in my six lamp AH Supply configuration over
> my 100 gallon tank.
> This seems to unlikely to be just a coincedence to me.
> When I asked my JBJ
> rep about it, he said it was caused by heat build up in
> the system.

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.  

Fans can help the bulbs last longer only if they reduce the
operating temperature below the excess range.  It hard to
get a fluorescent lammp to operate in the excess range. 
The value of fans re planted tank lights is to move some of
the lamp heat away from the tank to prevent overheating the
tank.

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.

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.
 
> My biggest problem with the rubber lamp holders,
> connectors or whatever they
> are called is inserting the bulbs into them is tricky. I
> really have to work
> at lining up the pins just right and getting the rubber
> to fit over the base
> of the bulb. It doesn't just slide in. The hard plastic
> snap on connectors
> of the JBJ lights are easy. Just line it up with the
> arrow, gently push and
> it locks in easily.


The hard plastic ones by anybody are better imo, ime. 
Gaynors are nice and inexpensive ( http://www.egaynor.com/ 
)


 >>I thought mine was great too, until the fan stopped
> working, the ballast crapped out, and the plexiglas
> cracked into pieces.<<


> What did you do, jump up and down on it? :)  I love the
> plexiglass cover and
> how it just slides in through a groove on the side.
> Brightlights don't even
> have a cover. JBJs actually have two fans.

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 ;-) 

Scott H.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day
http://shopping.yahoo.com