strange problem with fluorescent lights

[foy9999]

I have five 5' strip lights in my barn and 2 of them stopped working.

went and got 2 new tubes (bulbs) and 1st one didn't work when changed. tried it in another fitting and it was fine so I guessed must be the starter.

Took a known working one from another fitting and tried it with the old and new bulbs and neither worked. Established both the old and new bulbs are fine and the starter is fine so it must be the ballast. Not checked that yet...

However I found that if I removed the starter the light would come on but obv would not go back on again.

It seems that if I loosen the starter to a 'sweet point' the lights work fine. This is happening on both the ones which went out.

Can't find anything online about this specific issue but it seems that some fault in the light unit won't accept the starte in it's proper locked position but it will if it's almost taken out

[arco_iris]

No expert and not been involved with a building full of flourescents for many years, but remember having this issue many times.

Never, ever did anything with ballasts, it was always faulty tubes or faulty starters.

Check, starters are rated & should be matched to tube wattage, so read the print on them and try matching accordingly.

[ericmark]

I have found over the years voltage is rather important with wire wound ballast. I had some problems with 110 volt versions which were really 230 volt with an auto transformer to step up voltage, the transformer was marked 110 - 0 - 127 and swapping the feed from 110 to 127 dropped power from 0.9 amp to 0.6 amp.

Modern fluorescent use electronic ballast and they compensate for low or high voltage, but not the old type.

So modern car charging units and solar panels are designed so they will auto switch off if the voltage goes out of the range 207 to 253 volt. For years the supply authority never worried about voltage and although the official voltage dropped from 240 volt to 230 volt in real terms nothing changed. But with solar panels and electric car charging points locking out with under or over voltage the DNO as it's called have been a lot more careful selecting the voltage.

So a 5 foot tube was 240 volt and 64 watt for fat type, swap that for thin tube (58 watt) and they did not lass as long but still worked, but also drop the volts and they will not play, quick fix is fit LED tubes, but be warned the output is normally a lot lower a 5 foot tube is between 5000 and 5600 lumen depending on age and control gear, a LED is around 2200 lumen also the watts drop, but depends if you need the amount of light or just the spread of light.