Recessed square fixture hooked up to a mercury vapor ballast and a mercury lamp.

This is a normally incandescent fixture hooked up to a 100 watt mercury vapor ballast with a 100 watt A shaped mercury vapor lamp in it. Mercury vapor lamps require a ballast to run. If you hooked one up straight to line current it would either explode or fry right away without an explosion. Anyways, what to do is to hook up the leads that normally go to the lamp, to the wire leads of the normally incandescent fixture. In this case, it is a recessed square fixture. Although I have seen mercury vapor recessed square fixtures, I haven't seen them for sale in stores often, even before the mercury ballast and fixture ban. Since 100 watt lamps take longer to warm up than 175 watt ones, I didn't catch the full brightness but it did reach a cool white color at the very end. Also, when it turns the partially warmed up purple white color that DX lamps turn at that stage, it looked white on camera anyway. None the less, enjoy.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• mercury
• vapor
• 100
• watt
• coated
• DX
• shaped
• Philips
• awesome
• cool
• ballast
• transformer

[codemsan]

Hey david do you know what sort of impedance i would need to limit a 400W MH bulb? I dont have a ballast for it but i wanna see it run, plus firing it is no prob i can use a HV pulse for that if need be

[DavidFromAE]

Hey. I don't know of any ways of doing that without a ballast. Doing this without a ballast can cause big problems so the safest idea is to keep wading through ebay and eventually a ballast will appear. Often they can go for pretty cheap. Once you get it, just follow the wiring diagram and you should be good to go. I'd reccomend getting a matching pulse rated lampholder as well if you don't already have one. And an enclosure. Metal halide lamps are notorious for spontaneous explosion.

[TheGeek1028]

I'm not in dire, dire need of one since one of my friend's father's has about 10 in his garage that he couldn't get ballasts for. 4 are 50 watt, 3 are 70 watt, 1 is 250 watt, and the last 2 are 1000 watt. None have been used.

[fiesta1117cc]

It looks like your have to travel to England to buy one. The hardware shop down the road from me still sells many Mercury Lamps. A friend of mine work for the street lighting & he said they still replace the bulbs but if the fitting becomes faulty eg ballast burns out or the fitting gets damaged in any way they no longer repair them instead they will replace it with either a Son or Metal Halide lamp & he said both those lamps dont last very long. He said you cant beat the Mercury Lamp.

[TheGeek1028]

They are illegal to be sold, as well as the equipment for them.

Me either. The street worker that I worked with had reported that he did see an increase in the company's cost when buying more bulbs because more starting cycling and failing.

[fiesta1117cc]

In the USA when they say that Mercury Lamps used to be legal does that mean you cant buy them anymore?

I cant understand why they would want to make them illegal because they last much longer than Sodium & Metal Halide Lamps & they dont require all the electrical stuff you need for Sodium Lamps Also Mercury Lamps are much easyer to wire up

[TheGeek1028]

Yes, I know. Same here, just with E26 and E39. Makes no sense, though, why the medium base is E26 here and E27 everywhere else. Same with mogul, E39 here, E40 everywhere else.

[fiesta1117cc]

All Mercury Vapour Lamps made in England either have E27 or E40 Base eg 50w, 80w have E27 & above that 100w, 125w, 175w & so on have E40 Lamp holders

[fiesta1117cc]

It seems the system is different in England its only E27 & E40 as it has been since the very first electric light bulb was invented & not changed since then. As for the lamp holder adapter your looking for I can only suggest that you have a look on eBay you may come across one the only thing England & the USA have in common is they still use the old imperial measurements eg inches feet & miles.

[TheGeek1028]

I mean if you have a ballast kit with the wrong fixture. Instead of buying an E39 or E40 fixture, they make E26 to E39 adapters for here in America. For Europe,they make them with E27 to E40. They are mainly used for mainstream bulbs but can be used in a ballast configuration.

[fiesta1117cc]

Do you mean a device that enables you to plug an E40 base of the bulb into an E27 Lamp Holder If so this type of device is not available in England Maybe the reason is to prevent you from using wrong bulbs in wrong fitting eg 50w-70w usually have E27 base & 100w & above have E40 base Im not sure how it works in the USA But In England both E27 & E40 are quite easy to purchase & are quite cheap to buy £0.49p

[TheGeek1028]

I'm simply talking about a base adapter.