Spiral compact fluorescent starting on a preheat circuit

Here is something that you don't see everyday. This is the tube part from a spiral shaped cfl starting up on a preheat ballast with a starter. I dreamed about the spiral shaped cfl's before they came out only in my dreams they were preheat. It is interesting to watch how they start on the preheat circuit. Enjoy!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• preheat
• fluorescent
• spiral
• cool
• blink
• flicker

[skyman2002]

Is That a Old Comercial Electric Bulb? They Usually Get Black From Use. By The Way, I Made A Video For You! I Did The Same Thing! It Worked! I Will Send It To You When It Is Done Uploading!

[DavidFromAE]

Yup, that was a commercial electric bulb. 23 watts i think and the ballast was a preheat ballast rated for 28 watt CFL

[brettsalling]

what kind of ballast and starter do i need for this set up?

[DavidFromAE]

Right now, I don't know of any permanent setups that can pull this off although for this one, I carefully removed the tube part from the base of a spiral CFL. This is hard to do without breaking part of the tube and causing it to lose vacuum so be careful. Then there will be four leads, two for each tube. Take a preheat choke ballst, first lead of the cfl goes to that, second and third you hold a starter up to until it fires, the last one goes to the neutral wire. I'll do a demo.

[danielmcf]

Heya Dave ...you seem to be a great potential source for some knowledge. I have 175W Mercury Vapor fixtures all around my building. In an effort to save power usage and bulb cost I put some 100 watt compact fluorescent in these fixtures. They seem to be working just fine. The fact that there's a ballasts in the fixture AND in the bulb... do you think that will harm anything?

I appreciate your help Daniel

[DavidFromAE]

If these are regular compact fluorescent bulbs that are meant to go in an incandescent socket, I wouldn't advise sticking regular CFL bulbs in mercury vapor lights since the mercury ballast will overdrive the CFL and cause it to catch on fire or explode. However, I know that they make special "yard buster" compact fluorescent bulbs that have no ballast and run off of the ballast that drives a mercury vapor bulb, most of which utilize 65 watts. Those are perfectly safe to use.

[AcaAllertor127]

there was a light in a hotel in fortmyers two years ago in the bathroom and when i started it up it dimly glowed orange and eventually started up it was awesome:)

[jecwhiz]

It would be awesome to have CFL in preheat...even in spiral....only if there was NO thick coating on the bottom part of spiral...because there are darker spots when lighting base down and you want more light going downwards too....such as a....lets say...a table lamp!

[TheGeek1028]

I have one that is a preheat...but no magnetic ballast. It was the one in the white lamp that stuck out a lot in my video. BTW, I sent you a friend invite, did you ever get that?

[rickyatHK]

I have tried to start up a tri-U CFLon a desk lamp which supports a max wattage of 11 watts .I use a PHILIPS S10 green starter ,it lights as usual,what a funny thing!

[form109]

man,i wish today's CFL's were preheats,and actually lasted the rated life!

[turgi65]

For European series ballasts that's what usually happens when the owner realises the lights are using too much energy. They simply screw in a cfl and it still runs..:P. But US ballasts give the CFL 230v I think which is a 120v cfl.

[brettsalling]

ok...thanks!