Technical > Home Improvement > Dimming linear fluorescent lights

reply to IowaCowboy

Re: Dimming linear fluorescent lights

They do get turned on when we go down in the basement (such as to do laundry, retrieve possessions, etc). We are pretty good about turning the lights off when we're not down there and I've developed a habit of turning the lights off that sometimes I forget my mother is down there and I accidentally leave her in the dark but I do it due to the high electric rates in this part of the country. Sometimes they get left on. The tubes are starting to darken on the end. The fixtures are relatively new so the ballasts can be ruled out but I'll upgrade them to T8 when T12 lamps are no longer available. They don't have starters so they have electronic ballasts.

Inductive ballasts will light the bulbs 120 times a second, electronic ballasts will light them around 22,000 times a second as a rule. So it's relatively trivial to figure out which kind you have, just get some shiny cylindrical object and move it very quickly through your field of view under the lamp's illumination, and if it traces stripes through the air, you've got an inductive ballast, if the trace appears smooth, it's electronic.