Update to my lighting problems.
I was gardening this morning but was frustrated by the rain coming on so decided to do a little bit of sorting out in my garage. I have shelves high up near the ceiling where I keep stuff I don't use so often and as I haven't been up there for quite some time I made a start there. This means climbing up a few rungs of my step ladder and as I got up higher I realized one of the tubes on the light fitting is black at one end for a distance of maybe 2 inches in from the end.
The strange thing is that the end of the tube looks Ok from below, it's only when you get up level with it that you can see the top is black. I got a long garden cane so I can operate the switch whilst up the ladder and switched it on. Well, the end of the tube glowed an angry red for an instant, went out and then glowed red again and fired up. I let it run for a few minutes and then switched it off and tried again but it wouldn't light off - just gave me the red glow twice and then went dead. It's twin tube (this is a twin tube 5ft fitting) flashed and lit up when the "blackened" tube lit up, but subsequently only flashed in syncro with it's "sick" pal and failed to light off when the "duff" tube failed to light.
So what we have is two tubes which flash in synchro with each other when switched on. Sometimes they go on to stay alight and sometimes both stay "dead" after 2 flashes.
Whilst I was up there near the ceiling I came across a spare tube I had forgotten I had (there is another twin tube batten at the door end of the garage and a single 5ft batten in the kitchen) I must have bought a spare at some time and forgotten it was up there. Anyway, I thought the blackened tube didn't look "right" so I took it out and fitted the new tube. Now when you switch the light on both tubes flash once and then light up - which is what they always used to do - I must have switched it on and off at least a half dozen times this evening and it's worked perfectly every time.
I guess the blackened end and excessive red glow on the "duff" tube is therefore an indication that a tube is at the end of it's life and I'll look out for this on the other ones (in fact I can see this blackening - to a much lesser extent - on the other tubes now I'm looking for it) I have two questions I don't know the answer too:-
1) Given that the blackened tube is worn out? I can understand why it stopped lighting up but why did the other tube in this twin tube batten also stop lighting? By the way that other tube looks in good order with only a very slight blackening visible.
2) Because it's been "misfiring" for a few months now - sometimes lighting sometimes not, but even when not lit I would just leave the switch on and use the light cast over from the other batten near the door - will I have caused damage to this unit's electronics?
So, with a bit of luck and good fortune all it needed was a new tube - happy days, fingers crossed.