Tuesday, August 7, 2018

A Very Scary Situation found when replacing 2X4 Fluorescent lights with LED Flat Panels in a small office

I was recently changing out old style 2x4 fluorescent  lights in a friends small IT office when I came across a very scary situation which if it had not been found would have resulted in a catastrophic fire .
The old lights which which utilized 4- T12 old style bulbs with 2 bulbs per ballast are very inefficient so many are updating to either 3 bulb T8 fluorescent or in this Case LED which draws half the power and requires no maintenance for 60,000 hours .

I pulled down and replaced several lights when I got to the back repair room and thats when I found the situation which in my 40+ years as an electrician have never ever encountered .

Two burn marks going all the way up thru the ceilings Insulation where the 2 ballast sit in the fixture not only this there are 2 holes burned thru the fixture .



Now its not unusual for these ballasts which where replacement ballasts to get hot when they go bad but I have never seen anything this extreme


Which has me wondering if this is a manufacturers defect with these ballasts as they have gotten so hot are we looking at a recall and the big danger you can see the close tolerance between fixtures and ceiling and there are ,many small offices and store fronts like this all potential fire problems if there is a problem with these ballasts .

As far as I can determine proper voltage 120 VAC delivered by West Penn Power proper size wire and properly grounded .
I will be in contact with manufacturer , CPSC and Fire officials over this matter.


UPDATE :

After being examined by an Electrical Engineer he determined the current replacement ballast where not responsible for making the holes but the original supplied ballasts did it.
He has seen several cases where holes have been blown thru a fixture but never 2 in same fixture where both ballast failed which makes this a real anomaly
Sure would love to see the original ballast but where disposed of many years ago  .