A very Big Mistake by Lighting manufactures which allows High output T5 fluorescent bulbs to be used in Normal Output T5 fixtures and Fire danger it imposes

 I have a customer where they installed T5  high efficiency lighting in their office space  and down the street they installed High-bay T5 lighting  in their Warehouse.

Now the T5 high Bay Lighting has worked very well never an issue turn it on in morning it comes on and have to change an occasional bulb when it burns out after a couple years.

 

The office on the other hand has been a Nightmare .they installed offset 4x8 lay in lights and they constantly blow bulbs and transformers. 

They where mainly changing the bulbs themselves then I took over doing it and that's when I discovered a major problem.

I went to change out a ballast and had to do a retrofit as the smaller ballast in picture  was not available and when I started matching up numbers to get something to work that's when i also looked at bulbs and realized what was going on.

The supply house was supplying the wrong bulbs.The office fixtures use a 28 watt cool white bulb  normal output bulb . while the supply house was sending them 54 watt High output Bulbs  

T5-54 watt bulb 

 

T5-28 Watt  bulb

Which is why they sometimes worked and fixtures where overheating and sockets burning up. in essence they where creating the problem of the old  Edison based conventional light bulbs where socket maybe rated 60 watts but people where putting 100 or 150 watt bulbs in them .

But this should not be possible T12 and T 8 bulbs which are normal out put and High output have different ends to prevent this but T5 do not . How could Underwriters Lab  UL and NFPA allow this to happen. If these T5 fixtures are installed close to combustible materials and wrong bulb put in the overheating fixture could easily cause a fire. 

Once again someone asleep at the switch .