Hello, I am interested in electricity and lighting. I know the basics, but not all the different model histories and stuff. I have been quietly watching this forum for a while and decided to join and make this thread.

My house was built in 1992. And I think that is when this lamp/ballast was installed in my utility room. I never really paid much attention to it until we had workers in for a furnace replacement. They put in a brighter incandescent bulb so they could see better, and left the old one sitting next to the unit. With modern CFLs that use an Edison base socket, the lamp and ballast are together and have to be replaced at the same time. With this light, to lamp is 4 pin, and the ballast screws into an Edison base socket, and the lamp attaches to the ballast. It is a magnetic preheat ballast and is much heavier than modern CFLs.

It has lasted a very long time in the utility room because it was typically only started a couple times a year for a few minutes at a time when the HVAC filter was being replaced. I think the ballast's igniter is worn out. Because as a kid, I remember it took 2 or 3 seconds to start, now it takes 6 to 10 seconds. The lamp has no blackening of the arc tube.

The lamp says it was manufactured by Lights Of America. I researched them and found that they were founded in 1977 and are still in business. I emailed them the model number on the ballast and they said that its over 20 years old, but they no longer make them and don't have any additional information about it.

I will record a Youtube video about it sometime. But how rare is it and much do you think its worth, especially the ballast? My options are:
A. Sell it if its worth a lot.
B. Keep it on the shelf for a few more decades.
C. Use it in a location where it will run 24/7 so the igniter does not fail.

Thank you

It is very important to distinguish if it takes too long time of flashing till the lamp ignites, or if it takes too long after ignition till the lamp get it's brightness.
With an old, seldom used lamp, actually both could happen and would be related more to the lamp.
Try to keep it running for couple of hours uninterrupted once a time (per year,...), the arctube should clean up and recover.

According your description the ballast is rather common series choke, so for the ignition it uses either some electronic, or the common glowbottle starter (however without it's case and build within the ballast box). So definitely it will work with a regular FS2 starter, if the original dies.

What lamp it uses, isn't that some common CFL (I mean the type without ballast, so PLC-E or so; these are used mainly in commercial environment)?
Maybe you will still find a suitable replacement lamp for it...

These aren't common anymore but they are not valuable.

The more recent Lights of America stuff are pure garbage. Yours might use a standard PL-S or 2-pin PL-C replacement lamp...

Or it would be at least electrically compatible...

I think the ballast seems more rare than the lamp. Mainly because it screws directly into an Edison base. I found a similar LOA ballast in a Youtube video with a lamp. It appears Osram makes these ballasts too, but I can't find any for sale. I will post a video of it sometime. I don't know about the the different types of starters Medved is referring to. But I can see a glow inside the ballast before the lamp strikes an arc.

Is it really necessary to run the lamp for a few hours a year. I thought it could sit on the shelf for decades and still work. Why not?

These CFL ballasts seem complicated. What voltage do they output? Can I test the ballast with a standard multimeter? Is repair an option?

The lamp is 4 pins arranged like ::
I will test resistance on each pair.

The components of the inner atmosphere settle and react with the other parts of the lamp, mainly the mercury tend to attach to the metal parts and react with the oxygen from the phosphor, the starting gas components get trapped in those structures as well, altering the mix ratio , so the electrical properties (as normally there is used some Pennin g mixture, any alteration means increase in the ignition voltage).
When burning the lamp, the heat from that releases majority of the components back, so recovers most of the "shelf" aging effects.
This is common for most fluorescent lamps, but with some types it is more visible than with others (quite known for that are the modern European T8's, which after not used and exposed to low temperatures for just few weeks tend to burn "mercury starved" for some hour or so before regaining the original performance back).

You do not have to burn it every year, if you have a gear capable to ignite and operate the lamp (so it could get recovered) even after that degradation progresses. But if you say the gear you have has problems to start it, with longer storage it becomes even worse. And once it trips over the limit, where the gear won't be able to start it anymore, your lamp will be effectively dead (as without starting you can not regenerate it anymore).

The lamps are not designed to be stored, they are designed to be used and last as long as possible when used.

The components of the inner atmosphere settle and react with the other parts of the lamp, mainly the mercury tend to attach to the metal parts and react with the oxygen from the phosphor, the starting gas components get trapped in those structures as well, altering the mix ratio , so the electrical properties (as normally there is used some Pennin g mixture, any alteration means increase in the ignition voltage).
When burning the lamp, the heat from that releases majority of the components back, so recovers most of the "shelf" aging effects.
This is common for most fluorescent lamps, but with some types it is more visible than with others (quite known for that are the modern European T8's, which after not used and exposed to low temperatures for just few weeks tend to burn "mercury starved" for some hour or so before regaining the original performance back).

You do not have to burn it every year, if you have a gear capable to ignite and operate the lamp (so it could get recovered) even after that degradation progresses. But if you say the gear you have has problems to start it, with longer storage it becomes even worse. And once it trips over the limit, where the gear won't be able to start it anymore, your lamp will be effectively dead (as without starting you can not regenerate it anymore).

The lamps are not designed to be stored, they are designed to be used and last as long as possible when used.

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Thank you for the great explanation. Once the lamp "trips over the limit", is there a way to manually ignite it or something? Maybe using an oversized ballast? Do HID lamps also suffer from this effect?

I tested the resistance between each pair of pins and got 5.7 ohms on one side and about 6.5 on the other. This is a 12W lamp. I don't know if this really means anything in the fluorescent lamp.

Also, what causes a lamp to become "mercury starved" with pink light output before the filaments burn up?

Is a slight mismatch of ballast and lamp wattage okay (12W lamp on 14W ballast)? What are the effects of over or under-driving the lamp?

Also, I remember as a kid, seeing these ceiling tubes in the doctor's office waiting room with "rings" of light moving up and down the tubes. I have also noticed this in a storage room of my high school, with some of the T12 lamps appearing very dim. Do you know what causes this?

Sorry for all the questions. Thank you for the information, much of it can't be found easily on Google, but I find it very interesting.

The rings and dimness are common with 34w energy saver lamps.

The purple glow just around the electrodes means cold cathode operation, in fact it is an arc in the cloud of sputtered electrode material. That is not related that much to the lamp age, but to the fact the ballast does not heat up the electrodes enough before igniting the arc. Generally this condition is quite damaging to the lamp. I'm a bit surprised you see it with a mains powered lamp (except a brief flash), as normally this cold cathode operation heats the electrodes quite quickly, so the purple glow should disappear after fraction of a second or never appear at all. It could be seen a bit longer time on battery powered lanterns, where the ballasts is usually not able to maintain the current/power during the cold cathode mode, so the reduced power means it takes longer to heat up the electrode.

The brighter/darker rings come from a pressure oscillation within the tube, they are in fact standing waves. They do not mean anything harmful to the lamp, it just does not look as it should. Some ballasts tend to generate these, some tend to suppress them. They tend to occur on some dimmable ballasts set to low level. The general cure for that is to use some small DC bias of the arc in the tube (few mA), but that should be part of the ballast design.


To start the "lazied" lamps you need a ballast with sufficient ignition peak an OCV, as well as providing good electrode heating. It does not make sense to use any boosted power or so, that will just damage the lamps (so forget the HID; once it does not have higher OCV, it just feeds by higher current). Any time use only a ballast giving the rated current at the rated lamp arc voltage

So for that operation very good are the electronic starters based on an Fluoractor (a special thyristor with gate controlled holding current; a device specifically designed for such starters) and preheat ballasts. Those starters usually provide quite good heating (usually 2..3 seconds, against 0.2..0.5 s of glowbottles) and ignition peak around 1kV. But because for the rather long preheat time, you have to really use matching ballast, lower current ballast won't sufficiently heat up the electrodes, higher current will damage the lamp.

Second best (from the perspective of a chance of successful ignition) are the dirt cheap electronic (with 4 wire connection to the lamp), these tend to provide rather high voltage for ignition plus rather high heating current at the same time, but they tend to ignite the lamp way before the electrodes heat up, so operating them in the damaging cold mode (but provide still quite hefty heating power to the filaments, so that state is very limited in the time duration). So use only when you do not have other option; they are really harsh on the lamp.
On the other hand if you do not have the correct power ballast for the preheat circuit, this could be better even when it is rated for lower current than a lower current preheat. The reason is, this uses plenty of heating current, so even when normally feeding just half of the current rating, the heating current will be still sufficient to really start the lamp.
But when the lamp is garder to start, the ballast is then harsh even on it's own components, so do expect it dying quite often (make sure there is good fusing in front of the ballast, so at least the circuit board isn't damaged, so you may easily fix it; an incandescent of ~5..10x the power rating of the ballast will serve as a good "fuse" for that purpose; always observe it when turning that contraption ON and switch it OFF immediately once that lamp lights)...

The 2-wire per lamp instant start are even worse regarding the cold cathode operation, plus as they do not heat the electrodes at all, they may be less successful on the lamp ignition. I won't use them for such reviving of old lamps at all.

The RS ballasts are the most problematic regarding starting a lamp. They are designed with just marginal voltage available for the lamp ignition, the reason is to prevent lamp cold starting with normal use.

And in a similar way, the programmed start ballasts do contain many protection features designed to protect the ballast from any out of spec lamp behavior. Well, your lamp will be oout of spec because of the long storage, so the protection will shut it down, so you won't be abele to operate the lamp there.