II’m having trouble with my 4xF40 strip, when I ground the fixture and only run one ballast it works fine, but when I wire both ballasts in circuit, it trips the breaker, the fixture doesn’t have a dedicated spot on it for a grounding screw so I usually placed the ground wire underneath the ballast. I did swap out one of the ballast that might be questionable but still having problems with it tripping the breaker. I’m not sure if there’s a ground fault or maybe the ground wire isn’t supposed to be placed under the ballast. One more thing I’d like to mention is that when I remove the ground from the fixture, works fine without tripping the breaker. Any advice would be appreciated!

Someone please help!

Did you try replacing both ballasts?

Fixed the problem! Turns out, it was bare copper wire poking out of the cardboard piece of one of the sockets. I trimmed down the wire and that took care of it!! 

Fixed the problem! Turns out, it was bare copper wire poking out of the cardboard piece of one of the sockets!

Awesome that it was a simple issue and not one of the ballasts.

The easiest fixes are sometimes the hardest to find !

That's like the time I changed an outlet powered by a switch to a table lamp, after it was changed the lamp stayed on instead of following the switch command. All that needed to happen was to pull off a little tab on the side!

Fixed the problem! Turns out, it was bare copper wire poking out of the cardboard piece of one of the sockets. I trimmed down the wire and that took care of it!! 

That sounds scary to me... 

That sounds scary to me... 

Cardboard sockets..? I'll say 

Yeah the cardboard backing is very common with a lot of older fluorescent sockets here



What doesn't help is that a lot of fluorescents use a push in connection too so when you strip the wire past the recommended 3/8" there's a chance it'll poke out. I believe if you strip to 3/8" the insulation will prevent the wire from poking too far out.