Trouble with a florescent light

stu ledge · Apr 1, 2014

Hello electrical forum, long time reader first time poster, hope you can help me, I had been asked to change a single bulb to a florescent strip light with two tubes, I looked at the light that was in place and it was not looped so I assumed that the connections to the light was via a junction box and it was switched there and that I could wire this straight into this i.e there was a neutral not just a switch live, when wired in one side worked the other didn't, check usual things such as bulbs and starters, the wiring block on the strip lith had a L/SW AND L/UNI, I was wired into the L/SW which looked correct when looking at how the strip was wired but thought I should try the other side in case, this only resulted in the side that previously was not working to light up but not brightly and the side that was working not to light up at all, I told her that I though the fitting might be faulty and she is replacing it, now I am worried that I may have missed something and when I go back to fit it again it will be the same problem.

Any ideas would be welcome

Richard Burns · Apr 2, 2014

Not really sure on that one, the dimly lit sounds like an emergency light running on batteries.
Are you sure that the correct ends were used for each lamp, i.e. one side of the ballast was feeding the same lamp
Lastly was the second lamp correctly positioned in the end caps.
The original wiring sounds correct but did you check for voltage just in case.

Deleted member 9648 · Apr 2, 2014

Link L/sw and L/uni ? Maybe it's configured for both tubes to be switched separately?

stu ledge · Apr 2, 2014

Thanks for the replies, I did check the wiring of the strip light it's self but it look fine with no indication of having a battery back up, the instructions made no mention of anything other than a standard L E N arrangement, and I did check as was getting a 230/240 volts reading, I am a little baffled by the L/UNI marking on the junction part and will have a look to see if I can find any thing on line to point the way.

NickD · Apr 2, 2014

At risk of stating the bleeding obvious, what did the wiring instructions/diagram for the strip say? What Zs (or R1+R2) (or R2) and IR readings did you get at the cable? Have you confirmed supply polarity?