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Close call with disaster today....

melly mel

melly mel

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Was at the other house today wiring up my lighting on the new setup when the fiance called....."you should come home right now....I heard a pop in the fishroom and there's a weird smell like somethings burning". Of course, I dropped what i was doing and drove as quick as i can home. ....Get there and I noticed one of the lights did not turn on but the timer light is on so it should be. Unplugged it and tried it again....hit the reset button on the lumatek ballast and I hear the pop that she was talking about....I soon smell something like an electrical fire so I quickly unplugged it. looked at the ballast and sure enough...toasted! The surface of what the ballast was sitting on had burn marks and the bottom of the ballast had the black marking of a small ignition. Damn lucky she went home first before meeting up with me or else we could have came home to something pretty damn shitty.

Not sure what happened, its been running since november with no problems and I havent changed anything. Called Marine depot and they will exchange since it has the 3 year warranty but has anyone ever experienced this problem with the dimmable lumatek ballast? I've been running it on HQI setting since im running radiums. The other ballast seems fine.

Man, thats a good way to get someone home quick tho......
 
I had a different type of ballast do something similar. It "melted" I would say. Very dusty rice smell afterwards. I think it plain overheated, or there was an issue with the power supply and or timer. When a t5 setup was plugged into the same timer and outle it kept turning on and off, so maybe that was a cause. Either way I'm glad you caught it!
 
Whoa, that's some crazy sh!t. Glad everything is ok. I have the same ballast (250W - 400W) and have been using it since January and no problems so far *knock on wood*.
 
That expensive electrical smell is hard to mistake for anything else :D

Good safety tip though is make sure any balances are sitting on non-flammable surfaces, even if you have to put little pegs under it to raise it off the floor
 
I hope this doesnt happen to you guys that are running the same ballast, I'm wondering why it didnt trip the GFCI tho. Shouldnt something like that have tripped it cutting the power to the tank?

Patchin and Erin, Yeah Im pretty lucky she's in tuned with the tank. She always seems to know before me that something is wrong or not working right with it.....dont know if thats a good thing or bad since she never pays attention to what i do with it. :O ...or atleast I didnt think she did. But definately a keeper! :bigsmile:

Mike (gimmito) how long have you been running the balast and have you ever run into any problems with it?

John, glad everythings cool with yours. hows the tank?

Mike (coral reefer), you bring up a good point.....I did change the timer that this specific ballast was connected to back in Dec. How would I pinpoint if that was the specific cause?

Mike (sfsuphysics) I had the little rubber feet things on and the ballast wasnt touching the surface of the box at all but good advice either way.
 
I found out about the weird timer thing by accident really. Maybe just switch it out. They are pretty cheap. May have been the outlet too. Never figured it out, just ditched them
Both
 
Coral reefer said:
I found out about the weird timer thing by accident really. Maybe just switch it out. They are pretty cheap. May have been the outlet too. Never figured it out, just ditched them
Both
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Can I ask what timer you switched yours out to? I had the brinks one that i found at walmart. Just need a temp one since I'll be getting a controller in the future.

Kensington Reefer said:
If she can do that without paying attention, I think you might want to move up the wedding date!!
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She waited 8 1/2 years for the proposal, whats another 10 months? :D hehe

sfboarders said:
melly mel said:
John, glad everythings cool with yours. hows the tank?
Click to expand...

Tank is ok. Corals are somewhat growing. I'm gonna guess your GFCI didn't go first because the fuse in your ballast blew first.
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Makes sense. Im hoping it doesnt happen again but I will change out the timers just to make sure.
 
melly mel said:
... I'm wondering why it didnt trip the GFCI tho. Shouldnt something like that have tripped it cutting the power to the tank? ....
Click to expand...

Glad it ended well. Yikes.

Any short on the other side of a ballast transformer will have zero effect on a GFCI.
A GFCI measure an imbalance in current between the hot/neutral, which implies a short to ground.
But the transformer in the ballast isolates the other side, so the load on the GFCI side looks perfectly normal.
And to make it worse, the transformer also can limit the current, so breaker will not pop.

That said, most digital electronic ballast have open/short protections circuits as do some of the magnetic ones.
So I am a bit surprised that did not trip. But maybe it does not have one, or was not a big enough short.

Also, in other devices any short between neutral and hot will not trip a GFCI either. It just looks like a big load.
But that trips the breaker or fuse rather quickly.
Only a short to ground will cause a trip.

Maybe time to switch to LED? 0:)
 
Yeah GFCIs are pretty damn useless for preventing fires due to electronic equipment, great if you touch said equipment and current runs through to ground though!

What you really want to stop fires is called an Arc-Fault Circuit Interupter (AFCI)... Most codes require an AFCI breaker on every bedroom, bloody expensive switches too! However before you run out and get one for your tank's circuit, they have a very nasty habit of tripping on anything that has a rather large surge current, or things with electrical motors like power tools. Personally I'll let my smoking alarm save me in my bedroom and not a circuit breaker :D
 
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