I put together a sodium lamp as a gift for my mom, having assembled it out of bits from ebay.
I used a 150 W dual-ended sodium lamp, and a standard 150 W halide ballast with electronic ignitor.
This setup originally came with a 150 W dual-ended halide lamp, which worked great. So I swapped the halide out for the sodium.
First time I powered it up, it was really dim, and even after 15 minutes warm up was still really dim. Checking it with my plug-in wattmeter, I found that the lamp was taking way too many Amps and way too few Watts (which is what happens with a stone cold lamp, except it wasn't cold, it had been running for 15 minutes).
I "rebooted" it a few times, with the same result. Really feeble light, power usage of 75-80 W, and a stupid current of 2.7 A, with the ballast buzzing like a hive of bees.
Rather dissappointed, I left it on and went out for a couple of hours. When I came back, the light was crazy bright. The Watts had gone up to about 170 W, and the Amps had gone down to about 1.7 A (both of these are normal for this ballast, and match the results for the halide bulb).
After that, when I power it up, the lamp seems to warm up really quickly - reaching full brightness, and normal Amps/Watts in about 4 minutes.
Is this normal, or did I get some sort of bulb with a strange defect?
I used a 150 W dual-ended sodium lamp, and a standard 150 W halide ballast with electronic ignitor.
This setup originally came with a 150 W dual-ended halide lamp, which worked great. So I swapped the halide out for the sodium.
First time I powered it up, it was really dim, and even after 15 minutes warm up was still really dim. Checking it with my plug-in wattmeter, I found that the lamp was taking way too many Amps and way too few Watts (which is what happens with a stone cold lamp, except it wasn't cold, it had been running for 15 minutes).
I "rebooted" it a few times, with the same result. Really feeble light, power usage of 75-80 W, and a stupid current of 2.7 A, with the ballast buzzing like a hive of bees.
Rather dissappointed, I left it on and went out for a couple of hours. When I came back, the light was crazy bright. The Watts had gone up to about 170 W, and the Amps had gone down to about 1.7 A (both of these are normal for this ballast, and match the results for the halide bulb).
After that, when I power it up, the lamp seems to warm up really quickly - reaching full brightness, and normal Amps/Watts in about 4 minutes.
Is this normal, or did I get some sort of bulb with a strange defect?