| Climbed up on one of the roofs of a church building I help look after- Has 2 steeple lights. 100w MH. Fixtures and the building are a bit over 10.. maybe 15 years old. Lamps have been replaced maybe 3 times during that period.. They have always gone EOL. Then sit for upwards of a year or two before I get up there again when I feel gutsy enough to do it. This time around though, I said enough with having to replace the blasted bulbs every year, we're going HPS. I figured on running 100W HPS off of the 100W MH ballast/capacitor until those finally gave up the ghost then would put in a nice small compact 150W HPS ballast with capacitor built in. That will really light up the steeple nicely as I've already done at another building that had been running 150W MH. Sure, not as white as I'd like, but until they get a decent 175W MH LED replacement (or I find the gear cheap to convert over to MV) it will do just fine and I won't have to go up on the roof every year. Very steep roof, and the fixtures are right at the corner edge. I have to lay down somewhat just to reach em with the screw driver to open em up. Anyway.. 1 fixture swapped over nicely. It looked like the MH bulb I took out was still in good shape, very little if any blackening, which had me worried that the ballast may have already failed. But I put in the 100w HPS bulb anyway, closed it up, then climbed up the rest of the roof, over the top, and down to the other side and started on the other one. Only to find out that either the ballast and/or capacitor had puked oily stuff all over the place. Gah. It was a gonner for sure. But put in a new 100W HPS bulb just in case and then climbed down and replaced the 175W MH flag pole flood ballast that was putting out half the energy with a 150W HPS ballast and new 150W Sylvania HPS bulb. Went back inside, flipped on the breaker, came out, and was pleasantly surprised to see the flagpole light slowly warm up and get nice and bright for good ol glory. Sure, not the white like I would like, but it'll do until I can get a MV or something else in there. Looked up at the Steeple, and one side was lit. Albeit dimly, but not too bad considering. The other side was dead, the one with the oil all over the place. So one of these days when I have some free time and get my courage up again, I'll go back up and stick in there a 150W HPS ballast just like I did for the flagpole, and do the other side as well and upgrade the bulbs to 150 watt and call it good for about 8-10 years. unless I become too annoyed and find the right ballasts and bulbs for MV. We'll see. There are 150W HPS parking lot lights going EoL all over the place at multiple buildings, so I'm going to be busy over the next few weeks when I have free time. We have 4 buildings that were built within the past 10-15 years and these are where the HPS are going bad. Right about their 10 year lifecycle. Not too bad considering. I've changed out a number already but I hate dragging the A-Frame Little Giant ladder out to get to these, I'm too heavy right now and it's not safe.
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