They seem to be quite flickery when started up on a magnetic ballast compared to the Alto Is. I wonder if they still make Alto I or even full mercury T8 lamps anymore.

Hmm. My grandpa's auto body shop has F40T12 and 8' T12 slimlines. Since the lamps are being banned, i may be changign some ballasts for him. If I do, I'll certainly share them with the GoL community. He said unless there is absolutly no way to get lamps anymore (meaning unless no one has any lamps left) he's keeping his "good old fashioned lights" in place. He was considering buying new fixtures, but I'm trying to push him towards new ballasts sine the fixtures themselves aren't outdated; the ballasts are. His shop is lit with all magnetic RS ballasts probably from the 70's. The T12 troffers are likely from the late 80's-90's though since the drop ceiling in his office was added later on. the reason I'm saying this is because the new lamps will be F32T8 and 8' T8 lamps.

Hmm why not just use 80+ CRI lamps which aren't affected by the ban, they're a little more expensive but they're still T12.

He could use those, but if the 80+ CRI lamps are more expensive than standard T8s then he'll likely buy the new ballasts since it'll save him money in the long run. He knows eventually he's going to have to upgrade them, but he's on the cheap side and is trying to push it off as long as possible. I offered to do any relamping or reballasting the he needed and he said alright so we'll see. Come to thing of it, i think he has a two-lamp preheat F40T12 strip light in the (extremely small) bathroom at the shop. That one I may have to replace for him.

Hmm, well I personally prefer using 80+ CRI lamps, and I have some fixtures like this which will look weird with T8.

And yeah I wouldn't modify that preheat fixture, see if you can find some decent quality fixture to replace it.

Oh and have you thought about using magnetic T8 ballasts? They're harder to find but you get to keep the rapid start flicker and you also get the reliability of magnetic with T8s.

I didn't know they made magnetic T8 ballasts anymore. He'll buy the stuff at HD though since he has some sort of contractor's card since he also rents out an appartment that gets quite a bit of TLC.

Yeah I believe they're still made since they're not covered under the ballast ban.

Ebay is the best place for T8 magnetic ballast. most retail stores and electrical supply house is pretty expensive

Of the 8 lamps I installed in this setup, 2 of them are already burned out.

That's low mercury lamps for you.

Altos...

Two more died this week. Good god, these lamps are sh!t.

Wow now what year are they? 2009 were the worst
Did your die with that dim glowing discharge?

I bought them earlier this year, so they're probably not too old. No glowing, they just won't start.

Now I almost like the first generation ALTOs

Yeah, I bought some Alto IIs once and they always flickered for a few minutes when starting on magnetic RS. I just hope they don't come out with Alto III.

Alto III lamps will just be the factory duds that simply get a "I" stamped on to the end of the etch.

Alto III won't have any mercury in it at all.

To be honest, i THINK one of the lighting companies was trying to make a mercury free lamp (i forget if it was fluorescent, HPS, or whatever). I wonder if scientists could develop a mercury "substitute" that would make lamps work just as well as if they were filled with mercury, but without the toxicity. That way they could be disposed of in standard trash cans and the big "Eco" Bulsh!t can end. The companies don't care about the environment. They just do what they have to in order to get a grant from the government for "helping the environment". Plus mercury is probably very expensive given it's toxic so they probably want to reduce mercury so they don't need to obtain as much.