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My grandfather's F40
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Here's one of his 4 F40T12 fixtures. These were taken from a Western Electric switching facility by my great-grandfather. These were removed in the mid 80s i think (around the time my grandpa made the garage) and are from the early-to-mid 70s.
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[Original post:]
I looked at the paper UL tag on the endcap on the "spare" light in the basement that sits in the far corner collecting dust. I didn't open it up though. The fixture is a lot heavier than one would expect. Last night i was over their house (we visit every friday after supper for a few hours) and my dad had to borrow a skill saw so i tagged along with him into the basement to look that fourth one of these that's currently unused.
The outside simply has the UL sticker and a sticker that says to plug the conduit holes on the end if they're unused (which he didn't do LOL). I can only imagine what's in these lights with those huge openings.
The three-lamp half-piper has a center lamp that just glows dimly and blinks slightly. I didn't here a clicking starter, but my dad was rumaging around for the saw so maybe i jsut didn't hear it? Anyways, i'm bringing a new GE EcoLux lamp and a new starter next friday.
I'll ask if i can look at this light next time too to check why it has trouble starting on a cold start. After it starts, it'll come on when you flick the switch but if it's off for over a half-hour, you have the flick the switch a few times or else nothing happens. It's probably a grounding issue so i'll remove the lamps and clean them along with the reflectors and sand where the ground wire is connected to the fixture, as these are magnetic rapid start fixtures. While I'm at it I'll check the brand of the ballast. That's if my grandpa lets me "screw" with his light as he'd put it.
It's only been recently that it's had this problem too. He was thinking it was the lamps or the ballast but i told him that's not the case with this one. A little fun fact though: He's never changed any of the six lamps in the garage since i was born! He's had to change the T17 a couple years ago and one of the halfpiper lamps (one halfpiper lamp is a Canadian Sylvania probably from the early 2000s and the other two are Value-Brite F20T12 lamps. even if the unlit lamp is good I'll change it since it's an interesting addition to me collection.
I wonder if that's permitted by building codes? Or was someone garaging a semi truck?
Can you make a garage fireproof with just SheetRock? I would think so...
When I was a little kid I used to have creepy dreams about my mother's garage door opener...but when it broke those dreams went away.
Oh, by the way, at a friend's house I saw a Norelco "Genie" garage door opener in use! I knew they made electric shavers, light bulbs and florescent tubes but apparently they made garage door openers!
My mother's I think broke one of the bicycle-chain-like chains that lifted the door and she just had the garage door opener people disconnect the opener (as of a year and a half ago it was still on the ceiling, disconnected) and made it a manual-open door so instead of pushing a button in your car you just have to get out of the car and open the door by hand (it only takes one hand) then close it by hand afterwards.
I think it was a Sears garage door opener IIRC.
Now I HATE those spring-lift garage doors (the ones that instead of a roll-up door are just a wood panel and are held up by springs. I just never liked them.
Now at a neighbor's house (we don't have cars in my tiny Alaska town so yay no air pollution and noise) their "garage" has one of the lame garage doors described above only theirs has no springs so you have to stick a piece of 4X4 lumber under there and it takes two people (one to hold the door and one to insert the post).