In the words of Tucan Sam: "Follow Your Nose"

I just wanted to share a little story with all of you in the hopes that it might prevent a disaster.

My roomates and I started to notice a distinct smell of burning electronics/wires in our apartment, specifically in the area of our tank.

We searched and searched for a source, checking to make sure we were not crossing wires or setting our selves up for trouble.

This was all last week that we smelled this smell and we were getting worried that something would happen.

Well I came home from work yesterday and the first thing I noticed was that the apartment was dark. I do not have a canopy on the tank and the 250 MH serves to light our kitchen/dining room so it was obvious immediately that something was wrong with the bulb.

I took the fixture down off the ceiling and started to check out the connections on the pendant itself. It looked like everything was in order and I tried switching back to an old bulb, thinking maybe the Phoenix 14 I just got a few months back was shot. I switched the bulbs and tried plugging the ballast back in - it was only BARELY flickering. So I decided to take apart the housing of the pendant. Just at the point where the power cable connects to the actual pendant itself, I found the problem:

The negative feed had frayed out of the wire nut and was arcing onto the ground wire. This cause the wirenut that was holding the negatives together to MELT onto the pendant hosing causing further grounding/shorting.

A few minutes with a few simple tools and some electrical tape, and I was back up and running with the light again!!!

I just wanted to share this story to let everyone know that it is very important to follow your instincts and to do checks on your electronic equipment all the time as it can quickly become a devastating situation!!!

This also explains (hopefully) why the GFCI kept on tripping when plugged into this MH. (Maybe Reefsparky could explain if that is even possible . . . )

 

What I would be asking is; why/how did this happen to a static hanging pendant?

 

It is an OLD pendant. I am not sure how long/how much abuse it endured before I bought it a few years ago.

So to say that it was static for all that time is not necessarily true - I know it was moved around a lot and adjusted for a while. But you would still think that even with some movement the components would be assembled in such a way as to not pose a fire risk!!!

 

Glad to hear your nose led you too the lighting and you were able to get it back up and running. Luckily you didn't have a fire on your hands.