Why you should check your fans

Went to replace a few lamps in the fixture at the dentist's office, and discovered that one of the fans was not working! I figured this out, because some of the wiring was discolored.

Perhaps that is not the word for it. New wires on right (pilfered from an unused ballast). Check out the damage to the 2 white wires next to the new ones. Those are the exact same type of wire and jacket.





Maybe dried out and cracked is better, or perhaps borderline charred. These are the wires that connect each set of encaps together. There are 4 2 lamp ballasts in this fixture, each ballast has 2 hot leads, so one goes to one end cap and the other goes to the other endcap, and then these wires jump between them so that there are hot leads to both pins on each pair of lamps. Why they made then so short and crammed then into the space instead of making them a little longer and away from the lamps is beyond me. Because this is just an accident waiting to happen. On the other end of the fixture, each endcap has 2 wires that return back to the ballast and there is no cramming of the wires. The only wires that look like this are the jumpers.

BTW that wiring is discolored and cracked so badly that you can see the wiring inside. The end caps on that end were also brown and brittle.

The fixture is a Nova Extreme 1123 T5HO 8 lamp fixture (discontinued after they discovered that the 6 lamp fixture with individual reflectors actually performs better /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/mad.gif) and it has 2x 120V 3" fans. This is in conflict with Nova's website which states on one place that is has only one fan, and another place that says the fans are 2". What a bunch of tools. Anyways, I found it difficult to locate the exact replacement fan, which is a pretty low profile fan. The only one I could find was from Radio Shack, and it was "thicker" so t didn't fit inside the fixture, so I switched the grill to the outflow side and screwed it to the outside of the fixture. I feel that it actually works better in this position, the other (original) fan doesn't seem to blow much out of the fixture compared to this one.



So if anyone else out there has a Nova Extreme fixture, please make sure that you examine these wires occasionally, and make sure your fans are always working. This has potential to be a serious fire hazard and electrocution hazard if left unchecked. Also a good reason for having your light fixture on a GFCI protected circuit.

So now on that note, does anyone know where I can find replacement endcaps for this fixture? I damaged a couple while retrofitting it. Eventually the fixture will be replaced with an LED fixture, but then this one will still be good for use on another tank. Also I wouldn't mind retrofitting the whole fixture with a mod kit to convert it to the 6 lamp version, since that is supposedly better.