Metal Halides not working.

[bmeeder]

The last couple of days there has been a problelm with my halides. I noticed they weren't working correctly when i came home and they were not on. I then tried to manually turn it on and it attempted to but failed.
The next day they came on at there designate time but then turned off within a couple of hours. I have them set for roughly six hours a day. Today, they won't even try to fire up.
Is this a bulb problem or a ballast problem? P

 

[scsinet]

How many halide lamps are in this system? If it's just one lamp, it could be a number of problems.
If it's more than one lamp and both are affected in exactly the same way, then that narrows it down signfiicantly.
If you have more than one lamp, is it just one "ballast box" that runs everything?

 

[bmeeder]

one lamp and one ballast

 

[scsinet]

How long has it been since you last replaced the lamp?
After it shuts off, does it ever turn back on again by itself? If not, before it stopped working all together, what action did you take to get it working again?

 

[bmeeder]

It does turn on by itself randomly
The last time i changed the bulb was about two months ago. I got it off ---- so i guess the quality should be questioned in this situation.

 

[scsinet]

The classic failure mode of halides is to start cycling on and off.
The part that really stinks is that if you don't do something about it, it will eventually destroy the capacitor in the ballast. Usually it's not something hobbyists see because we proactively replace our lamps well before they start failing like this, though yours has started doing it very prematurely.
If the lamp has stopped coming on all together, in all likelihood either the lamp has given up the ghost or the cap blew in the ballast.
My first move would be to replace the bulb. If that doesn't fix it, then more in depth testing is in order.

 

[tank a holic]

I just had to replace one of my bulbs for this same problem its most likely the bulb If the ballast is bad they usually make a lot of noise and the buld will come on and off frequently