Hissing fluorescent lights

[ydna001]

Hi y'all.
Have got a new sound coming out of both sets of my fluoro lights in my home woodworking shed. They are 4 years old, tubes have not been changed out and start to hiss after 3-5 minutes of operation. Cleaned out the lights with compressed air as it's a dusty environment but to no avail.
Any suggestions as to what I can do next.
Thanks in advance
Andy.

[rwbuild]

Replace them with new tubes or change to LED fluro

[BobL]

Hissing or Buzzing?

Buzzing is caused by old school ballasts, replacing the old EM ballasts with new electronic ones will fix them.

For about the same price you can buy LED fluoros, remove the old starters and EM ballasts and you will have lighting at around 1/4 of the cost.

[ydna001]

Thanks guys for the feedback. In the meantime, if they are used is there a risk of them blowing out or worse?

[rwbuild]

and where were you when the lights went out......

[BobL]

Thanks guys for the feedback. In the meantime, if they are used is there a risk of them blowing out or worse?

It is possible for them to overheat and start a fire. Also they can waste a lot of power. One fluoro I had with a bad ballast was drawing nearly double its supposed power rating.

Sometimes they don't even have to catch fire to cause problems. I once worked in a 7 floor building that was about 40 years old and had little done to it in those 40 years so the fluoros would have been original fittings when the building was built. Anyway the fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate the building. The fire brigade came followed by the local TV helicopter. Dozens of Cars stopped on the main road with drivers gawking at the proceedings but there was no smoke to be seen. What happened was a fluoro ballast in a concrete tunnel between an adjacent building had overcooked and let out a small amount of smoke that had drifted into the basement of our building setting off the alarms. We were on the 7th floor and couldn't smell or see anything but it was easy to smell the smoke in the basement. That little incident was found to have resulted in more than 1000 person hours of lost work - after that all the fluoros in both buildings were replaced.

[rwbuild]

My bad, I didn't realize that they could cause that much trouble or fire