Metal Halide Bulbs

How to Know if a Metal Halide Light Bulb is Bad

The most popular and most important member of the HID lighting group is the metal halide lamp. This particular type is actually an arc tube is placed inside of a larger bulb. The arc tube is what makes the halides inside the light glow and they glow very bright offering you with a very high lumens per watt ratio. Basically what that means is it will be using very little energy, but still producing a lot of light.

These can be placed in the same category as sodium and mercury light bulbs. They are all excellent choices if you’re looking to keep costs down and save energy as they all have a greater life cycle. Like all lamps, the these to will run their life cycle and eventually fade out. When on its last leg, it’s time to replace it. I never like to wait until it completely burns out to replace it, because I get plenty of warning signs that it is on its way out.

There are a few factors to consider when deciding whether or not to replace them. If you’re using the wrong ballast, this will cause your bulb to work incorrectly. You have to make sure that the wattages match. In some cases the wattages have to be different, but that isn’t the norm. Just by matching the wattage alone isn’t a guarantee that it will work properly. Some specialty bulbs are not interchangeable with the common types of the same wattage and could require a different ballasts as well.

In some rare cases, I find that if placed in mercury ballast, it will start up, but soon burn out during its warm-up phase. Generally speaking metal halide bulbs and mercury ballasts don't work well together. However some mercury lamps can be used with metal halide ballasts if they are the same wattage. Both types tend to get overpowered by pulse start sodium ballasts if they are 100-volt bulbs. If you use sodium ballast most likely the bulb will burn out before a full warm-up has taken place.

There are a few other rare but notable reasons a mental halide might not be working or needs to be replaced are if the burning position restrictions have been violated or the photocell is catching the light from the fixture and that is causing it to burn out. Again these are both rare, but worthy of noting.