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Hi, I'm Tim Carter from AskTheBuilder.com and I've got a game-changing tool I want to show you
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Look at this. Do you have any clue what this might be? Especially with this funny little telescoping device here
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Well, I'll tell you what it is. It's a fluorescent light bulb tester and it can test to see whether the lamp is out
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out whether the ballast is bad, and it can also test to see if the filament and fluorescent
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light bulbs are good or not. I want to show you how it works. I'm going to go turn the
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light fixture off right now. Actually, wait a minute. No, let me show you something. Look up above. Notice how these two light fixtures that are together, one's working fine, but
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the one here just above my head, it's not working. Well, we're going to show you how
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this little tool can show you exactly what's wrong. I'm going to go turn off the light
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That's the first step to make sure we test the bulks. I'll be right back
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Okay I back Now let go look to see Well first thing what we gotta do is here we have to turn it on It kind of dark I don know if you can see there not but I going to turn it on to lamp
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All right. Now, what we're going to do is I'm going to extend this
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This is what's really cool, by the way. You extend this antenna out and on a normal ceiling that's eight feet, nine feet high
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you don't even need a ladder. You know, you can just stand there and hold the tool up
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But unfortunately, my garage ceiling is about 11 feet high. So I've got to get up a little bit on a ladder to show you how this works
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Now watch this. I just put the little cup in contact with the bulb and I push the test button
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Look at it flicker. That tells you that that bulb is okay
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Now let's put it on the other bulb. I push the test button and notice nothing's happening
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Okay, that tells us that we know that the bulb is bad
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so we now know exactly which bulb to replace If we put in a new bulb it going to work just fine If both bulbs tested okay and flickered that means the problem could be in the ballast
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So you just have to turn the control here to the ballast, and you start a similar testing
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procedure, but it only works for T8 electronic ballasts. You need to make sure that your
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light fixture has one of those. And finally, here's the coolest part about this tool. Let's
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say you've got a fluorescent bulb. Look at this. So first of all, the neat thing is if
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you've got a bunch of bulbs in your house and you don't know which ones are good and which ones are bad, same thing, you can actually test them. They don't have to be in the light
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fixture. You turn it back to the lamp, you just hold it like this, and watch what happens
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I just push the test button and you can see the bulb flickering
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So that tells us that this bulb is good. It's got gas in it
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Alright now if you want to make sure that the filament okay you turn the tool to pin right down there At the bottom of the tool is a spot where you actually plug in the two tips of the the two pins on the bulb Just put it in like that
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Hit the test button. Hear that? That tells us that the filament from this end of
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the bulb is okay and you actually test both ends of the bulb to see if the
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The filament's good. But can you see how this will be a huge time saver
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It's a great tool, fluorescent light bulb tester. If you work in a factory, a commercial building where there are hundreds and thousands of
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fluorescent light bulbs, this is going to save you lots of time and money
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I'm Tim Carter for AskTheBuilder.com. If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to AskTheBuilder.com
