rok, difference is the quality from HD usually is chincy at best. I can also buy a solar light set of 6 for 24.99 for my front path but in a year at best they'll be gone or lawn ornaments. Disposable lighting. hmmmm nice marketing concept homey D; stamp out the cheapest product possible, consisting mostly of poly and cheap steel materials, along with chinese sweat shop engineered electronics etc under misleading names like "Hampton Bays" Did you know that HD IS hampton bays? homedepot=mickie mouse lighting period. do it right the first time. Extraordinary lighting stores and supply houses in our area that have staff on hand for field-educated face to face explinations anytime include Aetna-hicksville, Creative Lighting-mineola, star&son-franklin square, Duplex michaels Revco out east too many to list but i have had terrible experiences at just about all nassau county HD, the lighting center, national, expressions, walmart, kmart, and countless others. nowadays its hard to find a real old time store with cutting edge product that can help like these. You will have no problem finding wire, ballast,nuts,and sockets for custom reflectors/boxes and greenhouses where a remote ballast is golden. Lowes stores seems to be a better place to start though they just started to pop up recently round these parts so i can say little. creative is where i have shopped for 30+yrs. Good luck on your journey into lighting hope this can steer some folks into the light it took an hour to write up i hope you can appreciate what I am getting at. peace LS

dcarch, in her first pics she did produce a photo of the ballast wiring diagram. On it the black wire went directly to the ballast as she now states. On the ballast wiring diagram again they show one wire from each lamp joining together and then connected to the incoming neutral wire. Not the way I find most ballasts. All of the ballasts I work with take the incoming wires and connect directly to the ballast with a ground wire, bare usually just connected to the fixture for safety reasons. Until I had a clearer picture I hesitated to say more although I am sure the white wire does not connect to the fixture. jrrr, on your pic of the ballast above, I assume the thicker black wire is the incoming power cord? And the one black wire of this is wire nutted (the clear connector) and then goes to the ballast. What does the other black wire of this incoming power cord connect to? It appears that this 2nd wire is wire nutted (another clear connector) to the white wire that is loose in your first picture? Referring back to the first wiring diagram on your ballast I would say that the white wire in question came out of one of the holes next to the white wire that loops from each plastic end piece in your first pic. That would follow the diagram on the ballast as they are using the end plastic piece as a connector. If foreign companies had quality control departments like we used to have here, that fixture and any else produced by that line would be scrapped or at least inspected individually before shipping. But that was a long long time ago on a planet far far away. I would return the fixture if that loose white wire won't slip into the hole next to one of the white wire loop. Once in you should not be able to pull it back out easily but since it is 'hot' when the fixture is plugged in I would not want it to be a loose connection. That could spark and soon melt the plastice end piece of the lite tube. Hope this makes sense. If you post any more pics, pull some of the same color wires out a bit so they photo individually. Won't hurt any thing and you can test the fixture without the cover plate on. Once you insert that white wire of course.

"Overall, the valve (tube)is still an almost mystical thing, but in all honesty, modern amplifiers using transistors or MOSFETs are so vastly superior in terms of fidelity, efficiency and reliability, that I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Having said this, I was using a valve preamplifier on my own system until recently." --from Rod Elliot---I recommend his site on all questions related to audio. There is no doubt that valves do have some very nice characteristics, and for guitar amplifiers there are few guitarists who would argue otherwise. Guitarists love the sound of soft clipping that tubes make, rather than the harsher sound of over-driven MOSFETS or transistors. A soft overload behavior means that a valve amp does not sound as harsh as a transistor amp when it is overdriven - which is great for guitar, but a hi-fi should never be overdriven anyway, so the point is moot. The problems that befall valves are many, and include Fragile - The glass envelopes are very thin, and are easily broken. Limited Life - Even if a valve is operated well within its ratings, it still has a finite life. The main causes of valve failure are cathode emission degradation (happening all the time), and gas, when small amounts of air "break" the full vacuum. Microphonics - All valves tend to be slightly microphonic, which is to say that they act as a microphone. This can cause additional colouration to the signal if the sound from speakers vibrates the amplifier. High Voltage - Having to ensure that the 600V DC typical of a high power amp does not "flash over" valve bases is a constant headache, and ensuring that these voltages are kept well away from small fingers is mandatory. High voltage capacitors are also more expensive than lower voltage ones. Heaters - Valve cathodes must be operated at the correct temperature so they emit electrons properly, and "boil off" contaminants. If the heater voltage is too low, the cathode will become poisoned, and the valve is useless. The heater power used is all wasted, in that none of it is turned into sound. Output Transformers - The output transformer for a valve amp is expensive, bulky and heavy. It introduces its own distortion components, which are difficult (or impossible) to eliminate completely. Heat - All valve amps run hot. The valve will not work unless it is hot, and the heat causes problems for other components, shortening their life. The heat is all wasted energy. Damping - Valve amplifiers nearly all have a low damping factor, caused by a relatively high output impedance. Speakers must be very well damped indeed to work well with any valve amp, or the bass will become poorly defined, and crossover networks (which rely on a very low amp impedance) may not work as well as intended. On the positive side, valve amplifiers have a "warm" sound, partly because of the low order harmonic distortion introduced and because of the much higher impedance level compared to solid state. A good valve amp will also have a very wide bandwidth, and will have an easy job driving loads that cause solid-state equipment to have severe heartburn (or just blow up on the spot). But then again, how many people own 2 ohm speakers. Personally, I would never buy a speaker that is so poorly designed that it required a special amplifier. At low listeneing levels, valve equipment has vanishingly small distortion levels, and when all is said and done, there is something nice about little glass tubes, with little lights inside, making your music. But watt for watt, dollar for dollar, and if accuracy of incoming signal is of your highest importance, buying tubes are definitely not the way to go. Robert Carver has built solid state amps (with a so-called niceness and warmth switch) that tube-heads couldn't tell the difference from. But if you get you your stereo info from expensive retailers, true-believers, and Stereophile-type magazines rather than acoustic and electrical engineers you are likely to be led down the path of subjectivism, rather than objectivism. The repair rate and replacement rate of tubes is so far greater than solid state devices it is ridiculous. Unless you live in very cold weather and need the extra heat--go solid state:-) We all know that heat is the enemy of electronics. That is why heat sinks and fans exist. Krell, Meridian, Levinson, are all solid state and they are generally considered to be the Rolls Royce of the industry. In the age of DSP's and amplifier impedance output adjustment it makes almost no sense for tube amps for the average audiophile and every listener. But if you love the look of glowing tubes and don't have kids with prying hands, go ahead and buy one. Greg

Oh, I agree with you there (e.g. about graph data presentation, a tool that can stretch truths and deceive the uninitiated through visual and communicative distortion) - I'm ignoring those (I immediately did with that graph lol) and haven't even fully read the info on that page - trust me, I hold healthy skepticism (yet, crucial openness), to all matters when it comes to health, healing, and science - but the fact is I know the benefits of the various rays of light that the sun provides and its beneficial health effects, (or if you will, detrimental effects of not receiving it or receiving it in less natural ways), already, and that's (all) the common ground I need to share with mercola to appreciate the information they state on that page - obvious product promotion undertone notwithstanding. I appreciate your information and thoughts - nothing I don't appreciate or ignore, certainly when it is friendly and respectful. The simple matter is, I want lights that offer (appropriate levels of) UVA, UVB, UVC, and infrared light, in addition to highly accurate colour rendering, and midday-like colour temperature. I want whatever those 80's studies in Germany (that their government concluded to ban traditional LFLs from), quoted as being far better for you than normal LFLs. I know that for MONTHS (both in summer and winter), after living such a natural outdoor lifestyle out in full sun, I have been severely irritated (physiologically, in the eyes), by what I can only describe as a highly uncomfortable experience, that is the fluorescent lighting in our kitchen. So that is the data and experience I base my views on, rather than any silly 'cancelling out' conjecture like this. (I'm aware of my opposite.) Maybe our kitchen lights are just OLD LFLs that are really bad. (But they're modern current market bulbs, so how could they be? Additionally, our electrician apparently told us years ago those fluorescents we have in the kitchen are terribly inefficient, (in fact the worst watt-suckers in the house, I've been told), so I don't know what that means.) Again - more important than all of this, I want to avoid artificial lighting where I can anyway. But an interest in the healthiest form of artificial lighting, is really worthwhile. So where others think 'UV radiation' in lighting should be avoided at all costs due to 'skin cancer', I beg to differ... (Because I know that what causes skin cancer isn't just UV radiation, but other lifestyle choices in combination with it that were never meant for the human body to sustainably endure.) (And where they don't give second thought to OTHER forms of (unnatural) radiation like mobile phone or Wi-Fi or general electronic EMR - I beg to differ...) If that's the difference between them and me in one's opinion of lighting choice when it comes to health, than so be it. My goal is to try and emulate natural conditions as much as possible, as the simple yet powerful philosophy behind one's choices! :).