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capecodcook_gw

Halo track lighting

18 years ago

Has anyone had any experience with Halo track lighting? My wife's new store has 4 runs of it, each about 20' long. Three runs are fine. The fourth consistently seems to lose continuity after the first joint, leaving most of the run dark. Sometimes whacking it with a broom works or getting up on a ladder and wiggling it helps. Sometimes the dark portion just comes on by itself.

It seems to me HD also sells Halo and we had a couple of runs in our kitchen for a while we got at HD and one run was fine and the other was intermittent and I had to whack the end power connector every now and then. Is this stuff garbage or do we just have a bad joint between two runs and my two experiences with this stuff are abnormal? Any way to make this stuff more reliable? Unfortunately Halo was the only brand the local electrical supply house carried in rural northern NY. She has invested a lot in fixtures so doesn't want to redo the whole thing unless there is a better brand of track that Halo fixtures will work with.

On a related note, she has installed CF spots in the tracks and we have had four of these supposed 7 year life babies die in about 3 months. Is her store jinxed or is the CF story just a bunch of hype?

Comments (4)

  • 18 years ago

    Halo track has been around for a really long time. I haven't heard of this problem so far. But in case you are interested, WAC lighting makes track and track heads that are compatible with Halo. Nora Lighting is also compatible. Are these tracks on dimmers?

    I would contact Halo's technical support people and find out if there is something that may be wrong with the connectors or something else. They may be able to solve your problem easily since they get all of the quesitons.

  • 18 years ago

    If you've lost everything after the first joint, it's fairly obvious that that's where the problem is. Most likely some part got deformed before or during installation, and isn't making solid contact. I'd take that joint apart and look at it; you may even be able to see something that's damaged, or evidence of arcing. The problem has got to be with one of the tracks flanking the intermittently failing joint, or with the connector. I'd have an extra connector piece and a section of track on hand before taking things apart, so you have the best chance of fixing it immediately.

    I don't have extensive experience with CFLs but I know their ballasts are often intolerant of enclosed fixtures that trap heat. Also, 7 year life assumes residential use, where they'd be on for only a few hours a day; it's probably more like 2 years in a commercial setting.

  • 18 years ago

    Ilitem, tracks are not on dimmers-most CFLs don't do dim.
    Jon, the CFLs are not in cans-they are the spot models and just mounted in exposed socket type mounts. And they lasted about 6 weeks not 2 years. I had expected shorter lifetime in a 10 hour per day environment, but a month and a half is ridiculous.

    I agree we know where the problem is, just wondering if Halo is junk given my two bad experiences, but I get the impression it is probably not so bad. We will probably try replacing the connector between the two tracks. When we took down the tracks in the kitchen a while ago, there was evidence of arcing in the power connector I had to periodically had to whack. It would stop making contact but not obvious why.

  • 18 years ago

    I'm in the business 30 years and used to recommend Halo exclusively. I can say I don't anymore as I feel their quality has diminshed some. That said it is a fairly good product. I am sure if you took out the joining piece and took a good look at it you would see the problem. The point of contact is a fairly small one and there isn't a whole lot of tolerance for error.