Lamp post lamp advice needed.

Is that incoming brown and black 2 phases then?  - i.e. 400V between wires both sides 230 to ground? Sometimes done on very long runs, as effect of a few volts drop is less on 400V than 230.

Or it may be 230V of course and just a rather confusing choice of colours. (**)

I suggest you get your meter out and tell us the voltages wire to wire and wire to ground, both incoming and on the wires going up the pole to the lamp itself, both on the dim one and a dead one.

And then label it or write in sharpie inside the box.

Quite right, those LED lamps do not need a ballast, but they do need  the correct 230V, so it may be time to remove the ballast and either connect direct if the incoming is 230V, or track down a 400/230 transformer if it is 2 phase no neutral or find the other end of the supply cable and change it there.

If the holder is a simple screw in E27 then there has never been a lamp made for which that sort of ballast is correct, it would have beem externally ballasted CFLs that had a plug in base, and in any case either are already phased out, or will be phased out when florry tubes go out of production in the next year or so.

It can never have been quite right, and the correct thing to fit now is the LED lamps, but please with an un-ballasted 230V supply

(such errors are not unknown - actually  in the past  I have also seen a lighting tower with ballast at top in the lamp, and also at the bottom, the results were psychedelic, but not helpful. Despite protests 'it had always been like that'  it clearly hadn't.  Wire cutters and some terminal blocks came to the rescue on that one.)

Mike.

** EDIT errata.

On a larger  monitor the incoming wires look like red and black so that would be pre 2004, and probably 230V but do check for voltage anyway.

also as Graham notes I am wrong about the ballast type - it is for a SON E - the cheerful orange ones, still made screw in style in the smaller sizes..  https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/LASONE70slashI.html

mapj1 said:

Quite right, those LED lamps do not need a ballast, but they do need  the correct 230V, so it may be time to remove the ballast and either connect direct if the incoming is 230V, or track down a 400/230 transformer if it is 2 phase no neutral or find the other end of the supply cable and change it there.

Or fit the correct lamp ... the rating plate on the ballast says 240 V 50 Hz 70 W SON lamp ...

Thanks Mike, always appreciate your comments. To add to the issue we hadn’t located the origin of the circuit and the circuit was dead so we couldn’t take voltages however it appeared to be single phase.

At the base swa came in and fed out (all dead) and a flex run through an fcu to the head of the fitting. 

We had access issues so couldn’t find the supply but that really needs to be the first thing we do when we go back on it. 

My boss is also of the opinion that LEDs are offered to the client as an upgrade. I did notice at least one of the fittings has already been made to bypass the ballast. 

Thanks for the tip about marking the inside of the lid.

Thanks Mike, always appreciate your comments. To add to the issue we hadn’t located the origin of the circuit and the circuit was dead so we couldn’t take voltages however it appeared to be single phase.

At the base swa came in and fed out (all dead) and a flex run through an fcu to the head of the fitting. 

We had access issues so couldn’t find the supply but that really needs to be the first thing we do when we go back on it. 

My boss is also of the opinion that LEDs are offered to the client as an upgrade. I did notice at least one of the fittings has already been made to bypass the ballast. 

Thanks for the tip about marking the inside of the lid.