As the weather warms up and the algae starts to bloom in the pond I decided it was time to replace my UV lamp for the new season.
This was quite a simple job that I had carried out a number of times before.
The only difference was that this time after I had removed, cleaned and replaced the quartz tube and inserted the new UV lamp it kept flickering and going off. After a number of attempts I decided to take the lamp out of the quartz tube and reattach on the outside of the unit so I could see what was going on.
I found it to be intermittent fault with the connection at one of the end caps so I got the soldering iron out and made my simple repair.
Again I tried this and found it to be satisfactory so I then replaced it back in the quartz tube and turned it back on again, all was now fine.
The lamp was only on for 5-10 seconds at a time.
This was Sunday afternoon.
At about 2 o’clock Monday morning I awoke with a terrible pain in each eye that I can only describe as having lots of dust particles in both eyes so much so that my eyes were watering and I could not open them. The wife led me to the bathroom where we did as best we could to bathe with saline solution. This helped and I managed to get back to sleep until 5.30 when the alarm clock went off. As I have to drive 2 hours to work every day I decided that although they were feeling better than they were I should not risk mine and other people’s safety by getting behind the wheel.
I have worked with reptiles before and many of these require a "Blacklight" that emits UVA and UVB but not the UVC that I beleive caused me the problems.
Today my eyes are a lot better and with no vision problems but just goes to show the damage that the UVC radiation within the lamps can do to the eyes.
I consider myself very lucky that it is no worse that I have explained.
Looking back it does say on the tube packaging that the lamp can cause damage to eyes and skin but who reads the packaging of something we take for granted with our ponds? I'm just glad I still can!
Posted on Apr 17, 2007, 1:42 PM from IP address 213.120.71.165