15 amp circuit - electrician advice needed

is your 600w 120V only? my solis tek is 120 or 240. just change the power cord.

jarvild said:

They are in an apt.

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So? Every apt should have an electrical panel

Not necessarily . He already said it was an older building grandfathered in so the elec is not up to todays code.

Question for the OP . Do you pay for your electric or is it included in the rent ?

rkymtnman said:

is your 600w 120V only? my solis tek is 120 or 240. just change the power cord.

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I believe it's 110 - 240, I'll have to check when I get home. Unless someone wants to pull up Apollos 600 watt mh/hps dimmable digital ballast specs for me I don't know if the 30 amp in my kitchen is 240v or not, wouldn't surprise me if it was 120 or less. So I could pull ~2900 watts or possibly all the way up to ~7,000. Judging by the building, I'm assuming it's 120v.

tightpockt said:

So? Every apt should have an electrical panel

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We do, down one floor and in the public hall with all 12 of the others for the building.

jarvild said:

Question for the OP . Do you pay for your electric or is it included in the rent ?

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We pay it under our name, so no worries there as long as we don't burn the house down from "putting a penny in the box" lol

no such thing as 30A 120V. it's 240V. i'd pay an electrician to run a 240V plug close to your grow off the 30A circuit. if i remember, 600 watts is ~ 5A at 240V.

GroErr said:

Sounds like you have some options for another circuit in which case it'd be better to stick with what you have and know. The ambient temp question is a tough one as it depends on your room. if you have some height like 7ft+ it's minimal. In my case LED's ran about 6-8F above ambient and require heating in the winter as I'm in a cold area. Significant difference between them and hps.


Again sounds like you have some better options if you can pull from another circuit. If you were to go COBs or A51/Apache you'd be looking in the range of 400w (actual pull at the wall) imo.

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I'm six two and can place my hands flat on our ceilings, so it's probably right at 7 foot. The only caveat about the other circuits is that if I want to run something off of them in my room with my garden, I have to run a 30 foot extension cord and hope my bedroom door will close over it. I keep my door closed at all times to help conceal my ladies and keep ambient temps down (Windows partially open to get it to 65 - 68 f, but my girl doesn't want the rest of the house quite that cool and I agree since it's winter).
Pulling 400 watts for an led would be much better than the 693 that I calculated my tent pulls at max power, especially when summer gets here and the 95° sun cooks our 3rd floor apt.

rkymtnman said:

no such thing as 30A 120V. it's 240V. i'd pay an electrician to run a 240V plug close to your grow off the 30A circuit. if i remember, 600 watts is ~ 5A at 240V.

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Ahh I see, lol there's my ignorance showing again. So if it's a 240v 30 amp, that means at max I have 7,200 watts, less if I follow the rule of thumb and pull only 80% of its capacity? There's no way I'd get my landlord to let me install an additional plug. I believe my fridge, stove (gas) are what run off of the 30 amp and I hear that a standard fridge pulls around 700 watts continously? That should leave me with enough room for a portable 10000btu air conditioner, correct?
Sorry for all of the questions and thank you for letting me pick your brain.

Midwest Weedist said:

I'm six two and can place my hands flat on our ceilings, so it's probably right at 7 foot. The only caveat about the other circuits is that if I want to run something off of them in my room with my garden, I have to run a 30 foot extension cord and hope my bedroom door will close over it. I keep my door closed at all times to help conceal my ladies and keep ambient temps down (Windows partially open to get it to 65 - 68 f, but my girl doesn't want the rest of the house quite that cool and I agree since it's winter).
Pulling 400 watts for an led would be much better than the 693 that I calculated my tent pulls at max power, especially when summer gets here and the 95° sun cooks our 3rd floor apt.

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Yeah, if it's an option for you it would be much easier to manage. Only thing is don't go off-brand, I've yet to see lower end panels produce anywhere near hps. Quality LED's are a longer term investment, you pay up front for the technology but save it longer term in operational costs like draw at the wall and associated cooling. Many reference grows posted in the LED section here.

Banana444 said:

Yea your 30amp line in the kitchen should be for elec stove or elec dryer. The ones with the big ass plugs, that is a 240v line and a 30a breaker would be 7200w or 5760w at 80%. I had an electric dryer once, added more to my electric bill than all my lighting and fans and ran on a 30a 240v line. Also, do you have a seperate furnace or water heater in your apartment? A seperate circuit might be run to those things.

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We have a massive shared water heater and steam heating, so nope. I'll have to pull out my fridge and see if it's a big outlet.

Fridge and gas stove will both be 110. They may have allowed an option for gas or electric. Pull your stove out and see if there is a bigger receptacle behind it.

jarvild said:

And your figure of 1850 watts is that resistive or inductive ? there is a difference . Ballast use inductive so you'll lose about 200 watts.

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I actually have no idea what those two terms mean in regards to electricity. Could you elaborate just a little bit please?
I got to the number 1850 by googling how many watts a 15 amp circuit can handle.

GroErr said:

Yeah, if it's an option for you it would be much easier to manage. Only thing is don't go off-brand, I've yet to see lower end panels produce anywhere near hps. Quality LED's are a longer term investment, you pay up front for the technology but save it longer term in operational costs like draw at the wall and associated cooling. Many reference grows posted in the LED section here.

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Yeah, I've been shopping this morning and the price makes me choke a little bit. Even for a DIY project it still makes me shudder to think of what'd I'd spend. But that's the price we pay for good medicine...

jarvild said:

Fridge and gas stove will both be 110. They may have allowed an option for gas or electric. Pull your stove out and see if there is a bigger receptacle behind it.

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It's a standard sized outlet, I know that for sure. As for behind the fridge though, I'm clueless. Though if what you say is correct, I guarantee it's not a 240v.

Apollo ballast are either but you'll need the 220 volt cord.

What is behind the stove?

Just tell your landlord you need more juice...complain you're blowing fuses every time you run the microwave or hair dryer or whatever. If you pay for it I don't see why they would care. It's like a free upgrade for them. I don't know how you can run an entire apartment from 1 15a circuit

Look at it this way a light bulb, electric heater stove are all resistive. They use the resistance of the elements to generate heat. A ballast uses a inductive load through the windings of coil to generate electricity to the secondary winding in the coil.

jarvild said:

Look at it this way a light bulb, electric heater stove are all resistive. They use the resistance of the elements to generate heat. A ballast uses a inductive load through the windings of coil to generate electricity to the secondary winding in the coil.

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if i'm not mistaken, that's for a magnetic ballast. aren't e-ballasts resistive too?

but the OP made a great point: DO NOT run above 80% of what the circuit is rated for. above that in an older place and you'll see a glow behind the wallboard.

Don't know. I ran one for a year and got worried about EMF after I did a test with an am radio so I replaced it for mags. Hell I have an 25 year old homemade ballast that still works great.

Midwest Weedist said:

So I you're right in that a Cobb setup would help me tremendously. So area 51 and Apache are good companies? If I wanted to get a comparable yield to my 600, what's a good wattage to look for? My understanding of leds is still pretty sad.

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Whatever you do, don't invest in any LEDs until you really know what you want. The range of efficiency you can get is HUGE, ranging from 15-65% efficiency depending on how much you're willing to pay (with diminishing returns). HPS is 35% efficient fresh. You will use MORE electricity than HPS and produce MORE watts of heat if you use a less efficient lamp than HPS. Almost all the epistar shit you can find on amazon is 25-30% efficient.

The truth is that leds in area51 are only estimated to be 34% efficiency at the current and temperature they're being run at. That's good, but probably won't really put a dent in your problem.

The new top bins in the new line of cree cxb cobs can easily get 50% efficiency, and just came out so the price will likely go down quickly. Your girlfriend will be so pissed (i think) if you get some leds just to tell her a few minutes later that the LEDs suck and you need new leds, or to go back to HPS!.