Ballast size relative to lamps used ?

cocobitzz

cocobitzz

Well-Known Member
Okay.

Your fire hazard areas in this are going to be the junctions of wires. What do these ballasts run, 12 gauge? If you were to run another full power source, especially with a high voltage pulse start, through these wires, you WILL burn your ballasts out, and with this much power quite possibly the house. I would look into something up to 4g wire for the full lead with 3 seperate ballasts run through it, and wire off of them. Those initial starting volts will build up ohms like crazy as soon as they all run through one wire, so just free it up as much as possible, and you should in theory, be at least better off.

malc01m said:
As I said I'm not going to do anything until I'm sure it will work...and safely... I think a dimmer solution would be the most elegant..Of course the plasma field in the kitchen flou strip light won't dim.. the plasma is either on or off..

LoL just found a design for dimming a flourecent tube light.
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As far as I know, dimming ballasts for MH/HPS are all digital. I don't know if magnetic ballasts can be dimmed safely, but don't hold me to that.
 
M

malc01m

Member
dont say dimmer, say rheostat, sound intelligent, work with me..lol
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I have a dim idea of what you're on about

If the digital dimming ballast is heavy then it is a good chance it has a magnetic coil inside, and the circuitry controlling it is digital,,, I suspected that when I saw they all have set positions like = 600w or 400w or 320w, and not a knob you turn...I'm going to investigate one somewhere, meanwhile I'll just run off the one 600W HPS lamp for now..
 
M

malc01m

Member
Trying to adapt and create a dimmer for an existing ballast is not a feasible idea, since the switch settings are effectively related to the number of windings around the inductor coil to achieve these alternative wattage output settings...
 
W

Wetdog

Well-Known Member
malc01m said:
What a pain in the arse, thanks for the reply Wetdog...

Not like my sound-system where I run a 3000W amp to drive 1600W of speaker drivers....
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Imagine the amp with no control knob and running the full 3000w into the 1600w of speaker drivers. LOL

Wet
 
Marijuanaa

Marijuanaa

Active Member
A mate of mine bought a 400w HPS off me, when he bought it he said he would only buy if it ran 1000w bulb. I couldnt imagine that would work but turns out, the 1000w bulb just took longer to light up than it would with a 1000w HPS... Got just as bright as it did in the 1000w HPS
 
Harrekin

Harrekin

Well-Known Member
Marijuanaa said:
A mate of mine bought a 400w HPS off me, when he bought it he said he would only buy if it ran 1000w bulb. I couldnt imagine that would work but turns out, the 1000w bulb just took longer to light up than it would with a 1000w HPS... Got just as bright as it did in the 1000w HPS
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So a 1000w bulb running on a 400w ballast (at 400w) puts out the same light as if it was on a 1000w ballast?

*facepalm*

First law of thermodynamics man.
 
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