IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
extension cords are always rated at a lower ampacity than standard American Wire Guage wire..... a #10awg cord will be the only cord rated for 20 amps.
Experienced Electrician! Here to Answer Any and All Growroom Electrical Questions
- Thread starter bricktown73
- Start date
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
sounds like you need to hire an electrician.......... but if it was me, i would hardwire the cord to the main panel on a dedicated breaker, ditch the power strips, get some outlet boxes, romex, and plugs, nail the boxes to a wooden stand/board, wire them together, then wire the cord onto the lead receptacle, which should be a GFCI type outlet, then wire the rest of the outlets on the board off of the load side contacts on the GFCI outlet. then plug all your shit back into the now Ground Fault protected circuit. '
Get some battery powered smoke detectors, and put em up all over the grow room, often there is smoke long before there is a fire, and the earlier you have warning, the more likely you can put out something before it burns your house down, or if its too late, at least have a warning and a chance to get out of the house.
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
that single 15amp surge protector will be fine for your CFL's
on what basis do you make your assumptions? you shouldnt be giving people electrical advice if you dont have the credentials to back it up.
you can splice together the power cord of power strips all say long with no issues whatsoever... its called a parallel tap amnd its how all the outlets in your house are wired anyways, so whats the difference between splicing together two powerstrips to one cord, or plugging in to power strips in different outlets on the same circuit? there is no difference.
an average 25' 16awg extension cord or fixture wire is rated for 2 amps @ 120vac. thats 240w. by my math, that means you could easily have any combination of lamps up to 192w of CFL's on a single 16awg cord with no issues whatsoever. the shorter the length of the cord, the higher the ampacity. if its less than 10' of 18awg cord, then you can run up to 288w, if its less than 6' you can have 432w.....
and as far as math goes, you should check yours because an 3.5w LED has nowhere near the PAR of a 13w CFL
runing the led's would be useless over an almost negligible cost difference. 4 43w cfl's (172w actual)will put to shame 172w of led's.
why is that? APAR and IPAR......
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
guestaweed
Member
hey man I was looking for a similar thing in my native language but don't find it. Anyhow let s see how it goes.
Can you and will you please explain step by step (and I do mean step by step if you have the patience) how to connect an eti ballast(complete control gear) to a cool tube and the ballast to the ground.
here s the cool tube http://www.france-hydroponique.com/administration/produits/images/cooltube-shp-ts-1000.gif
here s the ballast http://www.promshop.fr/img/p/541-1486-thickbox.jpg
I think I've got it actually while surfing for a ballast photo to attach the message but would like to get a professional opinion
Thanx
peace
PS how many watt does 25A mean(we're talking about Europe here like 220 voltage or something ....)?
Can you and will you please explain step by step (and I do mean step by step if you have the patience) how to connect an eti ballast(complete control gear) to a cool tube and the ballast to the ground.
here s the cool tube http://www.france-hydroponique.com/administration/produits/images/cooltube-shp-ts-1000.gif
here s the ballast http://www.promshop.fr/img/p/541-1486-thickbox.jpg
I think I've got it actually while surfing for a ballast photo to attach the message but would like to get a professional opinion
Thanx
peace
PS how many watt does 25A mean(we're talking about Europe here like 220 voltage or something ....)?
BigBudBalls
Well-Known Member
Just a note on surge suppressors: Their job is to keep the incoming power from allowing a high voltage 'surge' through. They really don't protect much, do NOT do voltage regulation. Think of them as a pressure blow off. If things get FAR out of wack they kick in.
Secondly, nearly all are MOV based. These wear out in 6 months to a year. And give NO signs that they are spent.
There is very little reason to use one in a grow room, outside of getting more outlets for more stuff (giggles thinking of Lampoon's Christmas Vacation)
Secondly, nearly all are MOV based. These wear out in 6 months to a year. And give NO signs that they are spent.
There is very little reason to use one in a grow room, outside of getting more outlets for more stuff (giggles thinking of Lampoon's Christmas Vacation)
Malenki
Well-Known Member
Awesome now I just have to buy it and mount it in the cab and run the wires then. Which means I can move onto figuring out the wires for the lighting. I have used the small clamp lights before, always took the metal reflectors off. This one from walmart seems to have like a heavy duty ceramic? socket. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Bayco-10.5-Brooder-Clamp-Light/14003468#ProductDetail I was just going to splice four of them together and zip tie them to a pvc frame. To ease raising the lights, it should be a tight squeeze but it should beat the large cfls. What do yall think? Love the link havent had to go to their site in a few years.
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
or A Christmas Story...... the old man, and the light....lol
GreenTree87
Member
1 - I wasn't saying to use the 3.5 LED for growing I was talking about replacing the light bulbs in the house to help counter the amount of power a grow space uses because most people use 13w+ lights in their house. The hole point of chaging the house lights with LED lights is to cut down on the power bill
2 - The way he was making it sound like he wanted to have 2 power bars spliced together so it only takes 1 plug. Doing that you have a higher chance of over loading that 1 plug and causing a fire
Wouldn't splicing 2 surge protectors together to use one plug cause a problem with it doing its job?https://www.rollitup.org/members/bigbudballs-38682.htmlBigBudBalls said:
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
no. think of a surge protector as a sponge.... it absorbs transient voltage spikes... when it does so, it also breaks the circuit so that that same transient does not pass through your device and fry it in the process.
guestaweed
Member
so ..i don t think I got an answer yet on how to connect ballast to cooltube.....
-oeace
BigBudBalls
Well-Known Member
Probably be easier to just daisy chain them then go through the trouble of splicing them.
I have two led panels(blue) in my veg room and three led panels(red) for the flowering room. I bought these lights online for cheap on a site called "LAshop.com". they ran for about i think 30 to 40 bucks each compared to everywhere else that cost over 200 bucks.when i bought these they said its for growing.There are 225 led iodes or diodes? i know there is 225 led bulbs on each panel(15x15).my question is would you know how many true watts i am pushing with these?
GreenTree87
Member
That's what I was thinking and its also less of a fire hazard then splicing them.
What ever wattage it says the pannel uses that's what it uses. There is no such thing as true watts that a bulb puts out that's not what the panel says it uses. Its like a person buying a 45w CLF and thinking its actuly pushing out 200 watts equivalent because that's what it says. so...
Once again. What the panel says the amount of watts it uses that's the amount it uses. The numbers that truly matter is the Lumes and the Lumes per watt
Lumes - How strong the light is that the light puts out
Lumes per watt - how efficient the lights are for putting out lumes. The higher lumes per watt a light puts out the more efficient it is at doing the job.
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
no, daisy chaining the power strips is not the right answer. by daisy chaining the strips, your passing all of the load through the first strip, which should kick the breaker on it.....
the correct way is to have a parrallel splice on the cords, a "t tap" on the 3 wire 120v circuit.
daisy chaining is making a parrallel circuit into a series/parrallel circuit, and when you do that, voltage drop becomes a major factor. undervoltage causes components to overheat, which causes the breaker to trip on the forst power strip. by splicing the cords together, the load is evenly divided between the 2 strips, whereas if they are daisy chained, all the load goes through the first strip. am i making sense?
IAm5toned
Well-Known Member
you need a good multimeter....
take an amp reading of the fixture, and write it down. take a voltage reading of the circuit the led panel is plugged in, with the panel off. write that number down. multiply the two numbers, to get your wattge. example-
1.41 amps @ 121.46vac = 171.2586 watts
(1.41 x 121.46 = 171.2586)
KidCreole
Well-Known Member
so im looking into what would be necessary to run a small scale sog on abt 200 watts of electricity. (cfl's) could i go about buying myself a pedal powered generator to create and store enough energy to run my op? i wanna live greener and also it would be a great source of cardio and a deterrent to the electric company and/or police from snooping because of energy consumption. Is this feasible? ive got the build to put in work for my babies, but i wanna make sure im able to generate this much power and safely store it before i build a unit. if im on the right track but off in the math, how much energy am i looking at needing to use to run a bubble tank of two mothers (under 4 26w daylight cfls with reflector) and about 10 lil ladies in soil(under 6-8 cool white cfl's across the spectrum. like 7 cool, 1 warm).
Malenki
Well-Known Member
Whats safer splicing the wires with the t-tap or twisting the two wires together and then twisting them around the main wire. This would be for the light bulbs. I would be just using the one surge protector.
TheWinter
Active Member
3.5 watts is nothing you could run a 50 of those on a 18ga cord