Are your ballasts making the grow room too hot ?

[panhead]

Like the title says,ballasts get hot as hell,most light systems ive ever seen or bought only come with about 15 ft of cord between the ballast & the lamp fixture.

My ballasts were frying my rooms & keeping temps too hot,the damm cords were too short for me to put the ballasts outside the rooms,i solved this problem with a very simple solution,i simply cut the cord comming from the ballats to the light hood,then added a hevy duty female 3 prong plug at the ballast ( hot ) end of the cord & a heavy duty 3 prong female plug on the light fixture (cold) end of the plug.

Now i can move my ballasts up to 60 feet away from the grow room,i use off the shelf heavy duty 12 gauge extension cords bought from home depot,inserted between the male & female plugs on the ballast & light fixture.

Just be sure to use a proper gauge extension cord to handel the power flowing though the ballast & a gauge heavier thanneeded to allow for losses from the extension cord,if you plan on running 50ft cords like mine you'll need 12 gauge cords which are not cheap but safe.

Also be damm sure to hook up the new plugs with some thought involved,if you hook a male plug up to the balast end of the cord you risk electrocution from a chance of touching the 3 prongs,ballasts store energy,be sure to use a female plug on the ballast end only,then male on the fixture side.

Ive been running my ballasts this way for a year now.

I will pist pics tomorrow after i visit the grow op,i forgot to take pics today.

 

[dhhbomb]

sounds awesome awaiting pics

 

[netpirate]

Gotta love the DIY's and mods!

 

[runsfromdacops]

nice! i wish my room was big enough to need a 60' extension cord for my ballest

 

[tusseltussel]

great info... mine is long enough to put it outside my room but still good info for those who have a problem

 

[coll]

i couldnt imagine if mine were in the room those things are hot.

 

[BloodShot420]

here's how i did it...

i have a 6" duct that runs through the light hoods just to exhaust the heat of the lights, so i thought - why not put the ballasts in the same air stream, cool clean air comes in, hot clean air goes out... first thing the cool clean air goes over are both of the ballasts...then on to the lights...

its kindof hard to see whats going on in the pic - but both ballasts are in separate containers, i cut 6" holes in each side of each container, and connected the ductwork so it goes in a loop, bottom container first, then through the top... the cables were long enough as they were, i just had to disconnect them and pull them through the wall before i turned the lights on...

oh yeah - each light is 1KW

 

[halzey68]

i just hung mine from the rafters in the garage and put the cord to my lights through the wall and sealed it up.

 

[tusseltussel]

i just hung mine from the rafters in the garage and put the cord to my lights through the wall and sealed it up.

thats what i did, and probably what panhead did his cords just wernt long enough

 

[AeroKing]

Aren't some ballasts only rated for a certain # of feet of cordset?

 

[tusseltussel]

Just be sure to use a proper gauge extension cord to handel the power flowing though the ballast & a gauge heavier thanneeded to allow for losses from the extension cord,if you plan on running 50ft cords like mine you'll need 12 gauge cords which are not cheap but safe.

.

Aren't some ballasts only rated for a certain # of feet of cordset?

i could be wrong but i think this is whats up. long as you use the proper guage wire

 

[panhead]

Aren't some ballasts only rated for a certain # of feet of cordset?

Why would you think there would be a rating for how long the lead can be ?,its no different than running any other high wattage/amperage draw device,at only 50 ft the losses are minimul at best,there are no such ratings on ballasts.

As long as you account for any losses from the extension cord your fine,its no different than a hard wired ballast using romex.

 

[panhead]

thats what i did, and probably what panhead did his cords just wernt long enough

I have mine hanging in another room from the ceiling as well.

 

[dhhbomb]

panhead did u ever make it to ur op and take the pics

 

[panhead]

panhead did u ever make it to ur op and take the pics

Shit,i forgot,i just got back from visiting the grow too.

I'll make a note to snap ew shots when im there tomorrow,i got sidetracked with the dutchmasters reverse im toying around with & plumb forgot.

 

[dhhbomb]

cool thx i would really apprciate it

 

[DontKnowBeans]

Good idea. My ballast is outside my grow tent but it gets so cold here in the winter I might have to move mine inside the tent. If I do I'll have to hang it from the ceiling to keep things safe.

 

[OregonMeds]

Why would you think there would be a rating for how long the lead can be ?,its no different than running any other high wattage/amperage draw device,at only 50 ft the losses are minimul at best,there are no such ratings on ballasts.

As long as you account for any losses from the extension cord your fine,its no different than a hard wired ballast using romex.

Your ignorance is showing, be careful.

HPS lights use an ignitor which can only support firing a lamp on a cord within a certain resistance limit, thus limiting cord length. Not only have you exceeded any rational length by an obscene amount, only going one size up on your cord didn't help and adding a plug in the mix made it even worse as well as splices with wire nuts.

You are lucky they are firing up at all, and you might want to keep a lot of spare ballasts around and spare ignitors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a0v-9eNHS0&feature=PlayList&p=4B850A385F08BDD8&playnext=1&index=3

If this were actually a viable way to do things it would already be done and be an option on some ballasts. There is a reason that product does not exist.

 

[cleef]

Oregonmeds is right. Many people have burned down their houses thinking that 50 feet or 1 gauge size wouldn't make that much of a difference.

The packaging with my ballast specifically denoted that it should not be more than 2' bulb to ballast. My ballast is the type that is designed to be housed inside the fixture that holds the bulb.

Even if changing the wire gauge wouldn't upset the other resistance and ignitor issues that oregonmeds discusses, it still wouldn't truly be possible because 16 gauge wire leads come out of the transformer. You can't attach a 12 gauge wire to that and think you're good to go, because the 16 gauge is still your bottle neck. The 12 gauge section of wire may handle the load fine, but that section of 16 AWG wire will still be your path of least resistance and your overall load will not be able to exceed that of the 16 AWG wire.

 

[OregonMeds]

Thanks for the backup cleef, but path of least resistance refers to a circuit with more than one way to send power. A 12 guage set of cords and 20 guage set going to the same terminals, the path of least restance is 12 because both fully go end to end to the same place. Or in other words electricity flowing through two resistors in parallel, one 100ohm and one 1000ohm the path of least resistance is the 100ohm path and the 1000ohm resistor passes almost nothing. He would have been right to use a thicker cord, except the distance he ran was just too insane for the cable to make any difference any more.