wow...
you guys gave me a little chuckle... I would be glad to chime in..
First off your surge protector had nothing to do with the amount of power you draw by your house or by an individual circuit... the surge protector will protect the electriconic components of your house in case you house or something close by gets hit by a large spike in the power....ie.. lightening strike.
If you already have a 1000w plugged in, and you are using the existing wiring in the house. And you would like to put another one in the same area/room... There is a good chance, almost 100%, that all the plugs in that room are connected to the same breaker, if they are.. you cannot use that breaker, or bunch of outlets connected to a breaker for more than 80% of its capacity... there fore 12A for a 15A breaker, 16A for a 20A... so one 1000w ballast would draw 1000W/120V= 8.3A , if it ran perfectly economically, the ballast also uses power and converts it to heat, so check your ballast for the amperage rating, you will see it is higher... mine is 9.6A .
So with one 1000w light drawing 9.6 amps... you can obviously not put two on the same breaker.. You will have to run wires from a new breaker to that room to give the room the ability to safely support two 1000w ballasts... plus the fans and other power consuming appliances...
If you want a cheap and ugly fix that is safe... you can go to your breaker panel and turn off the breaker powering your 1st ballast... Now, the other receptacle s that are live have the potential to carry another 12A, so if you can get a heavy gauge (14, 12 or 10)extension cord from the live outlets to the grow room to power the second ballast then you would have the ability to power two 1000w ballasts in one room.. *REMEMBER* These outlets are connected through your house so you WILL have other things drawing power from the same breaker, ie.. when the hairdryer goes on you may blow a breaker... thus NOT allowing you to run an extension cord into the room and you may have to result to pulling the wire and putting in a new breaker yourself or with an experienced friend.
Short form...
No you cannot plug two 1000w ballasts into one 15 Amp breaker.
You must bring another circuit into the room to support the 2nd ballast.. making sure that just because the outlets are in another room does not mean that they are on a different circuit breaker, room side by side typically share some outlets between them.
Everyones house has 220V-240V ability.. the only reason you would use a higher voltage would be to bring down your amperage traveling through a wire thus allowing a smaller wire to feed a larger appliance.. your dryer and stove both use this principal, see how they are bigger breakers with the large toggle switch? if they were just feeding your dryer or stove with the reg white and black wires they would have to be very large, larger then they are now.. So to keep the wire size down, thus the cost down, they run two "legs" out to the same location and use the same neutral/ white for both. So in the case of your stove or dryer you will have a black/white/red and a ground (which is never counted as a conductor but is always there) resulting in a three conductor wire feeding the appliance..
Now why would you want to use 220V to feed your ballast instead of 120V? well amps = heat.... heat is bad...
1000w/120v= 8.3A ..but it will draw 9.6A like stated above so you are close to maximizing the circuit already, 12 is max continuous load.
1000w/240V= 4.16A lower amps means less heat, always a good thing... but in this case it seems almost pointless.. why? because, one breaker will support one 1000W light safely (9.6A out of 12 in a 15A breaker) but not 2 x 1000W (19.2 A out of a safe 12 from a 15A breaker)... so now you install a 3 conductor 15A double pole breaker you can now install both 1000W lights safely...
However here is where the 220V-240V makes sense.. if you wanted to run three 1000W ballasts... then you would take the amps that the light draws at 220V and multiply it.. 4.16A per light.. allows us to put three lights under one double pole 15A breaker... going over the continuous limit by an amp is not technically allowed as per code, but it is not unsafe, I am currently pulling 13A from one 15A breaker with no problems. If you wanted the extra comfort, install 3 conductor 12awg wire instead of the 14awg... it will allow 20 amp (16A continuous) and will be governed by the 15 amp breaker.. there fore if the breaker needed to be upped to a 20A from a 15A, you already have wire installed that is safe for a 20A breaker.
BUT to get 240V to your room you must run a three conductor 14 awg cable from your panel to the room... YOU CANNOT USE THE POWER THERE AND ADD ANOTHER CIRCUIT TO IT making 240V... you must run a 3 conductor cable. Why? basically your panel has two legs and a neutral bar.... and everything "normal" gets its hot from one leg and then the white wire connects to the neutral bar. In the case of something needing 240V, that appliance needs a feed from BOTH legs to get the power it needs, so it would have a big(er) breaker, typically with a large toggle switch on it that looks like two switches joined together.. This breaker is a "double pole breaker", you standard ones are single pole.. Why do you need a double pole breaker, can i just not use two single pole breakers? No... the configuration of the double pole breakers allows the double pole breaker to connect to both legs off you main panel and more importantly, it shuts off the entire 240V if ther was a problem. If you were to pick two random single pole breakers out of the same panel and try to connect them like a double pole breaker, there is a chance they are connected to the same leg and will then only give you 120V not 240V... additionally if you try to put two single pole breakers side by side in your panel they would be taking power from each leg, giving the 240V in the room, but without them being a double pole breaker they do not have the ability to shut the entire circuit off if there is a problem.. both breakers must be tripped to allow the wire to be safe.. that is why a cable that carries more then one "leg" must be connected to a double pole breaker, so when it is shut off manually or by a fault, the entire wire is safe to work with.
Did you enjoy the tangent i just took you guys on?
If you want me to answer specific questions fire away.. I could ramble for ever about electricity... its what i do... = )
