600watt bulb in 400 watt ballast

Just curious if i could use a 600 watt bulb in a 400 watt ballast? I seen somewhere that i could i just wanted to make sure before i purchase anything.

Thanks in advance

yes you can on a magnetic ballast but it will not produce proper light spectrum from bulb and it will heat the ballast up a little more than usual. i did some tests on this awhile ago running bulbs in different ballast check the search or look at my old posts.

I'm not using a magnetic ballast ( well i don't think i am, kind of unsure what they are.. don't judge i'm a noob ) So it will not produce the whole 600 watts if i use it this way?

Interesting. I'd heard the 400w ballast didn't put out enough to even ignite a 600w bulb. I'd still think it would shorten the lower wattage ballast's life span somewhat.

I thought as much. This is one of those questions one will have to experience before knowing the answer, not yet going to experiment i shall play it safer than sorry but one day : )

No it will not produce 600 watts, thats why they make a 600 watt ballast. Spend what you can here, it is a worth while investment.
It probably will light the bulb (magnetic ballast, digital i question), and there is no reason it should shorten the ballast life, the bulb however it most likely would. I believe if you did a side by side comparison on this you would find the 400 watt bulb (on 400 watt ballast) would be brighter than a 600 watt bulb on a 400 watt ballast.

You can however run a 430w hps on a 400 watt hps ballast.

This is from the Kind Green Buds site:

"HID bulbs generally need specific ballasts, and any given ballast can usually safely and effectively operate only one type or a few types of HID bulbs.

The bulb wattage must be matched to the ballast. A smaller bulb will usually be fed a wattage close to what the proper bulb takes, and will generally overheat and may catastrophically fail. Any catastrophic failures may not necessarily happen quickly. A larger bulb will be underpowered, and will operate at reduced efficiency and may have a shortened lifetime. The ballast may also overheat from prolonged operation with an oversized bulb that fails to warm."

Which would indeed shorten the ballast's life.

Fair enough, didn't really think about it trying to "start" the bulb and over heating itself, makes sense.

less wattage and less light than a 400w bulb in a 400w ballast. i did tests on this if you search for them. i do not reccomend it but if you where like me at one point and had to put a 175 halide in a 150 ballast becasue no one made 150w halide bulb localy then yes you can mix and match bulbs and ballasts wattages with the proper knowledge. and for every ones knowledge you can light a 1000w hps with a 400w hps ballast magnetic. if your doing these things with a digital that does not dim or go up to that wattage you are going to kill your ballast regardless of whether it light or not

GREENERS said:

Just curious if i could use a 600 watt bulb in a 400 watt ballast? I seen somewhere that i could i just wanted to make sure before i purchase anything.

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

The stakes are too high, imho, to be trying any kind of unorthodox combinations, here - especially, not to just save a few bucks. And, especially, if you don't know any more about electronics than you apparently do.

Stay safe, stay free, and stay high.

If this was a good idea, you would have already heard of more people doing it. buy the right ballast or bulb for its respective counterpart.

nobody said it was the best idea guys. its an option when all others are exhausted.