How Many Watts am i running: Dimmable ballast

RockinDaGanja

RockinDaGanja

Well-Known Member
What's up RIU. Quick newb question.

I recently just made the switch from my old magnetic ballast to a digital/dimmable one. Im loving it so far but my grow room exhaust fan crapped out on me so im dealing with heat issues wich has caused me to have to run my ballast at 50%. I use a 600 watt lamp in a four by four room. And if i turn it up to even seventy five% my plants show a little heat stress.

basically what I want to know is when I'm running my ballast at 50 percent am i running 300 watts. Or is it more like 400 watts? Seems like it would be 50% is three hundred right...
 
Diabolical666

Diabolical666

Well-Known Member
Is you ballast putting off heat? if so can you more it out of the tent? do you have a fan inside the tent? if so can you direct the fan onto the heat source? i.e light and ballast. Can you open the tent till you get your other fan fixed? a pic is worth a 1000 words;)
 
RockinDaGanja

RockinDaGanja

Well-Known Member
I have a room not a tent but what im doing is just leaving the door open and i put an extra fan in there. i dont use air cooled hoods but winged reflectors I like to cool the temperatures in my room as opposed to cooling the light.

My ballast is outside the room and it has a fan in it so it stays cool to the touch.

I just want to know if anyone has an idea of how much yield i will be losing if i run my 600 watt hps at 75%..
 
JavaCo

JavaCo

Well-Known Member
RockinDaGanja said:
What's up RIU. Quick newb question.

I recently just made the switch from my old magnetic ballast to a digital/dimmable one. Im loving it so far but my grow room exhaust fan crapped out on me so im dealing with heat issues wich has caused me to have to run my ballast at 50%. I use a 600 watt lamp in a four by four room. And if i turn it up to even seventy five% my plants show a little heat stress.

basically what I want to know is when I'm running my ballast at 50 percent am i running 300 watts. Or is it more like 400 watts? Seems like it would be 50% is three hundred right...
Click to expand...
If your running 50% dimmed the light bulb is getting 300 watts. But you will be using more then that due to ballast efficiency. Would need specs on the ballast to figure out how many watts the ballast is using when dimmed to 50%. Looking at one brand of digital ballast a 600 watt it really consumes 655 watts So 600 watts goes to the bulb and 55 watts goes to making the ballast run. Best guess your with not knowing what ballast you got your probably using 325 to 350 watts
 
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RockinDaGanja

RockinDaGanja

Well-Known Member
Yea that's What i figured. I'm looking at specs right now... still early in flower so hopefully new exhaust comes soon.
 
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