Is it worth the extra money to buy a digital ballast or are the regular lights, like on Hi-Tech Garden supply good enough? Thanks for any input.

The digital ballast is better. How much 'extra money' are you talking about? The savings would come from long term use of the digital ballast. 'Good enough' depends on long term use. Your ball. VV

hI VV. The regular 400 watt is $120 and the digital ballast is $240..double. I was just reading about the digital being quieter and cooler. I guess it's a money issue...thanks

Dont worry about sound...HTG's 400w system isnt loud at all. The ballast does kick off a lil heat...but not too much. I just moved the ballast outside my grow closet...all is well.

Thanks BloodshotI'z, I think I'll get that one then. Do you have any problems with high temps now with the ballast out of the room? If so, what size room and fan do you have?

When I first put the light in...yeah the temps shot up to about 90f. But I only had one oscilating fan at the time. I bought two more fans from Walmart for $13 each. Since Im in a closet I put on on the top shelf and cracked the door...then put the other on the floor and cracked the other door. Now my temps are about 80-82f.....under the lights.

Pix in gallery of growroom size. Fans are "Hometrend" metal caged fans.

the digi ballast will also help save you some electricity

Digital Ballasts
The days of the old humming, magnetic core & coil-type ballasts may soon be coming to an end. The digital (electronic) ballast is the latest in ballast innovation. Digital ballasts are more efficient, quieter, cooler, and softer on the bulb. Digital ballasts do not have any of the usual transformers, capacitors or igniters; instead these ballasts have electronic circuitry to do the same job, more efficiently. What might take a standard coil/magnetic ballast 680-700 watts to fire a standard 600 watt bulb, may only take a digital ballast only 600-620 watts to fire the same bulb to the same brightness. The old coil type ballasts are hard starting ballasts; when the ballast fires the bulb it sends full power to the cold bulb. Over time, this shortens the bulb life and reduces the PAR output of the bulb. Digital ballasts start by sending a low amount of power to the bulb and steadily increases the power over the next few minutes until the bulb has reached full brightness. This is also known as soft starting, which minimizes the damage to the bulb and increases its PAR life (PAR represents the plant usable light; it’s what plants “see” and use, versus lumens which are what people see). After one year of use the plant usable light coming from bulbs that are run on digital ballasts has decreased only by 20-25% where as the same bulb being used in the coil type ballast would have lost 50-60% of its plant usable light over the same period of time.

Coil type ballasts are also known to cause the bulb to flicker or strobe. This takes place so quickly that the neither human eye nor light meter can pick it up. Digital ballasts provide a uniform power supply to the bulb, thus eliminating the flickering from the bulb.

Digital ballasts are great stuff, but they are still new-ish and very expensive compared to inductive (magnetic) ballasts. The payback time, if based only on power cost, would be very significantly longer than the service life of the ballast.

That by no means should be taken to mean 'don't buy digital ballasts.' They will extend the life of HID lamps, not by a lot, but by a bit. Again, not enough to recover the extra cost of the digital type in a reasonable period, but it is a savings.

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Get a harvest every 2 weeks - A batch of clones in rockwool - Al B. Gone

I believe the real advantage of the digital ballast is the fact that the lamp from a 600 digi will come very close to rivalling the amount of light emitted from a lamp fired with a 1000 watt magnetic coil ballast. (reportedly the 600 puts out 10% less light than the 1000)

We shall see. I have 4- 600 watt Lumateks on hand to slap into a new room...soon to be constructed!

*IF* the light output is greater as claimed, the yield generated by the extra light output should have a significant payback in itself.

like I say...we'll see.

good luck

bt dt