noise coming from the ballast is almsot ear piercing with this loud ass buzzing noise. should we return it, will the buzzing noise go away?
Ballast noise is caused by rattling laminations in the ballast core. This is a mark of a poor quality or defective ballast. It will not fix itself.
Return it but make sure you get to listen to the replacement before you take it home. They may be made with inferior quality ballast inductors.
My ballasts are 10 years old and are dead silent.
it's normal though for the lamp itself it make a low sounding hum right?
My 1000s make a small hum when just starting up but quiet down after about 30 sec.
Hey Al,
I bought Canna Nutes both Substra Vega A & B. However, I got the variety for soft water and I do believe my water is actually hard. It is my understanding the difference is the calcium in the water...
Do you think this will significantly affect my grow?
I don't think it'll make much difference. The soft water version will include more Ca and perhaps more Mg than the hard water version.
Your water is hard, so that means it contains minerals. The Canna for soft water has extra Calcium and Magnesium, along with other trace minerals (I believe) to make up for the soft water lacking them. I think it is better that you got the soft water formula and have hard water than the other way around...
Not too sure when you hit the point of too much ca/mg though.
yeah, wot 'e said.
Ummm? No advantage to ...im sure you meant digital because all ballasts use electricity....
Spoken just like someone who is not an electronics engineer.
Lucky you, I'm a BSEE- pull up a chair and I'll explain it for you.
"Digital" is a marketing hype term and really a bit of a misnomer when applied to ballasts.
Ballasts are current limiters; that's all they do. When I say 'electronic' as opposed to 'magnetic' or more correctly 'inductive' ballast, I am referring to the difference in the way that the current is regulated. 'Electronic' refers to
active circuitry used to control current as opposed to exploiting the characters of a combination of
passive components i.e. coils & capacitors.
Electronic, or 'digital' ballasts, as their marketeers would like to have you refer to them (since it sounds so 'high tech') limit current by way of some SCRs or triacs which do the actual current throttling to the lamp tube, but which themselves are operated by control circuitry, which may (or may not) happen to do some digital wave shaping. The term 'digital' is often used in a broad an misleading sense; I have a pair of headphones that are labelled 'DIGITAL' in big gold letters... but they are simply voice coils, magnets and diaphragms, just like Marconi's own 'cans.' Nothing 'digital' about them That they're usable with a digital audio player was enough for the maker to slap the DIGITAL!! word on them, despite the signal being used to drive any headhone being very, very analogue.
Inductive or 'magnetic' ballasts limit current by way of a coil of copper wire on a laminated iron core along with a capacitor of a certain value for a particular sized HPS lamp tube.
In other words, the 'electronic' ballast controls current by using what amounts to an amplifier (you technerds will know the old adage- it's either an oscillator, an amplifier or a filter) as opposed to taking advantage of the physical properties of an LC (inductance-capacitance) network.
Anyway, digital ballasts are silent. This is a HUGE advantage.
They can't be any more silent than a properly operating inductive ballast. Only a defective inductive ballast makes any noise.
Digital Ballasts use less electricity that is a HUGE advantage.
Earlier this year, I tested a Lumatek 600 side by side with a std ballast, driving a GE Lucagrow 600HPS tube. The Lumatek drew a whopping 9% less power from AC mains than the std ballast, owing to the lack of eddy current losses inherent in an inductive ballast.
9% savings is not terribly significant in terms of operation, unless you are using a large number of ballasts and 9% savings allows you to run all the lighting you need without exceeding the service current capacity. While electronic ballasts are coming down in price of late, it will take a long, long time to recover the difference in purchase price through the power savings difference.
Shit man, they even burn the bulbs brighter for longer then conventional magnetic s.
False. This is marketing hype. Remember, a ballast is a current limiter. The lamp tube is designed to tolerate a certain amount of current, doesn't matter how you throttle it, just as long as you
do throttle it suiting the power rating for that lamp. The only way to make an HPS lamp make more luminous output than rated is to drop more current across it than it is rated for. Doing so will increase luminous output but will shorten lamp life, could be dramatically if it's really excessive.
Back to my side-by-side comparison of the Lumatek vs a std ballast. I used a lux meter to measure the luminous output of the lamp tube, as it was operating on either ballast. The luminous output was
exactly the same with either ballast. I also measured the currents to the lamp tube from the output of either ballast. Unremarkably, it was the same for both ballasts.
Explain yourself and this really bad piece of advice
I've explained myself. Now that you understand what's going on, don't you feel a bit silly for calling my advice 'really bad?'
hey, was wondering if you guys could give some advice on transplanting clones to hydroton. It seems like some of my clones arent doing so well since putting them into my 12-12 system from the clone box.
What's the problem?
