Ballast fire? Why

So I'm standing in my grow room. I hear a pop. Look over and see literal smoke and flames shooting out of my ballast. I grabbed the first cord I could find and yanked it out. It was the power cord from the ballast to the light. Fires still persisted. Pulled the power cord to the ballast out of the wall and it cooled off. Needless to say we would have had a house fire had I not been standing there when it happened. I have the ballast mounted the wall well off the ground. I dont let crap build up on the fan or vents. It wasn't hot, never acted weird. It has one full grow on it. Was set to 600 watts with a 600 watt bulb. What gives. Did I do some sorta newbie mistake? Any input would helpful. Maybe I bought a cheap ass ballast and that's what you get? ipower.. ul listed.

There is soot and nastiness throughout the ballast. The male plug on the tube took little to no damage. I hooked up my 400watt ballast and light to it and no issues. The whole incident was less than 30 seconds. Being I'm not in that room much I feel very lucky I'm not calling in on our fire insurance.

Yikes! I'm glad it turned out the way it did for you. So the actual ballast wasn't on fire was it? If the fire was in the plug then the plug was faulty. Looks like it shorted inside. Manufacturing defect.

Contact the manufacturer. Guaranteed they'll send you a replacement and posibbly other items for free.

xtsho said:

Yikes! I'm glad it turned out the way it did for you. So the actual ballast wasn't on fire was it? If the fire was in the plug then the plug was faulty. Looks like it shorted inside. Manufacturing defect.

Contact the manufacturer. Guaranteed they'll send you a replacement and posibbly other items for free.

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I'm feeling VERY fortunate. I suppose you are correct. More of a cord fire than ballast. But the ballast is cooked for sure. Tons of black soot, sparks and smoke. In retrospect flames were at the cord end. Thanks for the tip on following up with the manufacturer. You are most likely correct, faulty cord. Thanks!

Glad everyone’s ok, that must of scared the shit out of you. That had to be a faulty cord, I’m guessing the pin had poor tension and as the connection got worse it finally hit critical mass. I look over my plugs and stuff every few days. Stuff gets bumped and there’s no harm in being proactive.

Wow man that is scary. Bad electrical connections create heat and that heat then compounds into a worse connection. It's like a snowball. I periodically check cord connections by holding my hands around them and seeing how warm they are. You'll be surprised how hot connections can get before you can visually see it melting like what you have. Inside the "plug" there is an internal connection and that could loosen its compression over time especially if it gets hot as the metal used is soft and mailable.