Digital ballast producing heat?

Do the Global Greenhouse units have a built in fan?

This is why its not beneficial to buy ballasts with fans.

1. Our ballast have a low % of energy loss. Most ballast in the industry have an energy loss percentage of over 10% therefore causing the competitors ballast to produce a lot of heat & that is why most ballast use fans.

No there is no fan. It is an enclosed unit. I mounted it on the wall, it is a tiny bit cooler. I can put my hand on it for 5 or 6 seconds now. Still not what I expected.

I emailed HTGsupply

I recently ordered a 400w digital greenhouse ballast from you guys. While
using it I noticed it runs VERY VERY hot. I was under the impression that
they aren't supposed to run hot at all, considering the description says
it runs cooler and my friend has a 600w digital greenhouse that is cool to
the touch. Why is mine so hot?

Click to expand...

Hello

Thank you for your purchase.

I apologize for this inconvenience. That ballast should be even cooler! It
sounds like you got a bad one!

I will be sending you a replacement today; I will however need you to ship
the defective lamp back. Please wait till you receive the replacement and
then you can use the packing material we shipped it in.

Click to expand...

I worry that the one they send me will be exactly the same and then I'll be stuck with shipping the other one back. It is cool that they are so willing to replace their parts, but I didn't even mention replacement.

Is there any air moving near/across it? Like I mentioned, I've got a small fan moving air across my Lumatek. In a stagnent air environment it gets pretty hot after maybe an hour. But just a little bit of air movement makes a big difference. I put my fan (pc fan) on a speed controller to see how much air flow it needed to stay cool. It doesn't take much. I can turn the fan way down and it can still keep the temps pretty reasonable. I'd bet even just getting a little air movement from a nearby fan who's job is really to circulate air for something else would be satisfactory for me.

Good luck with the second unit.

I have 2 fans in the room, plus an air cooled hood. neither pointing directly at the ballast but there is plenty of air movement.

So an update,

(2 weeks ago) They said they would ship me another ballast --- Never did
(1 week ago) I replied saying that I never received a ballast --- No reply back

Edit: just sent them another email