Experienced Electrician! Here to Answer Any and All Growroom Electrical Questions

Mr. Blue said:

I got a little electrical problem..
Here goes:
I grow in my garage.
I have (2) 10amp breakers and 2 lines going out to the garage. Within the finished walls in the garage, I lose it from there. I believe all my grow equipt is run on 1 of these lines/breakers. I run (2) 400w hps/mh lights, (1) 270cfm exaust fan and (1) circulation fan. Its recently been warming up here so I installed a window unit Air Conditioner (5100btu/h - 565watts)
Heres whats now happening.... I have the AC unit set to turn on 3 times a day.. When it does, my hps light goes out. (nothing else)... When it turns back off, the hps then fires back up. If just the fan in the AC unit turns on, this dont happen. If the whole thing, condenser(or whatever you call it) and all turn on.. The hps goes out.
My question.. Can I update my breakers to 10amp or 20 amp. Which would be better? And am I asking for more fire hazards?

Tomorrow, at the begining of the light cycle I plan on moving some plugs around and flipping some breakers to check what breakers control what plugs and see if I can split the power up for both breakers to run the setup.

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you can replace the breakers w/ larger ones ONLY if the wire is rated for it. -a 14 gauge wire is rated for 15 amps & 12 gauge wire is rated at 20 amps.the size of the wire should be labeled on the wire jacket.
sounds like when the AC kicks on,the draw is too much & the voltage drops to a level the ballast cant mantain. VERY DANGEROUS!!!! your breaker should trip & going to a larger breaker wont help. find out what breaker controls what outlets & get the AC onto a different breaker. bear in mind that the wire may feed your garage & then go into the house to feed something else so when you shut off a breaker,look inside as well to find if anything else is powered by it.

Its a detatched garage so nothing runs back into the house.
I'll check the wire guage and if possible im going to upgrade those to 15 amp then. (for the dual 400's and fans)
I did figure out the garage door opener and another plug were on the other breaker so I was able to switch the AC over to that plug.
Thanks Madcow

I have a quick and (I hope) easy question. I'm getting ready to wire a CFL fixture. My problem is, the sockets only have hot and neutral wires, and the wire I bought has hot, neutral and ground wires. The plug is also made for hot, neutral and ground wires. So, what do I do with the ground wire when I get to the sockets? I also have an old lamp cord lying around that only has hot and neutral, should I use that instead and ignore the fact that there's no ground wire to clamp into the plug?

If it helps, I have four of these sockets: http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xh3Zarcd/R-100356874/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

A roll of this wire: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xh3/R-100686859/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

And one of these plugs: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xh3/R-100184872/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Thanks in advance!

Do the sockets have some sort of mounting screw? If so then that is probably your ground and you would take the ground wire to your enclosure - which would have to be metal. If not you can just ignore the ground altogether, cut it off, and tape it over.

whiteflour said:

Do the sockets have some sort of mounting screw? If so then that is probably your ground and you would take the ground wire to your enclosure - which would have to be metal. If not you can just ignore the ground altogether, cut it off, and tape it over.

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No, there's no mounting screw. Good to know I can ignore it without creating a hazard. Thanks for your help. +rep

NEC 406.3(E) Cord-and-Plug-Connected Equipment. The installation of grounding-type receptacles shall not be used as a requirement that all cord-and-plug-connected equipment be of the grounded type.

hint hint.... use a 2 wire cord.....just make sure it is polarized (one blade bigger than the other)

in your case, with the cfl's on 2 wire lamp sockets, you should be fine by not using the ground wire in your 3 wire cord, because there is nothing to be grounded.
as whiteflour mentioned above, just abandon the ground wire, and you should be fine.
do not use the 'mounting screw' to ground the fixture....

abandoning the ground wire is something that can only be done where there is literally no place to connect it to on the device in question.

i have not read this thread and if it's already been discussed and someone could direct me towards the info that would be great

i bought a convertible light fixture about 4 years ago (400W, i think it's a sunleaves MINI) anyway i took it apart and noticed there are NOT 2 ballast ass., there is 1 transformer and on on side of the housing there is a cap and an igniter, and on the other side only 1 cap.

so now i want to build my own- 1000W and was wondering if the spark could show me how to wire this all up, i want to buy a 1000W ballast kit HPS (just the components) and then wire a switch leg to another cap as to run MH

so i could just look at the wiring in the hood i have and duplicate it but
1 not sure if it's different with 1000 than 400
2 dont know the capacitor values for the 1000 MH circuit
3 i understand 99% of basic electrical concepts involved in the construction industry but this is over my head
4 this will allow me too have multiple kilo watt veg an flower room with the same equipment (really want to go dual spectrum)

there all the same man...
the ballast core (big heavy transformer) is nothing but a current limiting device.

the only difference between a MH ballast and a HPS ballast is the way the lamp starts. most MH lamps are probe start. this means they do not require an ignitor. HPS lamps are pulse start, they do require an ignitor.
the cap for a probe start lamp is different than the cap for a pulse start lamp, thats why there are two seperate cap's in the switchable ballast.
look closely at your switchable ballast. there is a wire, that comes off of the ballast core, and goes to the switch. at the switch, there will be 2 wires, one will go to the ignitor cap, the other goes to the cap. all this switch does is direct the current coming from the ballast core to either a) the MH cap, or b) the HPS cap and ignitor combo.... very simple design. the switch you need is called a form c switch, or also a SPDT (single pole, double throw) switch. so basically your going to need a 1000w ballast core, and its correctly matched hps cap and ignitor combo, a SPDT form C switch, a correctly sized 1000w MH cap, and some wire and a mogul base light socket to make it work. of course you should also grab a back board or enclosure to make it pretty when your done, but thats all in the eye of the beholder.

thank you!

i will probably make boxes out of plexiglass with holes drilled in it and a copmuter fan in one end and the switch mounted on the side and maybe even green LED's in the box for some trick

anyway thanx stoned this is gonna help a bunch of people get cheap!

+

So does that mean that what I asked a couple days ago about making a switchable ballast is possible, and that the transformer is exactly the same?. But what I have to do is get a seperate cap for the MH side of the circuit? It really does seem too easy though. is it?

yeah, its not that complicated... your just switching the load side of the transformer between the metal halide cap, and the hps cap/ignitor combo. like i said before, the ballast itself is a current limiting device, all it does is act as a resistor to limit the amount of wattage that goes to the lamp, at a constant rate.

Would it be possible to get ya to pop in here
https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/326685-need-electrician-running-240v-2.html#post4110753 and give some input? Any is appreciated :joinþ:

New pics up in the thread. Hopefully they help

Hi,

I was wondering if you could help me out please. I don't know anything about electrical and I am having an electrician wire some lights. I want to run 4x 1000W HPS lights from one box with a timer. I want another box exactly the same with a different timer. So I will be running a total of 8 1000W HPS Lights. What type of cable should he be buying? Is there a outlet junction box like this? These will all be running 220v power cables. He is asking me what kind of box do I want. What do I do?

Altnutt

Follow his suggestions.

8KW? dang man!

altnutt said:

Hi,

I was wondering if you could help me out please. I don't know anything about electrical and I am having an electrician wire some lights. I want to run 4x 1000W HPS lights from one box with a timer. I want another box exactly the same with a different timer. So I will be running a total of 8 1000W HPS Lights. What type of cable should he be buying? Is there a outlet junction box like this? These will all be running 220v power cables. He is asking me what kind of box do I want. What do I do?

Altnutt

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8KW, is this too much? I have a room 14 x 14 x 8. If I am going to do it I want to do it right.

Too much? Yes an no. Too much for 5 plants but not enough for 5000.
Was more of a surprise/wow type comment.

Thought about cooling? You're *gonna* need it. Not sure if just fans and ducting will be enough.

altnutt said:

8KW, is this too much? I have a room 14 x 14 x 8. If I am going to do it I want to do it right.

Click to expand...

Made a mistake on my last post, I am going to have 4x 1000w HPS, two MH in the closet for veg.

Well, I had an electrician put in a panel today inside the room with 4 outlets on one circut and 4 on the other. Each will be connected with timers. I am wondering if the humidity will affect the panel since he ran a 4 guage wire to it. Will I have problems or risk of fire because of the humidity? I will post pics once he finishes. I also plan on painting the room with some kind of paint to resist humidity. Any suggestions?

I wan to buy 4 of http://florahydroponics.com/product.aspx?id=2347 I'll install fans on each so there should be plenty of vent air going out. Seriously though, 4x 1000w HPS bulbs are too much for the room? I figure about 60 plants. Any suggestions?

Run the room for a couple days with no plants to watch temps.

As for the humidity, if you keep the humidity where it should be its not going to be a prob. If you read the humidity specs on things, they state x% of non-condensing. If it does condense, then the rating is thrown out the window. But doubt you will hit that.

altnutt said:

Made a mistake on my last post, I am going to have 4x 1000w HPS, two MH in the closet for veg.

Well, I had an electrician put in a panel today inside the room with 4 outlets on one circut and 4 on the other. Each will be connected with timers. I am wondering if the humidity will affect the panel since he ran a 4 guage wire to it. Will I have problems or risk of fire because of the humidity? I will post pics once he finishes. I also plan on painting the room with some kind of paint to resist humidity. Any suggestions?

I wan to buy 4 of http://florahydroponics.com/product.aspx?id=2347 I'll install fans on each so there should be plenty of vent air going out. Seriously though, 4x 1000w HPS bulbs are too much for the room? I figure about 60 plants. Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

So just to check I can run two 12V .6A fans with a 12V 1.25A power adapter right?