Yeah... using normal incandescents, it'll take forever and you won't get a huge amount back. HID's can be a PITA if you're just starting out and haven't got a space sorted out, but it's still worth trying to get it sorted. If it's a cash issue, get one used. You can pick them up really cheap if you don't mind getting one that's a bit beaten up. It won't make any different so long as it starts up and runs fine. I've used rusty ballasts before and they haven't made a sound.
I have an epoxy encapsulated ballast now. It's compact and darn water proof looking, but shit do those things get hot with no ventilation gaps and 1kw of juice going through them.
Fungus knats.... fucking tell me about it man! The first times I tried with soil and a lamp in a cupboard (which seems almost identical to yourself) they just would not piss off. Using soil or anything from outdoors will get the fungus twats flying around. A new bag of, preferably unopen, soil is best since it's usually been baked to sterilize it when it was made. Once it's open, they can lay eggs in there. You can microwave small batches dry, but it takes a while and is too much effort when it's so cheap. +used soil is probably bad nutrient wise.
I didn't want to start putting pesticides on mine. I'm not an organic hippy (no offense to organic growers
) but I also didn't like the idea of spraying pesticides on something I'd be smoking - a lot of pesticides are based on a similar molecule to nerve agents (which are about as deadly as LSD is trippy, micrograms).
People suggested lots of things, like letting the soil dry out, watering less, tried spraying them with soapy water (there were some spider mites setting up home as well) and I think I even tried some pesticide on something (can't remember if it was weed, but probably not), spraying the plant with essential oils might work on spider mites and make the green smell floral... but once the knats are in the soil, none of it really works. What more annoying is that they don't all hatch at once, there's a steady drip feed of new ones to be clapped out of the air.
I can only recommend you try flushing the soil through with diluted H2O2 and water them with it. You can use it up to about 1% but you might want to start lower and only use that if they won't go away, you might want to start with just a spoonful first. You want to add it straight after mixing and not leave it standing around for days - it'll loose it's awesome power.
That should also help get oxygen to the roots, which can be an issue with soil / coir if it's packed down near the rootbase and it'll breakdown into something you need to drink and breath.
Hopefully that'll wipe them out. I'm not big on harsh gardening when it's not necessary, but I can't tolerate fungus knats. At least there's not billions of them and they can't bite. If they were mosquitoes I'd give up.
This is one of the benefits of hydro. Even if it's in coir.
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