Lights going out

This is day two of running my 400w HPS lights. Today, they have gone out a few times for about 5-15 seconds then turn back on what could be the problem?

I have the "Earth Worth 400 Watt Gorilla Grower Grow Light Kit"

ballast issues. get a replacement.

What kind of timer are you running? I've never had good luck with those manual timers. I know they work great for a lot of people, but not me.

I have two of these and love them.

Possibly ballast. Could be timer. My timer was causing my hos to shut off. I checked the pins and one wasn't fully pressed so check them.

Not sure if you are around your grow enough to check and manually switch over, but you could take the timer out of the loop which should tell you if the ballast or timer is causing the problem.

I am using the timer it came with you can see it here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1B00B55718

I was going to ask if that could be the issue as I had no problems yesterday. I just started using the timer today. I would have no problems manually timing my grow.

I was also wondering if heat could be an issue. I keep my ballast in the grow room and I have not set up my inline fan/carbon filter.

Yesterday I was not using the timer and I had the lights on later in the afternoon. So, it could be a timer issue, heat, or ballast.




EDIT: Just in case this can cause damage do you disconnect the cord (ballast) from the outlet or do you disconnect the light from the ballast when turning the light off.

bump......

I had this problem, and it ruined a whole crop. I ended up with an androgynous mess. Fortunately, they all seeded, so I got tons of seeds, all of which have subsequently been astounding plants.

As for the lights, I finally figured it out. This may, or may not, apply to your case, but the same thing was happening to me.

There were times when the light would not come on as expected. It seemed rare, but I have no way of knowing how often. Sometimes, I'd open the door, and the lights were on, sometimes not.

I have a time lapse camera in the room taking still photos twice a day to watch the growth over time. By the time I knew I had a problem, it'd been about a month and I had plenty of photos of blackness when I should have had light. I'm pretty sure the lights were cycling off, then on for the duration of the light phase.

I replaced the bulb. I replaced the ballast. I upgraded the ballast. I replaced the timer, even though it was the top rated timer for this sort of thing. I was told not to use an extension cord on the timer so I got rid of that. I did everything short of cutting open a chicken under the full moon and reading the entrails for clues. The guys at my local grow store were perplexed too, and I'm certain that they started to think that maybe I was a nut job.

Then, when I was bitching about why it wasn't working, the clerk started reading the bulb package and discovered that the type of bulb I had did not work with the type of ballast I had (electronic), even though it was a high end ballast, AND a high end bulb. He was shocked, and I could see it in his face. He was the one that upsold me on both the bulb and the ballast in the first place. He said he was unaware that the bulb wasn't rated for that ballast. As an aside, I was a little miffed that he didn't know that....shouldn't he have? Anyhoo....

Because of that, he fully refunded the cost of the bulb, and gave me at no cost a replacement. He replaced the high end bulb (400W Hortilux Super HPS) with a regular 400W MH Sun Master bulb. Granted, the new bulb wasn't as high end, or as expensive (around 80 bucks compared to over 120 for the Horilux) but it was totally fine for my needs.

Violia! No more outages. Not a single time has the bulb failed to fire when the timer instructed it to do so. And I finally got a great time lapse of my girls growing up.

So....get out the ballast specs, and review the specs of the bulb to make sure they are compatible. I had no idea that some bulbs wouldn't work with some ballasts and apparently the guys who should have known didn't either.

Hope that helps.

One more thing....

I have the ballast in the room with everything else. I've got a good sized room, about 6x6, plenty of room for four ladies, so space is not an issue for that. I mounted it on the wall so it's out of the way. Heat is not an issue, since I like the electronic ballasts which run cooler. My temps in the room in the hottest part of the grow, and even in the hottest part of the season, never gets over 85 or so. I don' think heat is an issue at that temp. The ballast specs indicate heat as an issue when it nears 95.

Just remember, keep it simple: No extension cords (for timers or lights), keep room around the ballast so it can naturally cool itself, keep them away from water, etc. etc.