How to wire compact floros?

[FreezerBoy]

I think kcbuds hit it.

From a longer explanation, this: "Another example: a damaged appliance cord touching the sheet metal case. This will cause the circuit breaker to trip, if the house and appliance are wired properly. If it is not, or if the plug is not polarized, the case could become live and present a serious shock hazard."

Switching poles will allow the unit to work correctly but, not safely in an emergency.

 

[gomer]

Nice i guess im wrong
It is largely a safety issue / and following a standard protocol as Freezerboy stated, when wiring regular light bulbs.

Why do we call it alternating current?
Because it is alternating, a sine wave. Not trying to be a smart ass. Rather than attempt to explain the the RMS of a sine wave and how generating creates the sine wave here, look up alternating current on Google, - select somewhere like Wikipedia for a basic explanation. It takes me far more than one try to explain it correctly.

Is it because power runs back to the source?
Not sure what you mean for sure but the neutral should be grounded at the service/breaker box. As noted below a light bulb would light if the wires were hooked up to a hot wire and any good ground. So the power does flow from the hot through the resistance and to the ground.

I always thought it was because the power would alternate in direction.Like if you put your volt meter in the socket it will show hot 110v on both sides
You could put your volt meter either way between the hot and the neutral and read the same voltage. But put one probe of the volt meter to the third wire ground or any good ground (such as a buried iron water pipe) and then test the hot and the neutral with the other probe and you will see only one of them shows voltage - the hot.

I mixed my response in above.

I see I also type rather slow.

 

[150wPimpin]

I mixed my response in above.

I see I also type rather slow.

Electricity must be a women!!

So complicated and confusing lol

 

[SuperHemp]

Nice i guess im wrong

Why do we call it alternating current?

Is it because power runs back to the source?

I always thought it was because the power would alternate in direction.Like if you put your volt meter in the socket it will show hot 110v on both sides

Put one prong on your volt meter to ground and then test the voltage of the neutral and hot connectors, the neutral should be zero while the hot should be 110.

The neutral conductor is just a reference point for the hot in order to close the circuit and carries a voltage of 0v relative to earth.

It's called alternating current because the flow of the electrons change direction constantly, one moment they flow from hot to neutral the next from neutral to hot.

 

[kcbudz31]

Here's how it works.

At your breaker box, the big fat 220 feed comes in on a two wire cable. Ignoring any 220v appliances for the moment - one conductor is connected to the left half of your breaker box, the other conductor is connected to the right. These two breaker bars are always set up to attempt to balance loads so that load is roughly equal, or as equal as you can get it. A big fat bus bar in the bottom of the box connects all the house grounds together, and then a huge wire runs into an earth stake outside. Another big fat bus bar connects all the neutrals in the house. This neutral bus is connected with a strap to the ground bus. Hence, everything in the house is connected to ground at exactly one point, the breaker box.

Now when you run a two (or three) wire circuit to an outlet, you pull one wire from a breaker attached to one of the hot lines, neutral from the neutral bus bar(, and ground from the ground bus bar.). note that 2 wire circuits without ground are old fashioned, evil, and never used at all, ever, if you run 2 wire without ground ghosts of growers past who died in house fires caused by 2 wire cloth will come back and haunt your ass.

Why not just use two wires? It's for safety reasons but basically it's like this - neutral is defined as the wire by which return current flows back into the earth, and ground is basically the same, except that it is never to actually be designed to carry power in a circuit - it is strictly there as a path to ground that is of less resistance than your wet feet in the grow room, for example, so if for some reason your AC feed shorts to your ballast box, it will flow to ground instead of across you and your electrocution-hating heart. In theory in an unloaded circuit, neutral and ground should show absolutely 0 volts AC and a very small resistance. But once you start loading the circuit, voltage drop from the power cable will start making a small AC voltage show up between neutral and ground at the outlet. This is bad and why we run pounds of fat copper wire to our outlets. You can calculate your voltage drop by figuring out your resistance of your neutral line, which can be estimated as half the resistance of the neutral-ground connection at the outlet, making sure the circuit is completely unloaded and the breaker (which only unhooks the hot) thrown.


--

How does 220 fit into all of this? Remember those two wires that fed in? They each only actually have 120v AC on them each - BUT, they are of reverse phase, so if you put a voltmeter across, the AC voltage is 220 volts. Neat trick. If you only need 220, you just run the two hots + safety ground. If you want 120 available you just run the neutral too, and can pull 120 off either hot + the neutral.

One thing that growers sometimes use is called a three wire branch circuit. What you do is take the 220 lines + the neutral line out on a 12/3 or bigger cable. Then you install a junction box where you split off circuits in an approximately 50/50 load distribution. I.E. if you have a 2k grow, put 1 1000w light on each circuit. The circuits share the neutrals but will have different hots. The neutrals are all connected together as well as to the neutral line running from your breaker box.

Why this is awesome: If your loads are equal, no current actually flows back the neutral line. Remember those lines are out of phase? This means that if they are drawing exactly equal current, nothing flows in the neutral feed line. This means that only 2/3 wires are carrying power from the breaker box, which means 1/3 less heat generated - though be aware, not greater current carrying capacity. That's still dictated by the individual conductors. If the loads are unequal, only the difference in current flows back down the neutral.

Why this can be bad: If your neutral from the breaker box gets lifted, everything gets put in series and unequal loads will wreak havoc.


Welp, that's a little longer than I intended! To tie it in to "why does it matter which is which", most appliances switch the hot line. If you switch the two around, you end up having 120 volts AC running all through the appliance's power input up to the back of the switch, meaning that in theory if you threw the power switch on your ballast and then grabbed it or made contact with what the appliance expects to be neutral, you're in for a shock.

 

[kcbudz31]

interestingly enough, no, i am not an electrician

 

[FreezerBoy]

I see I also type rather slow.

wha ... you callin' me out? Why, I oughtta' ... No one types slower than me

 

[ScrubNinja]

An easy solution is to buy a string of party lights. Lots of sockets and pre wired in parallel.

 

[kcbudz31]

ahaha i've never even thought about that Scrub. That's like a Dollar General item, ez to find.

 

[Green Smoke]

After reading everybodys posts, I still haven't seen anything as cheap and easy as the bathroom vanity light I suggested. They're already mounted to a bar, they're already wired in paralell, and they cost $10 or less. An up side is the flanged bar they come mounted to. If the lights get too hot, you have a flange to support a piece of glass, assuming you have 2 bars facing each other.

 

[Sick]

Because I don't have the chops to argue with electricity, I do what the NEC and UL tell me to do.

I'm an electrician and IMHO following the NEC in is allways a good idea.

 

[Agent SmokeAlot]

When wiring up the vanity bar do I have to worry about the ground or can I just use a regular lamp cord?

 

[Agent SmokeAlot]

Never mind Better safe than sorry. I will go ahead and wire the ground

 

[mad librettist]

I use a piece of wood, but I also hack off some of the plastic base. I don't use the ground. Nothing to ground it to!

SInce I have so many lamps, I use terminal strips to keep things clean and make my parallel circuits.