[PaulieWaulie]

Originally Posted by rives

As an electrician, that shit makes my skin crawl...

Using heavy loads continuously on receptacles that won't meet any electrical standard in the world is a recipe for disaster. As for using the wrong voltage receptacle, there was a funny story on here years ago. The fellow involved was also an electrician, and confident in his ability to keep things straight. Then he had a leak on his flood & drain, and in trying to get it taken care of quickly, he plugged his shop vac into the unused portion of the receptacle feeding his lights...

.....and then?

Heya just wanted to run it by you guys but I got my 630 (Dual 315) CMH set to 700Watts. Im covering a 5 by 8 foot area roughly at the moment so wanted the extra output and heat in the room (bumps it up by 1-2Celsius) there isnt anything wrong with this or crazy reduction in life of bulbs or ballast?

I assumed its an extra 11% of output so probably just 11% added to lifespan reduction.

[Vanilla Phoenix]

Originally Posted by dansbuds

i wasn't worried about the outlets as i'm going to be the only one ever plugging things into it . but yeah i can see your point .
i have used regular 110 volt outlets on some of the units i built instead of buying 220volt outlets & then 220volt ballast cords too (yeah i'm a cheap ass ) but again ..... i'm the only one ever plugging things into it , so it didn't matter much to me .

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I’m guilty of that too. Lol

[stoned40yrs]

Originally Posted by Hammerhead

That 15m delay is on all ballast not just CMH. Its a safety feature to let bulbs cool off before re fired. Hot strikes reduce bulb life. They should fire fine after that 15m delay. The ballast should continue to fire until it strikes..If ur using none CMH ballast that's prob why.

No they are quality cmh ballasts and no they do not continue to fire. No my hps digital ballasts do not wait 15 minutes, they fire right back up when the electricity comes back on. all my gear is pretty new and it works exactly like i'm saying or i wouldn't be saying it

[oti$]

...so, what happened to the shop vac?

[dansbuds]

Originally Posted by rives

As an electrician, that shit makes my skin crawl...

Using heavy loads continuously on receptacles that won't meet any electrical standard in the world is a recipe for disaster. As for using the wrong voltage receptacle, there was a funny story on here years ago. The fellow involved was also an electrician, and confident in his ability to keep things straight. Then he had a leak on his flood & drain, and in trying to get it taken care of quickly, he plugged his shop vac into the unused portion of the receptacle feeding his lights...

the cheapest outlets are rated for 15 amps at least , & even with 2 ballasts plugged into one duplex outlet on 220volts is only going to draw 10amps max ...... so its not really all that bad . but yeah i would be worried about longevity on them , but its not like they're hard to replace .

now if i was building one for someone that had no clue about electrical ..... it would be built for overkill on all devices .

[Hammerhead]

Originally Posted by stoned40yrs

No they are quality cmh ballasts and no they do not continue to fire. No my hps digital ballasts do not wait 15 minutes, they fire right back up when the electricity comes back on. all my gear is pretty new and it works exactly like i'm saying or i wouldn't be saying it

Some of my older HPS ballast have that delay. You would have to look at the specs to see if it has that feature. All of my new ballast have it. If ur ballast does not have that feature. Look at the specs for hot re strikes. It will tell ya to wait 20 min to re fire bulbs. You should never try to re fire a hot bulb anyway. If Your bulbs are not re firing after that delay I dont know what to tell ya. Something isn't right. I have no issues re firing after the bulbs have cooled. This can take up to 30min

I use these.. The GC Series Digital Ballast uses a timed re-strike system that prevents the ballast from re-striking a hot lamp after a power failure. If a hot lamp is detected, the re-strike will be delayed for 60 second intervals until the lamp has cooled sufficiently to be re-ignited. Re-ignition is then controlled by 'Smart Start Ignition Control' and 'Soft Start Technology' software.

Solis tek ballast have something similar but its every 90 sec,.
This is all apart of our exclusive Sense Smart safety mechanism that we introduced to this industry in 2010. If it detects any sort of anomalies or disturbances it will turn off the lamp and attempt to re strike every 90 seconds until it deems that it is safe to ignite. 99% of the time an error code is displayed

[dansbuds]

My Galaxy 315 CMH ballasts have a small green LED on top by the power cord , when it shuts down for whatever reason (like power failure ) & needs to cool off before it will fire again ... the LED blinks . when it stops blinking , its ready to fire again & does so by itself .

[Jhhnn]

Originally Posted by oti$

...so, what happened to the shop vac?

A puff of magic smoke came out & it quit working, I'm pretty sure...

I'm with rives about having things dummy proof, particularly for people who are stoned a lot...

[Hammerhead]

If u must do that get some of those outlet covers and write on them what voltage is on them. I use them on all outlets that do not have something plugged in.

[rives]

Originally Posted by oti$

...so, what happened to the shop vac?

It ran really fast for about half a second and then, as Jhhnn said, the all-important smoke escaped...

Originally Posted by dansbuds

the cheapest outlets are rated for 15 amps at least , & even with 2 ballasts plugged into one duplex outlet on 220volts is only going to draw 10amps max ......

No Dan, you are missing the point. "Rated", in this case, is absolutely meaningless. They are built by unknown manufacturers because no reputable manufacturer would touch building something that bypasses a 100+ years of electrical standards. They meet no standards, and can claim anything they want because they aren't tested for compliance by any agency. It's like buying roadkill off of the back of someone's truck and expecting it to meet FDA standards because the meat at the store does.

10 amps at 240v, continuously, is a significant load. The receptacle and the plug are the weakest link in the circuit. This is not the place that you want to save a couple bucks.