Nas,

I use the same lights. Here is a recent picture.

We have converted these to remote ballast, because I did not want to hang 35#'s above my precious plants and it is very bulky. Conversion is very easy with a $3 15" extension cord, an electrical box and a few wire nuts. Now they weigh 2-3 lbs, easy to hang and adjust the height. Email me if you buy some and I can get you detail pictures.

Other disadvantages, the reflectors are OK, but if there are different kinds look for one with lots of facets. Reflectors that are horizontal are a little better and more efficient. The standard one works fine and if you feel the need you can upgrade later. Here is a industrial horizontal that we will hang in the next few weeks. We did the electrical box remote conversion to this one as well.

I am sure some of the high $ horizontal horticulture reflectors offer more efficiency for a plant growing format, but it is still a matter of $ to what gain?
Multi tap ballast means it will run on 120 208 240 and 277 volts. Ours are on 120, but I am converting them to 240.

These are mechanical ballast, ie 10% less efficient then the new digital jobs. Mechanical emit a steady hum that digitals do not.

We converted one of our units to HPS by buying a brand new Ebay HPS ballast$40. The new ballast bolted right in to the case we had. If the guy has any old or defective ones it may be worth picking one up.

For a starting up CHEAP light source, I think they are great. Our grow area is a 3 season porch, so the hum is out there, the waste heat( part of the 10%efficiency hit ) helps keep the porch warm and the reflectors work fine for our physical lay out.

Larry

Nas had sent me a note earlier on how to remote ballast an industrial light. I emailed back a brief written description, but thought a couple of photos would be helpful to clarify my description. Here is a normal vertical fixture with the simple electrical box added.

The odd brackets below the box are the std warehouse reflector hangers. I unscrewed them from the ballast drilled 2 holes and mounted them at the same width to the cover of the electrical box. The std 5/8 screw in wire clamp and even by 1/2 inch of insulation as a spacer are visible on the top of the box. The box lid has a 5/8 std knockout that I fed the mogel socket wires through. 2 more holes were drilled at the mogel socket mounting locations and I put nuts on the inside of the cover on the std mounting screws.

The nextview is the wire( std 15ft household 16g 2 wire $3 extension cord. Wire nut it inside the ballast to 120 240 or whatever voltage you want to run. Same std5/8 wire clamp fits perfectly in the hole in the ballast.

About a foot of wire comes out of the ballast and then I left the std female end in place. plug the male end in and the other end goes to the light as shown above. This gives you an easy ability to unplug the light from the ballast.

Another close up of a horizontal set up.

Pretty simple really. If you really want to go whole hog, splurge for the 3 prong 15ft cord for $7-$8. If anybody else needs any clarification just drop me an email.

I could not resist throwing this in. Our innovative tomato grow had a big milestone today. 47 days from germination we have our first tomato. Happy gardening everybody.

Well, I'm definitely getting two from him tomorrow. Right now, I've got all my seedlings in a closet that's about 5x8, with a 4' fluorescent shop light hanging on the left, another hanging in the back, and on the right a 250w that can do mh or hps that I just got two weeks ago.

I paid $150 for the 250w, used. It's covering about 5 sq. ft. of floorspace. With the shop lights only an inch above the other seedlings, I've probably only got about 9 sq. feet of floor space with useful light. With the two 400w mh I hope to turn that into 32 square ft., effectively the entire floorspace.

Kind of sucks that I payed $150 for that 250w, and a week later found these 400w for $40, but I can still use it as hps for supplemental light I guess (provided all that doesn't trip a breaker.)

Hautions, thanks for the info, I can't find your reply email, but I think I can probably do the ballast conversion from the posts above, and if I can't I hope you don't mind if I message you.

And if this guy is willing to ship, and anybody is interested, I'll gladly post contact info for him. He said he has ~100 of them.

I would be interested in contact info for him. But I have a caveat: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Mike

Great NAS, I am a firm believer in keeping your eyes peeled and finding the alternative. I do not have $170 in 3 400w lights right now, and one of them is digital. That is bulbs and all. My email is on the site and look at your email I sent some instructions a couple of days ago. It is easy and very common sense

Ok I just talked to the guy again. Apparently there isn't a cord coming out of the lights, but what he called a "pig tail" wire. I have no idea how to get from there to a regular 120v plug. He didn't know either, and said he had an electrician install them. Not an option for me. Anyone know how to wire this up?

Connect the wires to a cord. For instance, if you have an old toaster or air conditioner, cut the cord and strip the wires. Use wire nuts to connect one wire from the cord to one of the pigtail wires. Connect the other wire the same way. There should also be a wire that is not coated - it also gets connected.

If you don't have an old cord, you can buy wire (12-2 with ground) as well as a plug at your hardware store.

Mike

Since it's multi-tap, how can you tell if those wires are for normal 120v or for 240 or something?

OK, you guys have got me psyched up, I think I can do this, I just have one more question: how do you know which of the three wires to attach to which of the pigtail wires? Are they color coded?

Thanks for bearing with me. I have zero experience with wiring. I've included a link to an ad this guy is running on Craigslist so if you're interested you can contact him. I'm meeting him tomorrow. I'm going to take pics of the lights he has and post them, assuming they're functional.

Also, just to be clear: I need to check and make sure the pigtail is running from the 120v and not the others, right?
My wife thinks I'm going to electrocute myself. I'm mostly sure she's wrong.

Here is a link that might be useful: the lights guy

Usually, the wire is color coded. Connect the wire with the white covering to the one with white covering. The other wire that is coated is usually either red or black, connect them together. The ground wire on the pigtail should be uncoated as will be the one is the cord you buy.

As long as you don't plug the cords in while you are connecting the wires, you will not be electrocuted!

Mike

Mike, the color code you mentioned does not apply to the typical mechanical transformer, but we are in luck. Next to my computer on the den floor is a transformer 400w. All wires are the same color. Since yours is a multi tap the wires have labels or more commonly the use is printed right on the wire. Look at this overall shot.

Now the close up shows the printed use. You can see the 277v wire and the common wire clearly. This transformer is not multitap so it only has 277. You can also see the wire labeled Lamp. That is how they are done in the 6-7 that I have wired.

Color code for the plug wire, just like Mike mentions above, is white to common and black to hot or the wire marked 120. Here is a pig tail cut off an industrial light from my work. As you cans see, cutting off the long wires shown and installing a 3 prong plug is no big deal.

Sometimes thing like extension cords just put little ribs on the hot wire and the common is smooth. Normal black, white green for ground is probably what you will find. I hope this helps and ask away on the questions. Tell you wife it will be fine and as long as you can read and are not terribly color blind it is not too bad.

Larry

Well, thanks to Larry and Mike, I got the light and got it wired up.
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Some notes on it:
1.Wiring it was super easy.
2.The reflector and bulb were dirty. I cleaned them up, but I'm probably going to replace the bulb and order another reflector when I get some money.
3. It is heavy as hell.
4. It was a steal at $40.

So after I got it wired up, I took off the reflector and the mogul socket thing:
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This is to prepare to convert it to remote ballast. Now, looking inside it, I can see that it is just a black and a white cord. Do I just cut it and wire in a lamp cord with wire nuts?

Great Job NAS! The remote side is just as easy only 2 wires. The same white is nuetral and black is power applies. Cheepie 15' two wire extension cord. I know these cords rather then color code are ribbed on the hot side and smooth on the nuetral. You will notice that coresponds to the two different sizes of male prong on the plug end of the extension cord. Again, make a pig tail with an 18" length of the cord and either the male or female plug. Use the rest to run to your mogel socket. Now it looks like you need to do something with your reflector hangers. They are as wide as the ballast. Maybe you could put a 90 degree bend on the ballast end of those and just screw them to your electrical box. Since MH bulbs fall off in lumens even faster then HPS, I would chnage that first. Ebay has cheap ones and I saw 400's at Lowes for $20. I'm glad this is working out for you!

Larry

Bumping this old thread up. I finally gave it a shot and made a little video of the wiring for some 400 watt metal halides I picked up for $30 each. The pictures help info in this thread were great.

link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKFWr1fA8d0

Here is a link that might be useful: Metal Halide Video

Hi were is this guy from?

This thread is 7 years old. I doubt they're still for sale.