REWIRING 400W HPS

[faithless]

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My HPS has the ballast in the hood, which I want to seperate for cool tube purposes.

Theres a blue and a white cord running from the bulb socket to the ballast.
The white one is thicker, or more insulated.

Can I just lengthen those two cords with just ordinary cords or are they both different?

Will I kill myself? I know very little about electricity...

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faithless Reviewed by faithless on 11-30-2006. REWIRING 400W HPS . My HPS has the ballast in the hood, which I want to seperate for cool tube purposes. Theres a blue and a white cord running from the bulb socket to the ballast. The white one is thicker, or more insulated. Can I just lengthen those two cords with just ordinary cords or are they both different? Will I kill myself? I know very little about electricity... Rating: 5

[faithless]

ttt

[faithless]

I gotz to know people...

[4x5]

use an orange extension cord for the wiring, keep the length under 10ft, I had to box-up my ballasts, all i gotta do now is plug in the bulb sockets to the ballast boxes (which are themselves plugged to the wall, after plugging the sockets in, not before), works damn good.

[faithless]

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Thanks for the reply. Orange? Why is that? Is that color coded to mean its a certain type of cord? The thing is they seem different, the white one is thicker? getting this sorted out while I still have a month left of flowering could mean the difference between me letting live or shooting the dog in my avatar, people.

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[Tokudai]

Don't shoot the Beagle!!

There should be a wiring diagram on the ballast itself. Basically all you need to do is get some 14AWG wire and extend the bulb leads with some wire nuts. I think he mentioned the orange extension cord cause they are generally 15 Amp Hvy Duty cables and are cheap.

The difference in wire size you are seeing is probably only in the insulation, but again, 14 gauge wire will be plenty for a 400W setup, thats what I used to build my lamp leads. Use as short a run from the ballast to the bulb as you can. Make sure the common goes to the threads of the socket, and the hot/power line to the center and you're good to go!

[bejay]

it is common to cut up a heavy duty extension cord and wire the female end to the ballast and the male end to the lamp socket this allows you to just unplug the socket from the ballast if you ever needed to. while you wouldnt want to have an excessivly long cord lengths of 10-15 ft is often used.

[faithless]

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Thanks a lot for all the answers. My head is swimming from technical terms like female/male/common etc...

I don't get how a single strand of wiring can be male/female?

What I want to do, is remove the whole ballast and use the pins that its secured with, to secure it to the removable metal lid instead.
That would give me an empty compartment within the hood to place a fan etc for the cool tube. Is this doable?

I'll upload a pic. The encircled two cords (it's hard to see that there are two, dodgy cam) is where I'd just like two extend those two wires - if I just chop 'em and extend them with some heavy duty wiring, will I be ok?

[faithless]

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Right, that beagle is a goner

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[Dutch Pimp]

^^^...WAIT.....ask the dog...if he knows anything about electricity..

Thomas Edison...I'm not...I don't trust anything I can't see...and can kill me...