dimmable ballast?

Grow room design, HID, fluoro, reflectors, ventilation, ballasts and wiring.
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UncleBud
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dimmable ballast?

Post by UncleBud »

Been out of the game a while, as well as this board.

Since my recent return, I've seen dimmable electronic ballasts mentioned a couple times. What's up with that? I was always hellbent on throwing down with as much light as I could possibly get. Never saw any need for a dimmer.
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Maribou Stork
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dimmable ballast?

Post by Maribou Stork »

The new Lumatek ballast I bought has a switch that you can adjust for 225/275/400 and another setting for flowering. You don't need different bulbs, just the 400 watt one. I used the lower setting for a couple of days until the plants got use to the higher power hps light after being moved from under the fluorescents.

That has always been achieved before by starting off with the hps light high above the plants and lowering them over a few days, so it wasn't the incentive to buy the dimmable light. My reason is that during the summer while we are away on vacation, I put my mothers in the large cabinet with the automatic watering setup and since they don't need the full 400 watts, I can switch the ballast down to one of the lower settings.
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UncleBud
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dimmable ballast?

Post by UncleBud »

Ah I see says the blind man...
Thanks for teaching this old dog a new trick!

On another note, thinking of getting back in the game with a little personal stash setup. So anybody switching over to the newfangled lectronics and wanna let go of any magnetics cheap enough I'd be seriously interested. I hang my lights vertical so no need for any hood nonsense.
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Dick Hertz
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dimmable ballast?

Post by Dick Hertz »

I have the 1000 Watt and it's great.
It is virtually silent and it runs much cooler than the old magnetic ballasts.
I started my seedlings at 600 watts then moved up to 750 after the first week.
Now I'm giving them the full 1000 with a metal halide bulb but plan on switching to a sodium bulb for flowering.
It is my understanding that while you can operate both types of bulbs, you can't get any more red spectrum out of a halide bulb solely due to the ballast.
It also has the turbo feature where you can effectively squeeze out 1100 watts worth of light at the expense of a shortened bulb life.

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dimmable ballast?

Post by Dick Hertz »

It can operate in any position so I mounted mine on the underside of a storage shelf above my work area.
It's in the upper right hand corner of this pic.
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dimmable ballast?

Post by roller24 »

where are the plants?

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dimmable ballast?

Post by ben ttech »

that pictures cues my hospital nightmares too
"disaster is the mother of necessity" rSin

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dimmable ballast?

Post by Dick Hertz »

check my gallery if you want to see those.

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BAMF
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dimmable ballast?

Post by BAMF »

UncleBud wrote:Been out of the game a while, as well as this board.

Since my recent return, I've seen dimmable electronic ballasts mentioned a couple times. What's up with that? I was always hellbent on throwing down with as much light as I could possibly get. Never saw any need for a dimmer.

The dimmer is so you can run 1k hps 18 on, just turn the dimmer down so the wee lil babies dont get so much sun/light


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dimmable ballast?

Post by MadMoonMan »

Just ran across this. I bought a dimmable ballast for my last grow. So far so good. Using it on low now to start some seeds in a cold unheated basement. Outside its 23 degrees f and 80 at seedlings level so raised the bulb. Have had a very low success rate on seed germination this time. In past its been 100% maybe lost 1 or 2 over years.

So far I'm 6 seeds out 18 not germinating and 4 I am babying to keep them alive.

As I posted elsewhere the Kosher Kush strain is possibly petering out.

Could be the cold air? Should have germinated them in a warmer area. Thermometor read 78 so I turned the ballast down to 50 percent. Its also switchable between MH and HPS. Cheaper than the heavy as gold ballasts I'm used to.

So far no problem. The fan is audible so you don't want to go hiding it under your bed. I tried to warn Matilda about that but nooooo she wouldn't listen to me.

Took her 2 sleepless nights to figure out what the "noise" keeping her a wake was.

Testing the Ipower.
Just because I can't spell misanthrope doesn't mean I'm completely stupid.

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