Grow Light????

[Jenn]

He says they are just the basic MH lights you can get at home depot. They are not sodium. They are magnetic ballasts and yes, they would be covered up with a hood as they are not too attractive.

[pilot_bell777]

So had anyone tried this with sucess?

[RobertG]

I have a 400W ballast that i have been told will run any bulb. There is something you have to do to the ignitor. Take it out of the loop. This will make it run the MH bulbs no problem I have been told. I was also told to put in a switch this way both bulbs could be run if you needed to change the bulb type. Typical grow setup. Needing to change spectrums for growth & flowering stages.

[astrong]

Stick to a lower Kelvin rated lamp and you will be fine, like a 10K. Ushio's sometimes work on tar ballasts and sometimes don't. The cheap lamps like Venture and XM fire on most anything. Home Depot lamps will work too but they are about 5K and really yellow.

Its the same technology and hardware though.

[reefer]

i got an hps ballast with a s51 magnetic ballast inside of it, and removed the ignitor. i ran a 400w 10k xm without issue. it fired up rather quickly, faster than a pfo ballast. i also ran a 250w ushio 10k on it, which was very bright!
8)

[pilot_bell777]

With a name like Reefer you should know about grow lights! JJ :-)

Do you have any instructions to remove the ignitor?

[RobertG]

Its easy, Guess you have to know a bit about them. Bring it over & I will show you.

HTH

[beagleton]

i use a ballast and fixture that i got at an austin store called bright ideas. it is deffinatly intended for agricultural use. i had to special order my 10k off the net but it seems to be working fine. i,ve had it up for about 6 months now.