Trying to rewire some warehouse 400 w metal halide. Ballasts are catching fire.

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formfactor

Member
So these particular ballasts say they are single tap at 277 volts, however some do have a 120 v tap. When I wire the lights up using that 120 they power up immediately, but after about 1 minute they start to smoke like crazy. Another minute and I'm afraid they will catch fire.

I am trying to run these on a 110v wall outlet.

What am I doing wrong? Is it even possible fir me to run these without installing a 120v or a 277 volt circuit?

Any help would be so greatly appreciated.
 
alphawolf.hack

alphawolf.hack

New Member
yellow wire says 120v gets wired to hot on plug wire. then there should be a wire that says common not the black wire it might be another color it gets wire to the plug wires common/neutral on plug wires wire is usualy black or gray. green is ground if there is no wire on ballast just add a screw or find a screw and wrap it on. this wil prevent your smoking problem. be carefull when dealing with elec.
 
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mrmadcow

Well-Known Member
are you connecting the colored wire to the 120 connection & white to the neutral?
if the plate on the ballast says its a single tap, it may be only a 277 volt transformer & the manufacture just used a multitap housing w/out wiring all the taps in.
 
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formfactor

Member
So I have the 120 wire going to black on my power cord. There are 2 common wires, I have tried attaching them both (1 at a time) to white on my power cable. I then have green from my power cable coiled around a screw on the metal housing of the ballast. Unfortunately it's still smoking like crazy. The light lights up though :/.

Am I missing something?
 
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Scroggsy

Active Member
Dude I would not fuck around with any stuff that could catch fire. There is too much at stake, go buy a good dependable ballast and make sure you use a contactor or heavy duty timer rated to atleast the same watts as your ballast.
 
dadio161

dadio161

Well-Known Member
What Clown Baby said , buy a real ballast. You keep messing with that light and the police along with the Fire Dept. will know what you have been doing. Even worse , if you burn down your house .......... you will harvest ZERO.
 
Jack Harer

Jack Harer

Well-Known Member
Modified high bay lights make great grow lights. They are all I use. However, If thats just a single tap 277 you are screwed. How many wires come off the coil? Are there spade connector ponts for others on the coil?

Go to photobucket and search for jack_harer. You'll come to a page with a single nugget pic, just go to the profile page. I have a lot of pics and wiring diagrams for how I modified a High Bay MH. Shots of the wiring on both the coil and bulb side. I can't seeem to upload pics, and I aint real keen on hot linking, so I created the Jack Harer page on photo bucket. (I still have no idea where that nugget pic came from. I didn't put it there)

Well now, seems the upload thingy is working now. Hope these help!
 

Attachments

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formfactor

Member
so in the pics above, you see the other three taps 240, 250, 277. i have the 120 joined to my black power wire, the ballast has 2 COM wires, i ran to my white power cable,. the other com goes to the outside wire on the socket. i have tried putting the ground various places but it still smokes afyer 30 seconds
 
Jack Harer

Jack Harer

Well-Known Member
Looks like you got it wired right. You might try switching the 2 common leads(?) I'm no electrician. I had a buddy of mine show me how to wire these I have. Sounds like it could be a bad ballast. that almost never happens, but it does on occasion. Magnetic ballasts are generally rock solid.

Got any electritian friends? You can be vague about what you're doing, although you risk them figuring it out.
 
Jack Harer

Jack Harer

Well-Known Member
formfactor said:
so in the pics above, you see the other three taps 240, 250, 277. i have the 120 joined to my black power wire, the ballast has 2 COM wires, i ran to my white power cable,. the other com goes to the outside wire on the socket. i have tried putting the ground various places but it still smokes afyer 30 seconds
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Whoa, you said you have a common run to the mogul socket? (The bulb socket)? you have 2 sides to that coil. the output (bulb side) should only have 2 wires, one off the coil, the other off the cap. I extended the bulb well away from the ballast with 15' of extention cord.

You look right tho.. have an electrician look at it.
 
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formfactor

Member
Yea, bisicly there are 2 common wires on the coil. 1 goes to the mogul,the other goes to the white power cable.

According to what I have read so far some ballasts have 1 common, some have 2. If 2 1 goes to mogul., if 1 then white, common, and the outside mogul wires should all be tied together. I tried that too... And nearly every combination in between I just don't get it.


1 thing I noticed is it definately gets hot a lot faster if I don't connect the ground to the case... Idfk...
 
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formfactor

Member
Well, the label on the ballast says 277 only. In researching I ran across a guy commenting on the forums about how he opened his 277 single tap, and sure enough he had a 120, so I decided to try it. 2 out of my 5 are multis even though the label says otherwise.

Since it was previously wired for 277, and I hooked it up t 120 instead is there something I need to do with the CAP? I don't know maybe it's the old builds I'm using.

Thanks for confirming my wiring though!
 
Jack Harer

Jack Harer

Well-Known Member
Thats wild. I didn't think the US used 277, I thought that was a european voltage. Guess thats why I grow and don't wire houses!!!
 
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formfactor

Member
DOH! holy shit, I'm done fucking with these. I just changed out the bulb, and put the one it came with back in. I plugged it in, andfor about 3 seconds the light lit up, then all of the sudden a super loud blue/green fireball popped up in it. It popped my breaker. It scared the hell out of me, I'm still shaking. I got these free, so it's no loss. I'm throwing them away. Next time I will be sure to grab 110 v tap ballasts. I have 2 and they work great.
 
yesum

yesum

Well-Known Member
I am glad to hear you are dumping them, just reading that worried me. I chose LED and flouro over HID because of the possible tho unlikely fire issues with them.
 
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formfactor

Member
yesum said:
I am glad to hear you are dumping them, just reading that worried me. I chose LED and flouro over HID because of the possible tho unlikely fire issues with them.
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Well, these units are strange. The thing is I already have 2 with ballasts that look the exact same. Those were my first grow lights and they worked awesome. Unfortunately the guts ofthese were a lot different than the ones I have running, also I didn't know they came in 277 volt. If I would have known that's what they were I wouldn't haveeven bothered. I found a couple of 110v 400 watt MH though for 25$ a piece. It magnetic, but you can't argue with that price. I use them as supplemental light in addition to my 1000 watt hps's. Normally they are super easy to wire up and I've never had them do anything as dangerous as these 2 did.

The moral, don't try to Jerry rig a 277v ballast to run on a 110. At least not without a transformer ;)

Holy shit though, that electrical fireball was awfully exciting though.
 
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