Need Electrical Advice . . . MH Cord Length
 

I am thinking of moving my MH ballasts from beside my tank on the second floor to my crawlspace. Is there any problem in running about 25' length of cord? I would run either 18 or 14 gauge wire.

Second question, because the existing cords going to and from my ballasts just use regular grounded cord ends, could I just make extension cords to lengthen my setup, or do I need to basically re-hardwire them? I'm not sure if there is any problems or power lost which could damage the ballast if I have additional connections.

Bill

anyone?

Hey Bill, first off ,the corals I got from you are doing great! Nice polyp extension.
As for your question ,if you are talking about the cord between the ballast and the lamp, the length should be fine at 25' , IMO, the 250watt Hamilton HQI's that I have came stock with 25' of cord, but I would replace the whole cord ( hard wire, not use extension cords) , because every connection (IE: extra plugs ) causes resistance which is more load on the ballast (remember the situation that I was talking about with my lights)
Hope that helps ... thanks again for the corals

are you saying the hamilton HQI ballast has 25' of cord between the ballast and the bulb??? Wow, I am wondering how it lights as the max balast to cord distance on a M80 ballast is about 5'. are you talking about a electronic ballast? Or maybe hamilton has found a new long distance starter for there set up, if thats the case I would love to know what starter they are using.

Steve

Here's a nifty little chart I found through Google:

http://www.venturelighting.com/image...MountChrt1.gif

Source: http://www.venturelighting.com/TechC...eMounting.html

Of course I'm not sure if this is standard to all ballasts, or only those made by Venture Lighting...

Very cool chart, Mr Alberta, accept it don't list the M80

Steve, I don't know what ballast exactly in the Hamilton HQI's that I have but they are not electronic and the length may not be exactly 25' long but it's close to that length

Have the PFO 250w DE Pendents (Hamilton bulbs). The cable between the pendents and ballast was ~8'. I contacted PFO directly about additional length as wanting to put the ballast in basement as well. They recommended a use of one extension cable only for a total distance of ~ 16'.

For my PFO's the cable (between ballast and lights) wasn't a standard type extension cord so ended up getting from OA.

I would say considering the price of cord if you just buy it from rona/ home depot I would say buy one cable 25 feet long,(I would personnaly go with 12 gauge) and try it out!!

I posted on RC in the Sunlight Supply forum. I haven't personally gotten a response on my thread, but I did find a very similar one and the SLS rep. on the board said that you can do 15+ feet without any problems on their ballasts.

http://www.ballast.com/eCatalog/out/2214932391.pdf

BTL is 5'. I pushed that to 8' and it was fine. I used 14 guage wire.

Thanks for the confirmation, btw, because I don't have any plugs in the crawlspace I'll be running about 20' from the outlet to the ballasts also.

Bill

ps glad to hear your frags are doing well!

Cool chart! I'll think I'll run 14 gauge then.

I know that most typical wires cannot be run in walls or through floors. Remember to make sure that the wires you end up using are to the building code. I found out from a friend who is an inspector that even speaker and/or signal wires technically should not be wired through walls or even slipped under baseboards without using an approved type of cable. ie home theatre use. Your MH cables will be passing a couple of amps each, atleast.