Light question t10- t8

[loaches r cool]

More and more people are "overdriving" their lights. This is basically running a bulb with twice as much power by taking both leads from a 2 bulb ballast and connecting them to one bulb. Thus, a 40w bulb has 80w running through it. This sounds dangerous to me and I wont recommend it until I know more about it.

I wouldnt recomend it unless you were confident working on electrical things - folks have had thier diy stuff catch fire. But this *usually* isnt due to the ODNO part, just thier own wiring. ODNO itself isnt really that dangerous, bulbs like T5HO are basicaly overdriven or VHO's for that matter. And it doesnt double, triple quadrouple the power like you would think, it just gives you a bit more. take at look at this from plantedtank.net:

Basically, looking at the T8 numbers near the bottom you can see that 2X ODNO results in 54W and 3X is 63W, and 4X is 69W, so even running 4 outputs into one bulb doesnt even draw 2X as much power.

DeMonZ - just a few years ago there was a bad storm (mostly ice) were my folks are in upstate NY. My dad delivers bread and it was so bad with the downed trees and all debris in the road he couldnt drive the bread truck through it, so he loaded up his pickup truck and made deliviries out of that! Even when the majority of the county doesnt have power, they just deal with it. Sorry dont mean to go to off topic hear.

 

[Jay-Stew]

Sure it may affect the bulbs some what. There are slight differences between bulbs, even the same size but different models or manufacturers. There are differences in how the bulbs start so some bulbs are optimized for one ballast verses the other, due to things like higher voltages and such. But usually its not a big deal. Overdrive - it depends, I haven't recorded any data on putting a 30W or 32W(usually they are 32W) bulb into a magnetic ballast, I have given up magnetics a while ago and just focus on electronics now. I wouldn't worry about it, if they burn out any quicker the difference is probably not any different then the natural difference from one bulb to another (meaning you may get 9 months out of one bulb, 13 months from another, they dont all burn out at exactly the same time anyhow so would you even notice if it burned out 1 month sooner?). I have been overdriving bulbs for a while now(32W bulbs at 50-54W) and the batch I have now is past what others have claimed their life expectancy (a year) and so far I haven't seen any problems with my plants pearling so I haven't replaced them yet.

Demons - Wether is crappy in ohio terms but I am from Upstate NY originally (perhaps you have heard about them on the news lately?) so this kinda wether is really nothing. Everyon here is saying how horrible the roads are but I say how horrible the traffic was lol. I am working night shift this week, work for AEP in a 'mission critical' position so it has to be manned 24/7. At least working night shift I am going opposite the main flow of traffic - into downtown at 6pm and out of downtown at 6am... that lightens up traffic alot! Last week there were several days my folks got over a foot in about a half days time, and schools and businesses dont close like they do here. I bet Jay-Stew gets some snow up there too.

I am only assuming they are mag. ballasts. The fixtures are only a year old now. Thanks for the great reply too. I am just going to keep using em and go from there.

 

[Jay-Stew]

As for bulbs I am using 2 aqua glo 36" . they are 1800k bulbs. I also use a 36" 30 watt coralife trichromatic bulb. It is a 7000k bulb. I am really happy with the look they give.

As for SNOW we are getting frickin hammered right now. They figure 10- 15 cm b4 morning. Oh well thats what we get for living in the great lakes. Its also been about -20 for 2 weeks now at least. I love it!!