Can anybody tell me what would the benifits be if I were to hook up my lights and ballast to 240 vs the regular 120 household. im running 1000watts right now my ballast is equipt to go to 240 is would that give me max light out put.
Hey man, you won't get any more output from 240. The lamp is rated at 1000W, so that's what it'll put out. I'm pretty sure that 240 circuits can handle more current.
you'll be using 4.75 amps instead of the 9.5 amps most 1000w ballasts use. adding more than the light to that circuit could cause it to overload or in some cases cause a fire. it's also a bit safer as your equipment will run a bit cooler, and last longer. the ballast i just bought looks to have an overheated transformer, most likely caused by it running 120v. by using ohms law you can figure out how much you are pulling on the circuit by adding up the wattage of everything on the circuit and dividing by the voltage of the circuit which would be 120v. you only want to be at about 75-80% of the amperage available on the circuit otherwise you risk burning the house down.
Ok,good looking out the way I got it set up is I have a single 15 amp in my box dedicated to just that 1000watt light ,so do you think that by plugging in a fan that I would overload it.
amperage cuts in half when u double voltage.runnin off 240 would make sense if you where runnin couple 1000 watters.
it depends on how many watts your fan pulls and whatever else you have on the circuit (overhead lights, other outlets). you'll have more than 1 light and outlet on the circuit, so adding up all the appliances you have running on it will give you the total number of watts. divide that by 120v and you'll have your total amperage. make sure it's at or below 75% of the 15amps. theoretically you should be ok but you can shorten the life of some of your equipment because it will run hotter.
Ok , let me explain it better, I have one outlet dedicated to my 15amp thats in the main breaker box and im running my 1000w just with that one outlet I just wanted to hook up a fan to it thats all but my main qustion that you answered already was if I hook everythimg to 240 it would run cooler. I havent tripped any of the breakers yet.thanks for the help.