Danger!!!

I'm very, very lucky to be typing this right now. The one thing that I never considered a hazard almost killed me a few minutes ago.

My grow room is 8' long by 7' wide. In it I have my 4' x 4' x 7' high "Budbox" grow tent, as well as the nursery that I had designed and built and installed, which is 3' wide and 4' long and 7' tall. In other words, my grow stuff takes up over half of the room from the floor nearly to the ceiling.

The little area that's left is where I have my computer desk. The door is also right there. I sit in here most of the day and tend to my plants from the comfort of my chair, with the door tightly closed so that the smoke doesn't foul the air in our home. My little grow/computer room is sort of a little add-on utility room, I think.

At any rate, for this grow I decided to try using 1000w MH lamp for the vegging stage and then switch over to a 1000w HPS SONT-T lamp for ther flowering phase. I decided to start them on their 12/12 today.

I took the big, bulbous lamp out of the Supernova reflector with no problems at all. I carefully screwed the new 1000w HPS into the socket, and adjusted the lamp position. The lamp was wiped down a final time with a clean, soft cloth to remove any oils from my hands. I then sat down and switched on the lamp so I could watch it warm up, since I had never seen a 1000w light up before (aside from the Metal Halide I had just taken out).

I noticed right off that it didn't seem to get very bright at all. In fact, I thought there must be something wrong, it was so dim in the tent. But then I decided that maybe that's just the way they burn or something when they're brand new. So, I took a nice long hit on my hash pipe, and then another, and another and well, I fell asleep.

Enter my wife, who is an hour or so late coming home from shopping for groceries in town. She walks in, smells this awful, acrid smell and throws open my door. I was dead asleep, if you'll pardon the pun, and it was difficult for her to rouse me and get me to even understand what she was on about. She finally got me up and out of the room.
She was nearly hysterical with fear that I might be dying, or that I could have died had she not come home when she did. I think she's probably right.

I had been breathing the whispy whiteish-grey smoke that was issuing from the in my 1000w ballast! As I recall, the gas from burning electrical components is called Phosgene gas, and it on the deadly side if inhaled too long. I probably only was breathing it for a very few minutes before she walked in and found me in the smokey room.

Now that ballast had its own comfy place sitting on top of my wooden nursery roof, so it's out of the way and safe. Right. Had it been on the floor, I may have breathed enough to be quite harmful or even fatal. If my wife had not come home for another hour, I fear I would indeed be dead when she did arrive.

CHECK YOUR BALLASTS TO MAKE SURE THEY'RE IN PROPER WORKING ORDER! EVEN BRAND NEW ONES!!!

Now I don't know if that slow-burning lamp put too much drain on the ballast and that's what caused the over-heating, or what it could have been. But I am swapping that 1000w crap out and putting another new 600 SON-T PLUS lamp in there. That's fine for a grow tent anyway, It's what I've always used. But I sure was keen to see what they would look like at harvest time under a 1000w lighting system.

I wanted to make sure as many people see this as possible, so please tell other people you know what I have just described.

Good luck and safe growing to all!