Hey Everybody . I just wanted to start a thread for people like me who don't know much about the electrical aspect of starting a grow room. I have a cabinet that I have started getting ready to grow but my biggest problem so far is my severe lack of electrical knowledge. I am trying to wire a homemade plug to a florescent tube T12 fixture. I thought it would be fairly simple, turns out I didn't know what I was doing. heres some pics of the plug and fixture. Please help me out with any knowledge you have. I also currently have a 105 watt 5500K CFL in my box, I want to put the tubes in there too, along with some more small 42 watt 6500k CFLs which I'll switch to 2700k for flowering. Which brings me to my next question. Is there a way to buy a household light fixture, for small CFLs, and wire it to a plug without buying a lamp or something. Like I said I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to wiring. I have put audio systems in cars and I play in a band so I know a little but not much about household type electrical equipment. So yea, any help would be awesome.
That looks like fun....CUT THE BLUE WIRE!!!! ROFL Personally my favorite way to give your fluoro's a plug is to buy a 3 prong extension cord. Make sure you get one that doesnt have all three conductors in molded plastic. Make sure to get the ones that have a tubelike outer black sheath. Cut off the female plug end at whatever length you desire and you will see 3 plastic wrapped conductors in there. White, black, and green. You color match the white and black and you attach the green to the grounding screw(generally inside the lamp housing). I did this to bring cheap blacklights to parties way back in highschool, I even wired one up while rolling on extasy once. My frineds looked scared as shit when I plugged it in, but I knew what I was doing, even on X you can generally color match. That non-color coded shit that you are using looks all kind of crazy As I can see in the background you have a lowes in your area. Not do they carry the extension cords I am talking about you can actually buy a cord that has the 3 prong at one end and bare wires at the other. I got mine for aout $11 or so, it was at least 10 ft long and you could cut off any excess you didn't want. It is what I am using to wire my vent fan up. Rated all the way up to 15 amps. I learned its best not screw with electricity when you have to guess. If the shock don't kill you the potential electrical fire in a wooden box might(or at least get you busted).
As for your way of wiring multiple CFL's you can wire them in series to a single 2 prong cord and you can find the basic ceramic bulb housing for each CFL at any of your general hardware stores. Check out Dr.BudGreenGene's thread about his perpetual grow. Look for the pics of the cabs he made. 5 CFL's in most and wired in series. Read though the whole thread before posting there and asking how to do it. That has already been answered in the thread I believe, just read through and find it.
It would be better and easier to wire your lights in parallel. If one bulb goes out, the others will stay lit. In series, a blown bulb will cause all the lights to go out.
yeah man dont wire in series. There is a voltage drop after each light bulb, so each of your bulbs after the first one wont be working as good. In parallel there is no voltage drop. So all of your bulbs with be bright as the others.
I was too high and tired last night and screwed that all up Dr.BudGreenGenes has his in parallel, that's what I meant. Thanks for catching that guys
Hey thanks for tips so far. I didn't know that the lights lost voltage in series, good stuff. I like the extension cord idea I think I'm going to try that out in a bit. Are you sure theres no risk of fire with that or does the ground prevent that? thanks again for all the help.
If you hook up the three wires to where they are supposed to go then there is no risk of fire. I'm 10+ years out of highschool and still have that same 2' fixture. Still works great. Where you connect the wires to the fixture cap them with an appropriate size TWIST WIRE LOCK. They are called by lots of different names but you have probably seen them before. This keeps exposed wire from touching something conductive(lamp housing) and creating an arc that could lead to an electrical fire. BTW, you will not need one for the ground. Wrap the whole thing in electrical tape if you waat to go overboard. I never did and never had any problems. Like I said Ill be using this same technique in another week or two. I'm still gathering supplies.
Dude that stuff is super easy. I hope you didn't tear it all apart trying to figure it out. I had to do that same thing for my floros. Step one: cut the cord off of something around the house you don't use anymore. (I used an old lamp) Step two: make sure the blue cord (or which ever is the ground) is secured to a metal part of the fixture. Step three: splice the two wires from the floros to the cord you cut. Step four: plug it in If it doesn't work you did something wrong. I think you'll get it though.
Ah. I see you have a plug. Just cut the ground off. Then splice the two cords to the two cords off the floros. It should work fine.
Hey wompa man thanks for the tips. I figured out after trying the home made plugs again, a different fixture, and trying old extension cords that my bulb was defective . I tried the other bulb I had and it turned right on. I returned the bulb along with the home made plug supplies and got a new bulb and some electric tape. When I got home I had them wired up and ready to go in 5 minutes. I like the old extension cords because it keeps everything looking a little neater. One question I have is should I have the fixtures grounded to something when I install them? They work without it but I just don't know if it's safe. Also I am going to get a computer fan in the next couple of days and I was told I could use the same idea as the extension cords with a old cell phone charger to the computer fan. Does this seem right as long as the charger is 12 volts? Also with my exhaust fan can I splice an old extension cord to the wiring? I don't have the fan yet so I don't know what the wiring will look like but I assume it's pretty similar. Yea thats all I got for now but thanks for all the help so far everybody. I got a couple pics of what I did here they are and keep tokin. Pic of where I wired the extension cord to the fixture Let there be light! I had to plug them in and see their glory. I'm waiting to install them when I get the fan.
Glad that worked out for you. Doesn't it feel good to fire up a light that you wired! Long term the electrical tape can slide away from the wires and thats why I used those wire nut things I posted earlier, but no worries since it looks like you have that taped up nicely. The same thing can be done to add plugs to a lot of the inline exhaust fans that you find at home depot that only come with bare wires. As far as grounding its always good to be safe. Dont use the 2 prong 'cheater' plugs unless you have to because the place you are growing only has 2 prong wall outlets. If you are stuck with only a two prong outlet option at at the wall a cheater plug works if the cheater plug is screwed to the wall plate using the center screw from the wall plate(This grounds your gear if the outlet was properly grounded when the house was built). As far as using a 12v adapter for one of those fans it can be easily done. Looking for it....looking for it........here it is. Very similar to what you have already done. "How-To" : Connect your PC/Axial fans to a 12v Adapter