Oooooold 1000 watt MH ballast and Bulb question.

So i today i decided to make a gamble and buy a lighting setup off craigslist. after talking to the guy he told me he wanted $50 for 2 ballasts (one 400watt and one 1000watt) he also included 2 MH bulbs for the 1000watt and a HPS for the 400watt. Obviously i made sure to clarify that he only wanted $50 for all of it, and he confirmed. I had to drive 3 hours eachway, and they wern't exactly what i had pictured in my head.

the 1000w is a sheetmetal box with a SOLA (southland electric???) transformer that will run on 120/208/240/277 volts. on the outside of the box it has "5/25/84 PM" written in sharpie. he told me that they had been is storage for a while... but DAMN! The 400w ballast is a General Electric 400watt metal halide balast built in 1990 and has a 277 volt transformer (Damnit!)l The bulb he gave me is a phillips 400watt HPS bulb. no im not going to use it. i already read up on that one. in fact, i havent been able to get the 400watt balast to work on 110, so i'll leave that for another thread.

the mogul and plug had been cut off of the 1000, so i had to wire everything up. i stole the mogul from the 400 because it is a ceramic GE mogul that has "1500w / 600v" stamped on the inside. i got a 3 prong plug rated at 15 amps from lowes for $5. it was the meanest 110 volt plug they had.

after dicking with it for a while and not getting it to work, i pulled the transformer out and had a look. i noticed that there is a male connector for each voltage setting. so i started moving it around and what do ya know... things started happening in the bulb. (i unplugged it everytime i switched the voltage setting)

there are 2 settings that will ignite the bulb. i only had one on for about a minute before it stopped getting any brighter. the other one... at first i thought to myself "Thats 1000 watts? my 100watt CFL is brighter... but then i noticed it kept getting brighter. and brighter, and brighter! it was like i took the sun, and moved it in to my apartment. i had it in my bathroom (no windows to let light escape.) and it was so bright, that i was able to turn out all my other lights in the apartment and it was still like daylight throughout.

it freaked me out a little though because A. I know HIDs can explode. B. i know almost nothing about the equipment i have, and C. this is the first time ive ever used a HID. the 1000watt bulbs are Phillips and Sylvania. both work, so i consider the gambe a total score. all in all it cost me $80 for a working ballast and 2 good bulbs.

my questions are, should the center of the bulb be BRIGHT orange after unplugging the ballast? is it normal for the light waves to cast "moving" shadows? how hot would it get in a 5' x 3' x 1.5' grow box with a desk fan directly on it and another desk fan blowing cool air in the box? is it a bad idea to put it in a grow box at all? the box is a former aquarium stand that i stood up tall and put four sides on. the sides are 1/8" thick plywood.

it has a 15' (or so) cord from the ballast to the mogul, so i can run the ballast on a separate circuit than everything else, and keep the ballast's heat out of the box.

im only growing 4 plants using the bubble bucket DWC setup, and i know that 1000watts is OVERKILL for that. i actually only wanted a 400watt, but at $50 for all of it, how could i refuse? i am a little reluctant to use it because of the heat, and the extra cost for power consumption.

With a 100watt FluoreX CFL and a dual T8 shop light with 2 32watt 6500k T8s, my temps in my bucket dont get over 71 degrees. they usually hover between 66.x and 69.x the entire inside of the box is covered in a sheet of mylar.

Thanks for any help in advance, and tanks to anyone who actually read all that

 

Im not going to use the 1000 watt ballast. ill re-sell it on CL or ebay since it works great. the bulbs ignite fast and the power is defineatly there. who knows, maybe someone will be ready to upgrade thier grow, and i can hook up a trade. I've never been a guy to think there is such thing as too much power... but until i buy a house in the boonies, and can put a grow room in the basement, i have absolutely no use for a 1000watt system, and it would be reckless and stupid for me to put it in an apartment. i doubt i'll ever have a basement grow going, but if i ever do, i'll have some good experience built up by then.

after i re-sell it, i'll probably go for a 400 watt digitial or electronic ballast. if i get enough dough fo it, ill get a 600watt since they are the most efficient of all HIDs, and i'll beef up my ventalation system. i may end up buildng a whole new box.

277volt is a heavy duty or industrial use ballast. you'll most likely only find it in warehouses and shops with many many MH lights and ballasts hanging. at my old job we had 110, 240, 380(i think) 430 and 480 volt hookups. we also had probably 30 or so T5 shoplights illuminating our warehouse. each shoplight held 6 T5 bulbs, and those mothers were effing bright.