Hello everyone ,Im looking for some information on overdriving . I have the basic knowledge on how to wire the ballst to the light ,or to use a ballast that drives many different types ,( i.e) icecap ballast . I have a 4 bay 4ft t8 light what I want to do is add another ballast but dont know how to wire the ballast into the socket . Can I just wire both ballast together ? like balck to black ,white to white, and so on ? I will have one ballast driving two bulbs .just not sure if I cane wire ballast together like that . most over driving I have read about is always taking a four bulb ballast and putting it to two bulbs but since I have four bay lights , you see what I mean ? I thought about having two cords coming out of one light but I dont want that . any help would be great thank you in advance .
you just wire them both exactly the same. Its like you are thinking... everywhere you ran a wire from bulb to ballast A you just run another wire from the same point to the same point on ballast B... Follow? The power you just splice into the lamp cord that already powers the ballast in there. As long as you dont go over the wattage or amperage of your circuit (which would be like 1200 watts) you just split the live feed and run all the grounds to the neutral... Im not sure i follow your plan though. 4 bay on one ballast? obv you have to make sure the ballast you are adding is of the same configuration. Are you saying you are just going to put both 2 bulb ballasts to one side and only run 2 bulbs?
No I want to run the four bay on two ballast . One four bulb ballast per two bulbs hence the overdrive .I am afraid to hook the two ballast together to the same power cord . there is another mounting point in the light for another ballst . just didnt know how they wired the two ballast together to the main supply , meaning I would have two ballast running off of one power cord . so if I dont go over the amps of my power source I can hook the two together , I would also like to add 120mm , 120v fans to the light for cooling . im sure they could only be wired in series or parallel . if together at all .
No issue with putting them to one power cord man... really. Think about it. If you had 2 cords you would probably plug them into the same outlet anyway. There is only one feed per circuit, so all the outlets in a given room are usually just split off the same feed. The lamp chord will have absolutely no problem with even 10 ballasts. So, yes... you are going to just take the ballast that is there, and unhook it from two of the bulbs and hook those wires to the corrosponding places on the two bulbs you are leaving wired, then copy that entire wiring setup to the ballast you are adding... same thing here. just hook up two bulbs like it says on the ballast, then hook up the second set from the 4 bulb ballast to those same 2 bulbs just as you would if you were hooking it up correctly.
Thank you for the help zippy . One more question if I may . can I just piggy back the second ballast to the first ? leaving the original hooked up in the proper location then hooking up the second to the same points ? I thought I had read something about feedback doing it this way but cant quite remember .
Not sure how else you would do it... each point on the bulb that had one wire before should now have 2 (running to equivelant points one each ballast or one each side or ballast in your case)... simple as that