thief said:lol i use the heat from the ballasts to heat the bathroom floor
Careful not to overfill the bathtub! *ZZZAP*i use the heat from the ballasts to heat the bathroom floor
Ah! Thanks miner, I've done work in electrical engineering so that all made perfect sense, I appreciate it.leafminer said:What does the ballast do? Nobody answered this yet. Here goes:
The lamp itself is a low-resistance device when it's in operation, but it requires a high voltage to get started. The ballast takes care of both these things.
When you start the lamp, the ballast allows a high voltage to get the arc started.
When the arc strikes, the current is low because the sodium is in solid state. As the sodium first melts and then vaporises, the resistance of the lamp drops to a low level and the ballast now acts to limit the current to the required operating value (the ballast is an inductor, a coil of copper wire on an iron core - inductors act as a resistance to alternating current)
ston3pony said:Ah! Thanks miner, I've done work in electrical engineering so that all made perfect sense, I appreciate it.
Do people ever use the heat from the ballast for something like warming a tray of clones or germination?
ston3pony said::confused2: Does it put off heat?
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