Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: lbpesq on May 20, 2024, 05:37:40 PM
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Not music-related, but I suspect someone around here knows something about electricity and may be able to solve this issue. So here's the story. I have an LED grow light with dual ballasts, one for each side of the unit. One of the ballasts stopped working correctly (the lights on its side were flickering). I obtained a new ballast from the Chinese manufacturer (that was an interesting endeavor). The new ballast had different color wires than the old one. I did my best to figure out what went where. Here’s where it gets weird. After installing the new ballast, I tested the light and it seemed to work fine. So I installed it where it previously lived, and it immediately tripped the breaker. With a little more testing I discovered that the light works as it should plugged into the outlet near where I worked on it, but slightly hums and quickly trips the breaker when plugged into the outlet that formerly powered it. The tripping outlet is otherwise fine with anything else plugged into it. Any suggestions on fixing this would be greatly appreciated.
Bill, tgo
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are the new and old outlets on different circuit branches? is the old circuit on a standard circuit breaker and the new one on a GFCI? if the wiring's hinky, you can have a whale of a shock hazard (i.e. leakage from the hot to ground) that a standard breaker will happily stand by and watch you electrocute yerself on but will never trip unless you actually overload it.
i've remodeled a lot of old houses around here and i'm always amazed at how these home handymen can screw up black, white and green (your colors may vary if yer not in the USA but the principle's the same)
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A tripping outlet? I'm picturing a Sandoz store in a strip mall......
Peter (who is semi-competent with basic wiring, but has no clue about Chinese ballasts)
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Post a picture of the new ballast/driver. The wiring schematic is usually posted on top. Also post a picture of the LED lamp label, it is driving.
Pete
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A tripping outlet? I'm picturing a Sandoz store in a strip mall......
Peter (who is semi-competent with basic wiring, but has no clue about Chinese ballasts)
:-D
Same thought.
Paul (who knows enough about electricity to respectfully stay away from it)
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Get thee to Home Depot for one of these.....under $10.00 Check all the outlets in question.
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One of those outlet testers rides in my "bag of tricks" that goes to every gig with me. I check outlets in every venue when I play there the first time, and also any time there is a problem (hum issues, shocks).
HOWEVER: it's important to know that there are faults one of these testers cannot detect. There was a recent discussion thread on another website where people talk about bass ;) involving such a problem that could have been life-threatening.
For those interested in the details - in the US, most outlets these days have three contacts: hot, neutral, and protective ground. The hot wire is 120 VAC, the neutral is nominally at 0 V (ground potential) and carries the return current that has passed through whatever load is plugged in, ground is also at 0 V, and is normally not supposed to carry current; it connects to (for example) the chassis of an amplifier and ensures that if somehow the hot wire shorts to the chassis it will trip a circuit breaker rather than energizing the chassis at 120 V. Neutral is bonded (connected securely) to protective ground at the breaker panel.
This is a relatively new standard (well, it seems new to someone at my age ;D). There are many older buildings that don't have the third ground wire running to all the outlets, just the hot and neutral. In this case, a three-prong outlet may bond the ground pin to the neutral at the outlet. This is fine - as long as the wire presumed to be neutral really is neutral.
It goes badly wrong if somewhere the hot and neutral wires were crossed up. With old, non-polarized, two-prong outlets this didn't matter because anything could be plugged in either way (this is why old amps had a "polarity" switch), and you just had to hope nothing in your amp shorted to the chassis. But if hot and neutral are mixed up and the "neutral" (which is really hot) is connected to the protective ground, then your amp's chassis is now live at 120 V. A licensed electrician will (or at least should) check this; a home handyman may just know "black is hot, white is neutral, easy!" and not bother to verify this is true when upgrading an outlet.
The outlet tester can't detect this. The red light (indicating voltage between neutral and ground, shouldn't happen) won't light up because they're both at the same voltage (120 V). The two yellow lights come on, indicating voltage hot to neutral and hot to ground, because what should be hot is at 0 V and neutral and ground are both 120 V.
As far as the original question - no good answer here. If I were in the situation, I'd probably sigh and buy a whole new grow light, one not made in China ;)