t5ho to a t5vho

[mike30g]

so what would i have do to turn my ho to a vho. do you just put in a 96w bal insted of the 40 to overdrive them? any input would be sweet. this has prob been asked before(did a quick serch) but here i am asking again.

mike

[evilc66]

It's not quite that easy. Most ballasts adjust to the bulb connected to it, so it doesn't matter if you have a 24W bulb or a 54W bulb connected, it will always run at the right wattage. What you need is a ballast that has the default values for the wattage that it should be running changed. Currently, there are only 3 readily available ballasts that do that when connected with one bulb per circuit: The Fulham Workhorse 7 (about a 30% overdrive), the Icecap 430 (about a 30% overdrive), and the Icecap 660 (about an 80% overdrive).

 

Now, you can overdrive the bulbs by connecting more of the output circuits together on a single bulb. Two outputs gets you about a 25% overdrive, three gets you about 35%, and four gets you about 50%. Not all ballasts like this though, so it's not recommended.

 

Keep in mind that as the wattage increases, the heat of the bulb increases considerably, and active cooling is required.