GFCI Keeps Tripping

[acrylic51]

Are your light fixtures properly grounded? Did you wire them yourself or did it come as a preassembled fixture.....I know that the ARO ballast electronic ballasts need to be wired and will have to do alittle work yourself, but if your talking about the ARO ballasts already in the aluminum housings, with the quick connects on the boxes everything should be cool

 

[bojik]

By quick on i ment quick start.

 

[snwboarder]

Yea...the ballast came with the quick connect, which is pretty funny to me, because the 2 mh ballast's i had to wire myself, and no problems with those at all, only having probs with the prewired ballast. makes no sense to me though...how they can go off...and all i do is unplug and wait a few minutes before pluggin back in...then they work fine; is there some sort of internal surge protection built into the ballast? i'm outta ideas here :notsure:

 

[scsinet]

Sounds to me like an overheating problem.
Newer magnetic ballasts have thermal protection built in. Electronic ones might, but they also have semiconductors that must be physically attached to the frame for proper heat dissipation... when/if they come loose, the ballast will shut down from overheating.
The symptoms you describe point to this. Unplugging the ballast for a few minutes give it time to cool enough to either work again or reset the thermal protector.
Did you by chance change the bulbs from what the ballast originally had? If you put bulbs in the fixture that were a different wattage, it can alter the amount of current flowing through the ballast and cause this.

 

[bojik]

Simple fix add more fan power to cool ballast?

 

[wattsupdoc]

Electronic ballasts are usually equiped with "end of life "protection. these shut the ballast of when they see there is a problem with the lamp. It sounds to me that this is whats occuring here.
Now to figure out if its the lamps with a problem or the ballast thats goofing up. Look at the lamps and see if they have black spots on or near the ends. This is a sign of a lamp who's time is ending. The ballast may have a problem with it also but we wont know until we try the lamps. If you want to test the ballast and not buy the lamps first, get some cheap HD lamps and place in it to see if they keep the ballast operating. I do suspect the ballast though as elctronic ballasts create a good amount of harmonics. These are spikes in the circuitry. They are seen on the neutral side of the ballast. You're GFI which was tripping was probably seeing these spikes and the surge protector has reduced that. These are normal for a electronic ballast to produce, but they shouldn't trip the gfi doing this. I'll bet that replacing the ballast is the fix and then you wont need a surge suppressor there. I would think that the ballast would be under warrantee, most GOOD ballast manufactures give at least a 5 year warranty on electronic ballasts.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by wattsupdoc
Electronic ballasts are usually equiped with "end of life "protection. these shut the ballast of when they see there is a problem with the lamp. It sounds to me that this is whats occuring here.
:thinking: Hmmm you're exactly right and I never thought of that. snw, I'd say he's right on this.
My suggestion though, before changing the ballast, is to change the lamps regardless of how they look. See if the problem persists. If it goes away, you've solved the problem. If not, yeah, you just spent money on new lamps, but you'll be buying new lamps sooner or later anyway, so it's not a total waste. Besides, a spare set of lamps is *always* a good thing as you don't exactly want to wait around for a week in the event of lamp death for new ones to come in... at least your corals won't want to wait..

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by Bojik
Simple fix add more fan power to cool ballast?

Naw. That's attacking the symptom and not the cause (assuming heating IS the problem). Ballasts are designed to work with no forced cooling. It shouldn't be needed to work right.

 

[bojik]

I was thinking of overheating 'not end of life' issues. Not something i've had personal expoerience with.

 

[snwboarder]

thanks for the responses everyone. the bulbs came together with the retro kit i put together, and as far as i know the wattage is matched up. i've only had the lighting system up and running for about 4 months now, so they should still have life left in them...but i'll go ahead and pick up another set of bulbs (good point....not bad to have a backup set)..and if the problem presists, i'll have to contact the manufactor and get another ballast i guess. thanks again for everyone's help!

 

[acrylic51]

Don't always rely on just because the bulbs are 4 months old they still have life left....Something could have shorted inside the bulbs causing a problem and to boot, I had bought some Sunburst bulbs awhile back and had issues....the bulbs didn't go 2 weeks and lost 3 out of the 4 brand new bulbs......Could just be a bad batch of bulbs.

 

[snwboarder]

wow, only 2 weeks? that sucks; they're uri bulbs, which i've heard good things about, but who knows, could be a bad batch. i went ahead and ordered new ones online, so guess i'll find out when they come in. i also have 2 - 250w mh's, so that might have something to do with shortened bulb life as well;

 

[acrylic51]

Originally Posted by snwboarder
wow, only 2 weeks? that sucks; they're uri bulbs, which i've heard good things about, but who knows, could be a bad batch. i went ahead and ordered new ones online, so guess i'll find out when they come in. i also have 2 - 250w mh's, so that might have something to do with shortened bulb life as well;
The bulbs I had issues with weren't URI they were Sunburst MH bulbs......Never had any issues with URI