Oh My! FIRE!

Gabba, it would be great if you found the issue for everyone who's GFI is being tripped by their ballast.

If I'm not mistaken, a ferrite core is one of those barrel shaped affairs that's on every monitor's signal cable, yes?

 

Yes, they're also called 'ferrite beads'. They will lessen some of the conducted RFI on that cable, and depending on the flux density of the bead, can be 'tuned' to work in different frequency spectrums. I would suggest a broadband bead unless we know the offending frequencies to tune it to.

Ferrite beads are passive chokes, and will work pretty ok to a degree... however, an active RFI filter may be needed. This would consist of a toroidal balanced inductor along with resistors and capacitors to create a basic 'LC Filter' to suppress RFI in line with the mains input. I imagine that the OEM design of the ballast should include an active filter of some kind, but you never know. It may actually be the way the filter is designed in the unit that is causing the GFCI to trip rather than the RFI itself (depending on whether they have shunt capacitors to ground or not and whether these are providing a leakage path that trips the GFCI).

Anyone that would like to provide contact info of the manufacturer, I'd be willing to call them and see if we can solve the issue.

I wish we could separate this topic into a different thread since it's definitely taken a different shape...

 

LOL!! Last night i cam home to find my ro overflowed my tank's sump underneath in the stand. I've been meaning to do something different with my cords for this event and they were NEARLY underwater. I dont know how they didnt short and fry my tank/burn my house down but I got SUPER LUCKY. Im glad to see you did too KC!

 

If Kacy agrees to this, I can copy particular posts into it's own thread.

 

Yes, GFCI's only "usually " trip for a reason. Now the reason could be that the outlet is old and worn out, defective, or the load is too high on it, in addition to the assumed reason that something is wrong that is plugged into it.

KC, the one in the garage that keeps trippin' might have any of those issues, but I would find out the amperage of that one, and replace it with one corresponding to the amperage of that line on the breaker box.

My EE friend only likes leviton GFCI's, and not the bargain basement ones you can find sometimes.

I had a mag9 that was chucking stray electricity into my tank. I also had other equipment fail, but still work and those threw a GFCI.

test each piece of electrical equipment separately on a known good GFCI outlet.

 

I don't disagree with you guys, but I believe the reason that so many folks have good working ballasts trip the GFCI is due to a design issue of the ballast. It's similar to saying that it "trips for a reason"... it's just that other than causing the GFCI to trip there may be nothing else wrong with these lights or the circuit they are plugged into.

If we can correctly isolate the issue to being caused by the ballast design, then I think I will have proved my point.

KC, Zach and Bama, do you care to disclose the make and model of your lights? This way I can look into it more.

If the issue is caused by RFI or by the design of the RFI filter, then wouldn't it make sense to fix this issue so that more people can continue to run their electronically controlled T5 ballasts on GFCI's for added safety? That's what I'm trying to contribute here.

 

Gabba, that is an interesting thought. FWIW, I had been running 2 TAR m58 250w magnetic ballasts for my 2 x 250 MH, an they never tripped my GFCI's. I am upgrading to Icecap electronic ballasts now, but you might be onto something here.

If those that are running 2 magnetic ballasts on their tank are having them on the same circuit,a nd on the same timer, that could be an issue. Try a separate timer for to stagger the turning on of the MH to see if that helps. 2 or more magnetic ballasts lighting at the same time might be too much for the GFCI to take.

 

What I am saying applies to electronic ballasts, not magnetic ballasts... the magnetic ballasts are well filtered by the transformers they use (hence magnetic) and don't have high frequency switch-mode power supplies.

 

Everything is okay. I only have to replace a few things: my auto top off got fried, and my reactor pump got fried. Other than that all the equipment is okay. Thanks for checking!

See, this is very weird about the lights!

Thanks goodness your equipment didn't start a fire!! Get a GFCI right away and get your cords up off the ground and mounted to the wall.

Thanks for all your help!! Really appreciate it. My light is a Sunlight Supply Tek 5. Let me know if you need any more info.

Inwall, you can definitely do that!

 

My Pendants are LumenMax Elite's. Ballasts are Vertex electronic ballasts (250w MH).