any electricians out there?

[michika]

PM KrazyKuch

[parkinsn]

pm'd

[lorenz0]

can you take a picture of the fixture?? well the wiring

all depends on the wiring

[mark]

and if you have 2 ballasts

[fishface]

well with the help of parkinsn, and a quick look-see we've determined that it's a single 4 bulb ballast. so i'm thinking about grabbing a 2 bulb ballast and adding it. lighting 2 bulbs with the existing ballast and the other 2 with a new ballast. how's that sound?

[KrazyKuch]

Sounds possible but make sure that the 4 bulb fixture will fire 2 bulbs......their are alot of ballasts out their the require all bulbs before they fire!!!

[lorenz0]

could down grade to ballasts designed for 2 bulbs. I haven't looked at the wiring in any of my t5's but the ballast should be getting source power but i know on mt TEK is runs a parallel circuit and if 1 bulb is missing another won't light up. but if that one bulb burns out power will still go through it to light up the other bulb. well i am bored and decided to have a little fun on ms paint, this is how the circuit is probably ran right now:



Now basically all your trying to do is remove 2 of the bulbs and that should be a diagram for each type of circuit that you plan on running. The one thing with this idea that if its a single series circuit you might get less resistance which your bulbs may give off more light. lol i don't know, kind of rambling here.

edit: crap forgot to label the box in the picture, thats your ballast

[fishface]

thanks for your input guys but i'm considering a different approach now.

what about if i was to keep the same ballast, keep it directly wired to 2 bulbs and have the other 2 bulbs on independent switches? so basically 2 lights would be on by default, but then i could manually turn on the other one or two if need be. would that be easy enough and do you think it would work?

any thoughts would be appreciated?
i believe this is how it's wired (linear)...
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/alb...&pictureid=346