Amount of wattage?

[Delphinus]

Not a soft spot it's just that I don't know what he means so I thought I'd better ask. I can make fun of him all I like because HE makes fun of ME all he likes.

If you have the serious questions or the serious research as you say Steve is the guy to bug because he has done all this research. Odds are pretty good any questions you come up with are ones he's already answered for himself.

As for the industrial grade ballast idea your idea is fine but it does get a little more involved than that. At the end of the day a ballast is a ballast it doesn't really mean anything to say "industrial" or .. um .. well whatever the opposite of "industrial" is. What you are concerned with is the ANSI designation, ie. for 400W is it M59 or is it M159 (I forget the numbers offhand so please forgive my transgression if I just listed a 250W instead of a 400W or something like that). Each bulb manufacturer has a recommended ballast to use so that's where you get that info from (the bulb you want to use). Then you want to look at the power tap. Can the ballast run on 110V? 220 or whatever. Last (and most confusingly) there is constant wattage autotransformer, or super lag something or other, linear reactors ... and I have absolutely no idea what that means. I think most "typical" ballasts are CWA (constant wattage autotransformer) types. I'm not sure one really needs to know what the difference is unless one really wants to geek out on it. Oh and then you want to look at something in the specs like "power crest factor" and I'll let Steve explain that one because I don't know about it. And last but not least if you are going to use a pulse start with a starter you want to check the "BTL" (ballast to lamp) distance because if you intend on remote mounting the ballasts this measurement needs to be taken into account. Many standard pulse-start starters offer a BTL of only 2 feet. If you want something larger (so the ballast isn't right in your hood) you need a long-distance ignitor/starter. (This is only for the pulse-start ballasts i.e. M137 M157 whatever). Probe-start ballasts (i.e. M59 M58 M57) do not use an ignitor.