Wiring question

hi all,
first off i would like to thank everyone on RIU for all the great info here, it has made setting up my room and grow so much easier. i have a 400w light which says it will run on either 110 or 220, i have been told that it will be cheaper to run on 220. i did some tracing on my box and have a 3 conductor wire which use to run some baseboard heaters, heaters are gone now but wire still connected to a dbl pole 30amp. wire looks to me to be #10 but no writing on round black jacket, red,white and black wires. anyway can this be wired to a standard outlet in my grow room to give me 220? i have read on some after some searching that something that will run on 110/220 should be run in 3 wire with a bare ground which this doesnt have. hopefully this will work because i cant afford to go buy 40ft of wire right now. thanks

Yeah dude you need that bare ground. And it can't be wired to a normal 120V receptacle. You need a 3-phase, 3 wire outlet, and your light would have to have that type of plug on its' cord. It's the same thing as a dryer outlet. The red is one phase, the white is the other, and the black is the return/neutral most likely. The ground is to ensure that in the event of a fault that the electricity goes to ground instead of other things. That breaker should also be switched to something lower. That light is going to draw less than 2 amps on 220V so if it's the only thing on that circuit I would lower the breaker to 15 which is I think as low as they go but I might be wrong. Hope this helps, good luck growing.

dont burn your house down

be responsible and call an electrician or a buddy that does that for a living.

tomwolfe said:

Yeah dude you need that bare ground. And it can't be wired to a normal 120V receptacle. You need a 3-phase, 3 wire outlet, and your light would have to have that type of plug on its' cord. It's the same thing as a dryer outlet. The red is one phase, the white is the other, and the black is the return/neutral most likely. The ground is to ensure that in the event of a fault that the electricity goes to ground instead of other things. That breaker should also be switched to something lower. That light is going to draw less than 2 amps on 220V so if it's the only thing on that circuit I would lower the breaker to 15 which is I think as low as they go but I might be wrong. Hope this helps, good luck growing.

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Mostly right here, except the 3 phase part, that is completely different, you would need a simple 240v outlet. Also everything on that circuit would now be 240, so you would have to trace out everything on that wire and make sure you don't put anything 120 on it. Anyhow you are not running enough power to worry about this, you are pulling 400 watts, my computer pulls that!
Seriously here is how to look at it, you are in the states most likely with this question, so odds are you pay between 10-15 cents per kilowatt hour, that is 1000 watts for one hour. So your light will cost less than 10 cents an hour to run, probably less than $1.00 a day, $30.00 a month, hell my 1000 watt barely costs $50. This would be more work than its worth, plug it in to a normal outlet, and go switch all your light bulbs in your house to cfls, you will save money!

First off the saving is marginal but the real down side is 240 will kill you dead if you fuck up, you will also be crispy. Now 120 gives most people a second chance, but not all the time. You are much safer with 120 and it might cost you 1 or 2 dollars more over all. Just google 120 vs 240.

Now what I would do is put a GFI into a room socket and plug it in there for 120 at 15 amps vs 240 at 30 to 50 amps. The amps kill you and it don't take much under the right conditions, water and electricity don't mix. If you live by yourself, knock yourself out, but if anyone lives or loves you don't be a fucktard douche bag go with 120. And turn the power off and check at the plug for power even after turning it off always always.

even better, i love the leave it alone idea. first month running the light so am curious on the bill and im just to lazy to figure it out using the formula ive seen posted. we did change out all the household bulbs to cfls. thanks for the info.

mrshakes said:

even better, i love the leave it alone idea. first month running the light so am curious on the bill and im just to lazy to figure it out using the formula ive seen posted. we did change out all the household bulbs to cfls. thanks for the info.

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So your telling me your life is not worth 12$ for a GFI, don't forget your light could screw up or the ballast you never know.......spill some water...sleep well

no, i am saying that i will leave it running on 120v, instead of running a dedicated 220 line. the outlet i am using now is gfi protected.

thanks woodsmaneh and everyone else for the quick help. love this place, every question i've had has been covered with a little search.
wish i would have started this yrs ago.

Use common sense to guide you when reading post and you will find all kinds of stuff, another great site is the thc farmer way nice people too.

woodsmaneh! said:

So your telling me your life is not worth 12$ for a GFI, don't forget your light could screw up or the ballast you never know.......spill some water...sleep well

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lol heed his warning!!!

half of them are talking crap, 110/240 volts will not kill you, it is amps that kill you, 240 volts is the speed that the amps are delivered, a house that has a 240 volt 100 + amp cable entering it before the meter, if you touch this it will probably kill you instantly, as 50 amps will stop your heart, the cable is run through a 100 amp isolator switch on the consumer unit and then to a buzzbar which then supplys a 45 amp mcb (medium circuit breaker) which prevents fire and will trip if an electrical fault is detected in your electric running items. this then supplys an electric cooker, touching this is very painful and will probably seriously stun or maim you it may even kill you or it may even render you unconsious, the buzbar then supplys 32 amp mcbs for all of your sockets, if you touch a socket cable it will give you a serious shock but will only stop a weak heart, the mcbs for the lights are 6 amp, and this will seriously hurt if you grab both wires red/black or brown/blue with both hands, the shock will hit you on the chest and may render you feeling very unwell, the bare ground cable that some of you were talking about is a bare earth wire that MUST be covered with self extinguishing green/yellow stripped sleeving this will extinguish any burning through the cable should a serious earth leak occur, if you use rcd (residual current detector) sockets in all of your house ( they are quite expensive) these will protect anybody from electric shock and will trip, even if you drop an electric radio in the bath while you wash you will feel nothing, so remember its mcb for electric item protection and rcd for human protection. you can put rcd`s in your fuse box but they are expensive and you then lose the added bonus of having mcb protection. if you get a shock from a 110 volt 50 amp cable this can kill you too. think safety.

That is the worst post i have ever read, .01 amp could kill you 1 amp WILL kill you! Do not listen to anything he said, just leave it alone you are running a tiny light, really your computer most likely uses more power.

A watt of power is volts x amps. When you double the voltage from 120 to 240 you will use about half of the amps, but the formula remains the same. For example, a light that draws 4 amps at 120 volts will only draw 2 at 240 volts approximately. The power used (watts) remains almost the same. 120 x 4 = 480, 240 x 2 = 480. Anyone on here that tells you your going to save a bunch of money by running at 240 volts doesn't know what they're talking about. The power company charges by watts, or VA, Volts times amps. If your light was 2 miles from your house, you might save some money by stepping up the voltage. If you don't know what your doing in your electrical panel, save yourself some grief and leave it alone. You won't save enough to even make it noticeable with just one or a handful of lights.