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Re:: t-8 ballast reccomendations
>With all this talk about about t-8 ballasts and bulbs, what are some of the
ballasts that you all are using? I have an advance >ballast from home depot
but in the future to one with a better power factor. What are some of the
reccomendations? Also, >what are some good high-output ballasts that can be
used with t-8 bulbs? I have searched the archives and seen some info, >but
nothing that made me feel confident enough to drop the $40 on a new one.
Manufacturer/type/etc. The more info, the >better.
There are lots of manufacturers and lots of suitable ballasts. The biggest
manufactureres seem to be Philips which also owns Advance and Osram/Sylvania
which I think also owns Motorola now. Both Advance and Sylvania have
fluorescent ballast websites which I think are very good and will help you
to pick the right ballast at
http://www.advancetransformer.com/catalog/flbform.asp
and http://www.sylvania.com/ballast/cat/ respectively. I found the Sylvania
site confusing at first until I found the PIB section. There if you wish you
can specify the type of system you want and it will return you all kinds of
interesting information. Probably the system type you are looking for is
called 32plus by Sylvania. Sylvania calls their 4' T8 lamps FO32. The
Advance site is easier to use and they call the same lamps F32T8. The
returned listing gives the ballast factors and you can easily scan the list
to see which lamps have the higher ballast factors.
BTW I am guessing you probably meant ballast factor when you said power
factor and high light output ballast when you said high-output ballast.
These terms all have different meanings and if you ask a supplier to get you
an HO ballast with a high power factor he might do just that. As they say,
watch out what you ask for.
Wayne