Low wattage MH landscape lighting

[PetrosA]

Situation: Retrofitting multivapor floods with remote ballasts with new MH PAR floods in landscape lighting fixtures.

The electronic ballasts shipped for the 39W MH bulbs have a max 5' lead length limit on them. Some of the remote sockets are beyond this limit. Is there some way to make the electronic ballasts work at greater than 5' lengths or do we need a different kind of ballast? Thanks

 

[dbuckley]

For electronic ballasts, extending the cables beyond spec is not good; the AC frequency of the output of the ballast is typically many KHz, and thus cable capacitive effects start to get ugly as the distance goes up, not to mention wiping out reception on nearly radios and tellys.

 

[Wha Who?]

Ask your ballast vendor if a long range ignitor type ballast is available.

 

[PetrosA]

Ask your ballast vendor if a long range ignitor type ballast is available.

That's what I ended up doing along with getting rid of the electronic ballasts for the 39-50W fixtures. I found that Advance makes one (the only one I could find...). The lights are all working now, although some had to be rewired. The original installer used a grey colored SJTO cord which has a plastic covering and is rated for 300V. I'm not sure whether it was the voltage rating that was hurting us or the fact that some cables had tree grown over them and may have been damaged.

 

[Dennis Alwon]

I can't imagine that upsizing your conductor from the ballast to the socket wouldn't handle this situation but I would definitely contact the mfg.