# DIY Home Depot Overdriven 48" Fluorescent Strip Mod



## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Since so many people have asked me details about the Home Depot DIY fluorescent lighting solution I've used on my tank for the past year, I thought I would make a thread that I could reference with some pretty pictures (we all love pictures, don't we?).

I built my original setup about a year ago and have run into no problems other than a rusty reflector. I did not originally overdrive the ballasts as there was very little information about these ballast at the time I purchased these lights. A year later there is still little information, although I did find one member of a saltwater forum that has been running these ballasts overdriven on a 75 gallon saltwater reef tank for over a year and has not had any problems. That was good enough for me 

The biggest benefit of doing this is that you can get a setup that produces a very high number of watts per dollar. The overdriven DIY setup described here can be built at a fraction of the price of a nice T5 VHO setup. Using 2 fixtures without overdriving produces an approximate 128 W of light, while two of the same fixtures modified with a 2x overdrive multiplies your output by a factor of approximately 1.7. This means that with the same bulbs you are getting roughly 218 W of light! And the best part....it costs less than $60 to make it. WOW!

The saltwater guys have been doing this since the advent of the electronic ballast with excellent results. Overdriving actually saves wear and tear on the ballast, as it can direct all of its current in starting a single bulb instead of two. The bulbs take the beating in an overdriven setup however, and it has been recommended that bulbs be changed every 6 months. At several dollars a bulb though, I can deal.

*********************************************WARNING!************************************************

I am not an electrician. I'm a Systems Engineer/System Administrator by education, which means my knowledge of electronics is moderate at best. This is fairly untested with this particular equipment. While this works in theory I only have one reference that says it has held up for over a year. Consider this an ongoing experiment. I wouldn't even recommend this as a stable solution, as I really don't know how it will work out in the future.

Please take all the proper precautions when working with electricity. Getting shocked hurts (often bad) and the current coming out of a wall outlet can easily kill you. Improper electrical work can start fires, damage electrical equipment, and cause all sorts of other problems.

I can't be held responsible for any problems that you cause, so use any information here at your own risk and discretion.

******************************************END OF WARNING!*********************************************


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

The light fixtures are the Home Depot Commercial Electric brand "Shoplight". The model number is 732-334. These are advertised as T12 fixtures, although the ballasts can handle the 32W T8 bulbs without a problem. All of the local Home Depots here have piles of them, and the price always seems to be the same. I bought (2) at $9.79 each a year ago, and (2) more last week for $9.79 each. This is apparently not the case all over the country; I have received reports that in some parts of the country the price can be $2-$3 higher per unit. Even at $13/fixture it is still a deal.










The balast is an electronic unit manufactured by Jimway, Inc. The model number is CDL E240120MR-01. This is a replacement for the Sunpark SL-15 ballast, which was an absolute workhorse. I have used the newer Jimway CDL E240120MR-01 ballast in both fixtures for about a year an have not experienced any issues with it. Time will tell if these hold up to overdriving as well as the SL-15s do, although in theory overdriving a ballast to power a single bulb puts less stress on the ballast than driving two separate bulbs.

The bulbs I use are Philips Alto Daylight Deluxe 32W 48" bulbs. They have a temperature of 6500K (semi cool) with a brightness of 2950 lumens. These can also be purchased at Home Depot in twin packs for $6.49 each. I have found that the GE 5000K Ecolux T8 is a good replacement, is also rated at 2950 lumens, and costs about $.20 less. It is also a warmer bulb, which brings out a bit more color in certain cichlids (or so I'm told). Lowes also carries the GE bulbs, but not the Philips Altos. I currently have (2) Philips and (2) GE bulbs as Home Depot only had one package of the Philips Altos DD left.

The absolute first thing you need to do is plug the fixture in and make sure that it works. Also check for humming and/or funny smells when it is running. If you encounter any of these, go exchange the fixture for another!


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

You are going to want to remove the three screws holding the reflector onto the base of the fixture, denoted in the below picture with the highly advanced MS Paint red circles. These are standard philips head screws. Save these for reference; I would recommend replacing them with some SS hardware as my original screws rusted out so badly in a year that two had to be drilled out. I was able to purchase the same screw made of SS for about $.16 each. You will need 6 (3 for each light).


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

With the cover off you can see that there is not a whole lot of equipment inside the fixture. The ballast is long and thin, and the fixture base will afford us plenty of room to fit both side by side. The sockets are held in place by the top cover; once this is removed the sockets will slide right out.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

You need to remove the power cord, as we will be wiring each fixture to run in parallel. Remove the electrical tape and you will find the lovely crimp on butt connectors. Mark the hot wire on the power cord (connected to the black wire leading into the ballast) with a marker to keep it from becoming confused with the neutral wire when it is rewired later.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Cut the white and black wires coming out of the ballast as close to the butt connector as possible.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Unscrew the small green screw from the fixture base. This is the ground. It is connected to both the third wire on the power cord, as well as the green/yellow wire coming out of the ballast.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Your power cord is now separated from the fixture and the ballast.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Using a pair of pliers, squeeze and twist the cable pass-through clip on the power cord. You will then be able to pull the cord right out of the fixture.










*This is not necessarily a mandatory step but will depend on the amount of room you have in your canopy. All Glass pine hood had less than 1/8" clearance at the end, which required that I remove the cord from the end and reposition it elsewhere.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

The ballast is held onto the fixture frame with a single screw and nut. Using a pair of pliers or a crescent wrench hold this nut in place while you back the screw out from the other side. The other end of the ballast is held in place with a small piece of the fixture base that has been notched. Once the single screw is removed, the ballast will slide right out.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

I took the time to seal all seams and holes on the ballast with silicone. Being that there is a lot of moisture above the tank I did not want any water or moisture getting inside the ballast.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Coming out of each side of the ballast there is a pair of red and a pair of yellow wires each leading to a single Medium Bi-Pin Socket. The red wires are for one bulb, and the yellow wires are for the second bulb. We are going to be removing the sockets from the yellow wires and plugging them into the sockets for the red wires.

Grasp the Medium Bi-Pin Socket with one hand and one of the wires with the other. Wiggle the wire gently as you pull and twist. With luck the wire will pull right out.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

I find that about 40% of the time I am not lucky and I break the wire off in the socket. If this happens, swear a couple of times. You will now need to expose between 5/16" and 3/8" of bare wire. Use wire strippers or scissors (be careful not to cut into the solid copper wire!) to remove the insulation.










Only pull one wire at a time, as they are not marked and it is important to know from which side you pulled the wire! I marked the left wire with black marker so I would not get them confused. Before you proceed with pulling more wires, please see the next picture.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

On the socket, you will notice that there are 4 holes. The two on the left are for the left bank, and the two wires on the right are for the right bank. I've found that usually the outer holes on each bank are used by default, but it really doesn't matter as long as left and right are separated.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

The yellow wire you just pulled needs to be plugged into the other connector on the same side (in this case I pulled the left yellow wire). The good news is that the wire literally pushes into the hole...this process is much easier than removing the wire from the socket. Push this wire firmly into the second hole on the left bank until the wire insulation is flush with the socket. Do the same with the wire on the right. Then repeat this for the other 2 sockets at the other end.

When you are finished, your sockets will look like this. This will need to be completed for all 4 ballasts.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Now place both ballasts with the wires and sockets into one of the fixture bases. Make sure that you don't accidentally cross over the fixtures! The retaining slot for the ballast will work holding the one side of both ballasts in place, however new holes will need to be drilled for the retaining screw and nut from before. I would show this step, but I have also decided to replace these parts with SS hardware. I will update this once I have completed it.

Rewiring this is simple. Grab one of the power cords that we removed earlier. Using the green ground screw, take the green/yellow ground wires from each ballast as well as the ground wire from the power cord and screw them securely to the fixture base. This is important! The ballast will not function properly if it is not grounded! If you cook your ballast(s) because you forgot to ground the wires, you are going to be really upset and will probably swear again. My, what a mouth you have! 

Strip about 1/4" of the wire insulation off of each black and white wire on both ballasts. Take one of the power cords that you removed earlier, cut off the butt connectors, and strip about 1/4" of the insulation off the hot and neutral wires as well. Make sure that you can still identify your hot wire (remember that we marked it with the black marker earlier?  )

Solder, tape, or wirenut the black wires to the hot wire (the wire on the powercord that we marked) and the white wires to the neutral wire on the powercord. I prefer wirenuts; they are cheap, they work better than just twisting and taping them, and you don't have to unsolder them to get them apart if you need to. I always wrap the base of the wirenut and the wire with some electrical tape; this was omitted to show the wiring.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Place the cover back on top, screw it down, and plug it in. I would suggest sunglasses.

So exactly how much brighter is this? I can't offer you any real life numbers as I don't have a photometer. I did however attempt to take a picture. My camera doesn't show this well due to the auto light meter built in. None the less, I will post it.










The fixture on the right is the stock fixture with the GE 5000K bulb on the left, and the Philips 6500K bulb on the right (you can see that the Philips bulb has a slight blue tint to it). The fixture on the left has the two overdriven ballasts, again with the GE 5000K bulb on the left and the Philips 6500K bulb on the right (although the output is so much brighter on the overdriven fixture that you really can't see the difference between the two bulbs). The stock fixture has a combined output of 64W, while the overdriven fixture should be producing somewhere in the neighborhood of 109W.

Part II will be coming soon where I show how to cram two of these fixtures into a 48" wide All Glass (Perfecto) pine hood for my 55 gallon. Stay tuned.


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## becikeja (Oct 14, 2007)

_"I took the time to seal all seams and holes on the ballast with silicone. Being that there is a lot of moisture above the tank I did not want any water or moisture getting inside the ballast."_

Ballasts run hot. The seams are there to allow for air flow. Sealing these will limit the life of the ballasts dramatically and could put you at risk of fire especially if you put these in a wood cover. Having 2 in parallel will help them run cooler since the draw from the lamp will be the same as if you only had one. Ballasts do not generate or use power they merely transform it for use by the load, in this case the lamps. You are using higher wattage lamps than 1 ballast was intended for, so the use of 2 will provide the power you need to drive the lamps.

Another risk you have are the lamp connectors. Being a shop light the manufacturer has most likely cost reduced these fixtures as much as he can and still maintain a UL label. That being said I am sure they are not UL approved for the load you are carrying. Will it work? I am sure it does, and I am sure it works great. Is it worth the risk of burning your house down? Not mine. At a minimum make sure you put a time delay fuse on the primary side of the ballasts sized appropriately. The time delay will allow for the ballasts to start-up and still protect you when the short does occur. And it will occur. You may not see it for several months or maybe better than a year, but it will happen.

The idea is sound, just make sure to use the right sized connectors and ballasts, and provide adequate ventilation.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Can you elaborate on "lamp connectors"? I am not sure which part your speak of.

If you are speaking of the bi-pin sockets, the sockets used on these fixtures are GangFeng part# t-0068 (E236276) rated at 600 Vac and 600W. If this isn't enough, can you explain why and maybe make a recommendation?

I considered the heating issue with the ballasts. After several hours of running however, the ballast were cool to the touch. The original ballasts from my old setup were sealed with silicone and have not experienced any issues with heat since July 2008. Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't using a single ballast to run a single bulb produce even less heat that using it the way it was intended (2 bulbs)?

Also, why will a short occur? What part of this system will fail? I question your 100% failure prediction...guys have been running overdriven setups like this for many years, and the worst I have read about is a low percentage of ballast failure. Can you provide some additional information?


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## becikeja (Oct 14, 2007)

If you can lay your hand on your ballast for 60 seconds after you have sealed them and they have had time to heat up, you should be ok. I still would not seal them, but you should be fine. The ballast will attempt to allow the load to take as much power as it can deliver, but it does have a max that it can drive through the windings which causes the heat. I donâ€™t know the specifics of your ballast but I would have to assume it is typical for an HD shop light. The fact you have 1 lamp 2 lamps or 3 lamps on the ballast is irrelevant. It depends on the draw of the lamp. If you have 1-40W bulb, the draw is the same as if you had 2-20W bulbs. Typically ballasts in shop lights are way smaller than they should be to drive the lamps they suggest. The result as you have seen is that the lamp is not able to draw the watts from the ballast for optimum lighting. What you are essentially doing as you have correctly stated is oversized the ballast to drive one bulb. This results in the bulb being able to take the full power and provide the optimum output. But it also allows more heat to build on the connector pins. Remember the fixture was initially intended for the current to be dispersed over 2 bulbs, now you are placing it all on one. If your pin is rated 600W at 600V then it is good for 1 amp. Watts = (Volts X Amps). Simply take the watt of your bulb divide by the Voltage output of your ballasts and you will see how many amps youâ€™re driving across the connector. If you exceed the amp rating look out.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

An electrical engineer friend of mine is going to take a look at my equipment and give me his professional opinion concerning this setup.

I'll post his response once he examines this.


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

After considerable research at my end as well as much review from my Electrical Engineer friend, I have abandoned this project. I will be converting this back to the standard configuration. Let me explain why.

The ballast does not have the specs listed, specifically the amount of amperage running through each circuit during start up and during hot operation. I even attempted to call the company to get the specs, and the person I spoke with (who barely spoke English) told me "no no no no specifications". I'm sure I could get them from UL, but I stopped this search after doing some more research.

As we cannot figure out the exact current to each end from listed specs, we cannot figure out within what limits the actual PVC ends can handle. Normal operation isn't as much of a concern as is the amperage dump across the connector during startup. While I should be well within the safety levels, we are only guessing.

The loss of heat created by running these bulbs in a 2x ODNO setup actually drops the output of the light much farther than anticipated. As the bulbs heat up (and they do get very warm) my output will drop form the projected factor of 1.7x to somewhere in the 1.2-1.4 range. This means that my lights turn into a poor efficiency aquarium heater with only 20-40% increase in light, while consuming a considerable amount of additional energy.

In the long run in real life examples, this doesn't work out to be cost efficient. Unfortunately it looks great on paper, but not in a true life situation over time.


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## gmaschke (Aug 23, 2008)

well it looked like fun! I admire you for updating the post with the info you learned


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## Rick_Lindsey (Aug 26, 2002)

Bummer, thanks for the update! No such thing as a free lunch I suppose... back to dreams of Fulham workhorse 7 and T-5HO bulbs with parabolic reflectors .

-Rick (the armchair aquarist)


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## vaypourus (May 20, 2008)

Rick_Lindsey said:


> ... back to dreams of Fulham workhorse 7 and T-5HO bulbs with parabolic reflectors .
> 
> -Rick (the armchair aquarist)


I actually read about this ballast as well. This seems to be a worthwhile project, as the ballast specs support (2) of the T5 HO bulbs.


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## Rick_Lindsey (Aug 26, 2002)

Yeah, the ballast is pretty cheap, too ($35ish? Under $40 for sure). The data I was looking at said it would run up to 4 of the 54W bulbs (220W maximum).

Of course by the time you add 8 water-resistant end caps, 4 46" T5 reflectors, a handful of bulb clips, a power cord, and a canopy to house it in, the $$ starts to add up .

-Rick (the armchair aquarist, who is still intrigued by fancy lighting, even though his fish of choice don't need much in the way of live plants)


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