So about five minutes after the lights on tonight I heard an ungodly noise which sounded like a mini Transformer exploding, smelt burning and my year-and-a-half old Hydrofarm brand Chinese POS thousand-watt ballast apparently blew out :/
it's still got warranty left but I don't want another one I'm going to go up that new hydro store tomorrow see what they have, I've got a couple in my Amazon cart which I'll pull the trigger on if they don't have reasonable prices at the hydro store I gotta grab a bag of
ffof anyway but did not need this nightmare!
I haven't run at a 1000watt since my first year growing, I may just buy a 600-watt ballast I already have a brand new 600 watt HPS bulb so I don't know, always something :/ plus I just bought a brand new thousand watt bulb less than a month ago; starting to piss me off a little bit if I'm honest
Right now I have an old ballast running at 400 watts in there so I don't have to make a panic purchase, I can't turn it up past 400w cuz I'm remember it had issues and on the box I store it in it says don't run past 400 so I'm not going to push it, I'll have something new in a few days, maybe tomorrow, Thursday or Friday the latest