do you need a contactor when using a timer on an envirolight?
might seem like a daft question but i could do with some advice.

cheers DM

Nah Darkhalf,

CFL's are self ballasting.

Your all good mate,

nice one that'll save me some cash

cheers mate

As long as the CFL is less than 250w you should be OK with a normal timer, over 250w of either single or multiple CFLs does need a seperate contactor.

And that is why you wait for a second opinion when this stoned HST wannabe is about my appoligies DH

cheers ms much apreciated

no probs chewy happens to the best of us

HST??? Please enlighten me

just a quick comment regarding this, what i found out is if you plug a contactor and timer in a 5 socket normal extension instead of into the main wall sockets where it should be, it wont work, just something i tried, if someone can be bothered please explain why, all i can say is the extension is causing the problem, i was only using a 125w cfl

sorry to sound thick but does this mean that you need a contactor if you are running 1 250w enviro?

you'll be fine without one i use a 250w HPS without a contactor, no probs.

thats the crazy thing

i have a 250 enviro and a 250 HPS i use a contactor for the hps but not the enviro,, am i doing rite or not

well saftey wise a contactor is good, so if you have one and you use it you may aswell carry on using it.
the enviro will be fine without one

will it tho? if there is a slight chance of somthing breaking/catching fire i dont sleep at night

i was lead to belive enviros dont need a contactor, i assume it depends on how many watts but i still assumed from what i had read that there was no risk of fault using a 250w enviro on a standard timer without a contactor.

i appreciate what you are saying its just that MS?MJ! has me worried

Rest easy man, The reason why you use a contactor for high wattage HPS lamps is because when you turn the HPS on it need a massive charge of electricity to ignite the gas inside. The envirolights work in a different way and they dont need the massive ignition charge! I hope this puts your mind at rest, do some reading up about contactors and HPS lamps in the meantime.

Edit, Dont run the HPS and the Enviro from the same timer and wall socket, use a seperate timer on seperate sockets for each light, or else you probably would need a contactor

that was my understanding already m8 but thought there maybe more to it after what was said

i wouldnt run them from the same socket

thanks

Didn't mean to worry you scoob - yes a single 250w CFL on it's own timer is fine, but I wouldn't go over that without using a contactor. The ballast of your CFL does draw an inductive load when starting, just not as much as your 250w HPS which is why you can get away with using a normal timer with it

thanks m8

I've had cheap timers fail with 250w enviro's, wilko's £2 specials.

They worked for sometime so whether they're failure was due to the load or something else god knows. I use grasslins and contactors on all lighting equipment now, if you ever do upgrade to HPS it's one less thing to buy and safer all round.

envirolite make excellent timers, think they £11 maybe less off ebay, easily take 2 x 250 enviro's or even a 600 hps

They're a neat piece of kit too, very well designed. Makes the regular contactors look ugly.

I've got one of those Envirolite timers/contactors and being nosey, I opened it up to see what components they used for the contactor part of it and all I found inside was a timer - no sign of any contactor or any other electronics for that matter in fact all I think it is; is a heavy duty mechanical timer . That said - I have given it a bloody good test with both a 400W MH and a 600W HPS (not at the same time) and it took all I threw at it.