Replacing Ballast - Bit off more than I can chew

idnetter · Apr 3, 2013

Hi,

Hopefully I'm posting this in the correct section.

First off, I'm not a qualified electrician. I'm replacing a ballast in my home aquarium light and thought it would have been a straight forward like for like swap, the connections on the replacement has 7 wires when the original has 6.

See attached photo, can someone please shed some light on where I'm supposed to connect the wires on the new unit?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Richard Burns · Apr 4, 2013

OK so you need a non dimmable electronic ballast suitable for 2 x 28W T5 lamps.
This one from RS looks suitable and would have the connections similar to the way I described (no connection to 4) but do check the wiring diagram. Oh and check the size of the ballast to ensure you have enough room to fit it.

idnetter · Apr 4, 2013

Richard Burns said:
OK so you need a non dimmable electronic ballast suitable for 2 x 28W T5 lamps.
This one from RS looks suitable and would have the connections similar to the way I described (no connection to 4) but do check the wiring diagram. Oh and check the size of the ballast to ensure you have enough room to fit it.

Excellent, thanks for the link. Silly question, it's a poor image on the website, correct me if I'm wrong please but I can only see 4 connections on the ballast from RS. Will this be a re-wiring of the tubes job? Reason being it's a sealed unit and I've already hacked my way into it to get at what I need to get at, and sealing it up is already gona be a fun job. This all stems from avoiding paying £100 for a replacement unit, thinking I could do a £25 DIY job lol

Richard Burns · Apr 4, 2013

I have looked at the link to the family range of these ballasts and although the wiring diagram is small it seems to indicate that there are seven connections for the lamps of which number four is unused and there are only 230V input connections (and earth).

Hope you manage to get it working without paying out too much, good night.