T5 Ballast Question...??

 

If you already have the workhorse ballast I would not spend the money to replace them. In my opinion you will not see any difference compare to how the workhorse is driving the bulbs, And yes I have run T5's with the univeral ballast from reefgeek and workhorse ballasts.

 

end of life and soft start circuits are overrated.  FYI I believe if I remember right there is no end of life circuits or softstart stuff in the icecap ballasts but you do not hear everyone bashing those ballast because of it like you do the workhorse.

 

I believe in the giant Q&A T5 thread it was said that workhorse does drive the bulbs to spec but runs slightly hotter and uses a tinny bit more power, which it is outputing as heat.

 

I believe it is entirely undocumented that using a workhorse will shorten your bulb life, yes the icecap has been proven to shorten bulb life and they loss color faster if not cooled.  In my opinion a properly cooled t5 bulb run by a workhorse will perform as good as one run by the spec ballast from reefgeek.  end of life circuits in my opinion are not very relavant as everyone I know changes the bulb due to color shift and/or low par before they are technically anywhere near end of life.  That bulb you change after a year most likely will burn and produce light for another two years no probelm.

 

Would you mind posting where Grim posted numbers for the workhorse stuff, I can not seem to find it.  I would be very interested in seeing actual tested difference between workhorse vs a spec ballast vs icecap overdriven.

 

I only seem to find posts from 2007 discussing workhorse vs Icecap here is part of one that Grim posted

 

The Ice Cap ballast will overdrive the shorter lamps to 40%. As you move to the longer lamps the overdrive isn't as large. I got about a 35% increase in PAR output with the 54 watt lamps. Not sure what the actual increase would be on an 80 watt lamp cause I never had a spec 80 watt ballast but the Ice Cap was 28% brighter than using a Workhorse 7.

I know icecaps overdrive the bulbs, but I would be interested in how much difference the PAR output is between using a workhorse 5 or 7 vs using a spec

AccuStart Triad 2x54W T5 High-Output Ballast

by Universal Lighting