Metal halide bulb explosion

[closetkush]

I just bought a brand new Plant Max 1000W Metal Halide bulb to use with my 1000 watt ViaVolt ballast. It has a switch for HPS and MH, so I flipped it to MH. It powered up with no problem and about 5 minutes in all of a sudden it exploded and scared the living shit out of me. Haha, but anyways have any of you had this problem before? I've heard that MH was better for the vegetation phase and I've always just used HPS for the whole grow cycle... but this time I figured I would try it out. As of now, I'm just gonna play it safe and go back to using a HPS bulb. Any tips? Maybe I did something wrong???

 

[voltron]

I just bought a brand new Plant Max 1000W Metal Halide bulb to use with my 1000 watt ViaVolt ballast. It has a switch for HPS and MH, so I flipped it to MH. It powered up with no problem and about 5 minutes in all of a sudden it exploded and scared the living shit out of me. Haha, but anyways have any of you had this problem before? I've heard that MH was better for the vegetation phase and I've always just used HPS for the whole grow cycle... but this time I figured I would try it out. As of now, I'm just gonna play it safe and go back to using a HPS bulb. Any tips? Maybe I did something wrong???

Glad everything is ok CK wow! I researched HPS/MH lighting for a year before purchasing and one thing to becareful of is making sure you don't touch the bulbs with your bare hands as this will transfer your body oils to the bulb which could cause an adverse reaction with the bulb ie possibly exploding... I handle mine with gloves, actually a sock or terry cloth I try to make sure nothing gets on the bulb. I know you said it was only on for 5 min but they will get pretty hot in that time and you're using a 1000 watter, I'm sure you can't touch it after being on for 5min without a lil burn. Do some research on the bulb and its compatibility with your ballast and until then stick with what works for now GL

 

[Vapedogg223]

I just bought a brand new Plant Max 1000W Metal Halide bulb to use with my 1000 watt ViaVolt™ ballast. It has a switch for HPS and MH, so I flipped it to MH. It powered up with no problem and about 5 minutes in all of a sudden it exploded and scared the living shit out of me. Haha, but anyways have any of you had this problem before? I've heard that MH was better for the vegetation phase and I've always just used HPS for the whole grow cycle... but this time I figured I would try it out. As of now, I'm just gonna play it safe and go back to using a HPS bulb. Any tips? Maybe I did something wrong???

Plantmax makes a 1000W conversion bulb for use on a non-switchable ballast, is there any chance you got that one by mistake? If you have a switchable, or digital ballast you just need a regular old MH bulb, If you have a conversion bulb you'd need to leave your ballast set for HPS.

If that's not what happened, I'm with voltron... by the way, I used to use cotton gloves, now I just clean the bulb with a micro fiber cleaning cloth afterwards.



Edit: Almost forgot, if you've always gone through the whole grow with HPS you'll love the way they veg with MH, the nodes will stack nice and tight!