The ballast will come with instructions on how to wire it. You will need to purchase ballasts with those bulbs and dedicated, standalone ballasts tend to be pretty expensive. Here in the uk, a 30w lamp with ballast built in is, depending on where you get it from 2 to 7 UKP sterling. The tube alone type, are about 5UKP. The ballasts to run these, are 25UKP for a twin lamp unit. 1UKP = 1.8US$ last i checked.
You're right about the tube making the most heat out of the whole unit. This I found as a result of my experiments. I had been told previously that the ballasts make more heat and this is just plain bovine faecal matter. However, most ballasts use crappy electrolytic capacitors in them which do not like any kind of heat. In a conventional CFL this heat transfers into the ballast, shortening the life of the unit. This is why i have been looking at modification of the bulbs - longevity.
I have opened up one of my spiral CFLs and they're 4 wire. I'm now trying to decide whether its worth the time it takes to mod the bulbs, when I want to get going NOW. I could modify the next set... |