Hey electro-dicks and radio-dicks, im having a pretty serious issue that i need some help with...

Hey electro-dicks and radio-dicks, im having a pretty serious issue that i need some help with. Im a licensed medical marijuana caregiver in my state, legally allowed to grow cannabis.

My problem is that i run 4 of these Nanolux digital 1000 watt ballasts in my flower room, and Saturday (the first day i fired up all the lights) i had the cable company show up at my house and tell me they have to cut my house off from the grid, because i am producing some wicked radio frequency interference that caused about 400 people to lose service in my neighborhood.

Apparently the RFI travels back into the system, fucking up everyones signal around me. Anyhow, i went into the basement where all the coax lines are running, and noticed that when my dumbass wired up the romex wire to power the sockets that the ballasts are plugged into (240V), i accidentally had the main incoming coax laid on top of the romex lines that run to the room. I have re-routed the coax line so that it doesnt touch the romex line, and i need to call the cable company back to have them come back out to see if the issue is gone. I want to make sure i do everything i can to decrease RFI before calling the cable company hack out.

My question is, if i wrapped the incoming coax in foil tape, would that do the trick? Would i need to groung that foil tape? Should i just wrap ALL of my cords and power cables in foil tape?

I've seen wifi blocking paint and i know that would work, but i cant afford it right now. Also, i really dont want to build a faraday cage for the ballasts to sit in because most of the interference is coming from the cords that run from ballast to bulb anyway. No way i could get all that cordage inside a faraday cage.

Pic related, its the exact same 1000 watt ballasts i have.

Wrong board fella.

That's a seriously wimpy ballast for 1000 watts. How did you choose such cheap hardware?

I'll be bumping with random shit off my phone

tits or gtfo

Its what i was able to afford at the time and i really liked the compact size. Wish i had known how shitty they shielded it, i would have bought 4 Phantoms or Lumateks instead :\

Pic: wax purging

Pic: the crusty old meter cabinet that was here when i bought the house. Been replaced

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go to Sup Forums or /diy/. also you should use l e ds and stop being poor.

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Im going to make a thread in both of those boards later today. Figured i would try my luck here first. Worst case scenario: i share some sexy sock porn with my Sup Forumsrethren

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Ok well i dont know your set up but you could try foil tape or a concentrate housing so the signal dosnt gothough

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Ill take some pics of the setup but i have to adjust my camera resolution first because Sup Forums doesnt like the size of my pics.

just get a new cable company. it'll take a while for them to catch on. problem solved

Trying to tweak my camera settings but i cant seem to find em

Figures a stoner is asking serious advice. Pics/Timestamp of bud in pooper and I'll tell what to do. I'm certified have electrician for 30 years.

Xfinity (Comcast) has a monopoly on my area so ibcant do that, but even if i could, i still want to cut down the RFI. Anybody with an AM radio could find my grow easily

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This piece of shit phone doesnt allow size change. Guess ill continue with the socks

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post this on /diy/ you'll get more serious helpful responses.


Also those ballasts are great, That's kind of strange

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Hey dumbass. I do this for a living. There's a lot of factors I don't know, so unless you give me some specifics, I'm just going to give you blanket advice. Foil tape may not work, it may in fact make it worse it could also make it slightly better depending on how the coax cables are laid out. I wouldn't recommend it.

So! Get a well shielded coax cable and replace the one you have. Put those ballasts in foil tape, and make sure you don't curve the coax cables in anything more than 45 degree angles. A 90 degree angle could be creating this.

ex cable guy here.

It's their responsibility to fix it. You are a paying customer, and your situation is rare but it's not highly unusual to have houses with hobbyists and the like the produce noise. Decent quality quad shield coax has all of the shielding required to block it. Being farther away helps, but the effects can be minuscule sometimes depending on the frequencies effected (higher frequencies die out over shorter distances.

What you really want to check for are loose connectors (the #1 cause of all cable service calls and outages actually). They should be tightened down to 25lbs. Check for poorly prepped connectors. If you can see braiding then they are fucked. Make sure you have quality splitters (they should provide them for you for free!) and that there are no open ports on them.

When looking for noise feeding into the plant, we would typically knock on your door and attempt to fix it if you were home and wanted us to. If you were not home, we would disconnect you and put a sign on your door stating that we would come back to fix at any time please call this #.

TLDR; make them come back and fix it for free, don't take no for an answer here, the problem is not yours it is theirs. A decent tech can figure it out, but sometimes you'll get shit ones. Have them look at the things I mentioned and be fair and reasonable if the job turns out to be too time consuming and they have to schedule to come back. Sometimes the problem is as simple as tightening a connector, and other times the whole house needs to be rewired, and the tech won't know until he gets there.

I thought so too. I had 8 of these running at my last house and never had an issue, so it had to be the coax line touching the romex. Ill keep posting some socks for a bit before retiring to /diy/

There actually were some 90 degree angles in the old configuration, before i tore it all out and rerouted it. Makes sense. Thank you for the serious answer. I have about 100 feet of sheilded coax that i am going to use to replace the old stuff. Just want to make sure i get this right on the first try. I dont want them coming back multiple times.

Thank you! A+ quality response! That gets you some vagina!

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Thanks for the great answers from the couple fellas who didnt wanna see my anus. I think its time to let this die.

For those who want to know where these pics came from:

Teenbabesinsocks.com

>following up.
The guy who disconnected you did not attempt to troubleshoot it at all. Typically these are system techs that spend most of their time maintaining the whole grid, and do not go into houses. They literally drive around all day long looking for these. It is normal to just disconnect and have a home tech come back. 90% of home techs won't give a shit if you're growing weed so don't worry about it - they'll probably just want to avoid the room that they're in. Telling them at the door that your setup is legal is probably good form.

It's possible that your cable is not even grounded at all (which is a big nono, but it happens), it's easy enough to check outside where the lines come in. If you see a green wire coming out of a cable splice and going to your ground rod, you're good. If you see it going to anything else, the ground might not be good (even the electric meter, i hate electric meter ground clamps). Sometimes rolling up the excess cable into loops helps. Don't make the loops too small. This is in theory, in reality you're better off finding the actual issue, but that is supposed to stop a lot of em ingress/egress - like windings on a motor more or less. Meh, I wouldn't count on it.

Plugging your equipment into high quality surge protectors is also super important with those ballasts in the house. A STB is supposed to be shielded, but let's be honest they're all pieces of crap. So anything that has a coax line connected to it and is plugged into your outlets shared on the circuit with your ballasts may be combining the noise. High quality power filtering surge protectors are a good investment period. Sometimes you can call your power company and just ask for one and they'll send it to you for free.

Serious: If the source of the problem is signal reflection, I would recommend talking with someone experienced in impedance matching.

Hey can you post a picture of the coax you're planning on running? A picture of the end of it stripped and maybe the writing on the box and I'll be able to tell you immediately if it's good or not. Also, again, the connector is almost more important than the cable, so a quality prep tool and quality connectors from PPC will do you wonders. :)

It SHOULD be free to have the cable company fix it btw, but if not it may also be cheaper to have them do it as well. I worked for TWC and our new outlet cost was like $25 or something? You could pay for 4 or 5 outlets for the cost of supplies and tools on your own, and then you might end up doing it wrong.. just my two cents.

I'll match some amateur teen girls in socks ;)

I actually do have a big behemoth of a splitter that has a weird power cable ive never seen before. It actually gets its power supply from a coax that connects to an AC adapter. Its located right below (about 6 or 7 feet below) the ballasts location, and it has 3 out of 4 split ports open. Im going to get rid of it and replace it with a ordinary coupling since i only need the one single line. I dont use television, just internet so i only need signal for my gateway.

Yea, i plan on telling the tech that i grow and show him my medical card when he gets here. Good call for sure.

The guy who disconnected me did try to troubleshoot but i was kinda panicked so i told him i wasnt home to let him inside. I figured i would call him back after i prepare the house (locking doors to the rooms, cleaning up the weed related shit i have laying around, etc.). He seemed super cool. He gave me his cell # and said i could call him 24/7 if i needed help (i think he wants to be my friend since he knows i grow lol) but im trying to avoid involving him.

Thanks again man, you have been a big help.

Ill see if i can get a picture less than 2mb, but for some reason i cant find the rez settings in my phone. Let me give it a shot.

Im going to use a different phone to take pics under 2mb and transfer them to the puter to upload. brb

You have an 8 port Amp?! That is almost certainly 100% your problem right there! The open tap ports, and the fact that it is connected to the power. It literally uses power over coax and combines the power with the RF. It's a bit more complicated than that, but you can probably guess why it's not great to have on an outlet with your light ballasts.

If you only need one line even better. Just couple the incoming with the line you want and you are golden! Just make sure to tighten them down past finger tight (don't crank on them, but you shouldn't be able to loosen anything with your fingers).

I bet that's all you need to do! I wouldn't even rewire anything if the original cable in there looks decent (especially if it says the name of the cable company or some reputable company on it anywhere).

Managed to get some >2mb pics. upload incoming

Ballasts mounted

Makes perfect sense! Thank you so much! This has had me stressed the fuck out

And yes, I know my wiring is ghetto, but I had to make do with what I had. Didnt have money for conduit or I would have put everything in conduit.

posting some sock girls in the meantime

Cords from ballasts to lamps

Lamps

Power cords to ballasts. The splitter was located about 5 - 6 feet below these, in the basement

This is the coax I plan on using to replace the old stuff

Hahaha
Retro.

Ah a 4 port zero gain with only one line connected to it, weird. But yeah, just combine the input line to the line in Out4 with one of pic related, and you SHOULD be good I would wager.

My Red Green ghetto wiring job. The coax was laying on top of those romex lines before I re-routed it.

Ehhhh it doesn't look great but hard to tell. The shielding layer is the most important part in this scenario.

The line in and the line out on the amp are both quality cable with quality connectors, so you should be ok with just leaving it to be honest. That and hooking your modem in to a quality power filtering surge protector.... I can say with relative certainty you should be ok. It doesn't get much better than having a straight line right to the modem. That's how my house is done.

Keep in mind this is a temporary wire job, and I dont plan to stay here longer than 2 - 3 years. I wanted it configured so I could easily remove it if I needed to, and the basement is NEVER used or visited by anyone but me, so I didnt really give a shit about drilling holes and running it through the floor joists.

I will do this and call the guy back. Glad to hear I dont have to fuck around putting fuckin foil tape all over all these lines running everywhere

Would those open ports on that amp suck up interference? Shouldn't I just ditch the amp and go with a plain old couplin like in your pic?

>Anybody with an AM radio could find my grow easily
buddy, there's how you check if you fixed the problem.

wrap some foil around the lines and check if it reduces the RFI

honestly, I think a couple of layers should do the trick

You probably could have only run 12/2. that 10 is a little overkill

Yeah, that's what I meant but I worded it weird on this post.. I meant the cable and connectors are good and don't need to be replaced. Just combine them and you're ok.

But yeah, the amp is the problem. The open ports, the power feeding it, and the fact that amps actively amplify the noise back into the cable plant..

lol Yea good point. But this way I figured I could eventually hook up the other 4 ballasts in the adjacent room if I wanted to in the future, without having to run more lines through the floor.

Thanks for all the help guys. I'm going to ditch the amp and run a coax straight to the modem and give ol Comcast a call. Wish me luck.

For the record: You are the fucking MAN

No problem. Good luck man. I'm 90% sure you should be ok, but cable and electromagnetic propagation are strange and mysterious things.

interesting thread, I have no idea what I'm reading but problems are being solved!!!

a couple growers, helping a single grower with some issues he's having with his grow