cool your room, not bulb/reflecter!

[Str8Dank]

now here are some numbers from a source that only has a objective of making their customer happy. sure they may have a better margin on some then others but i trust that this didn't influence their results.
www.greners.com/reflector-test.html

 

[ttystikk]

Keep in mind even the bare bulb guys don't get ALL of their bulb's performance; some light doesn't touch the plants, and there's always the edge of the pattern next to the wall...

 

[Str8Dank]

So like I said I'd ask eye hortilux and here is their response, as expected dude in that video is full of bs....

Answer: Running cold air over the bulb inside the fixture will not reduce the lumen output of the lamp. That air is only cooling the air and the outer jacket (bulb) but it is not cooling the arc tube.

To cool the arc tube the air would have to be significantly cold (sub zero temperatures) and even if it were that cold the only real affect it would have on the lamp is it would take longer to warm up and get to full power.

You can run cool air over your grow lamps without any adverse affects.

 

[Schwoop]

I've just removed the entire equation from the game, 10% loss, 15% loss, Not Concerned, HVAC is King Imvho and ducting, heavy hoods, intake fans, exhaust fans, etc are unnecessary, Id rather have less equipment, more room, less work, cleaning glass sucks ass! Changing lamps on alot of hoods sucks ass!
The hinged ones are cool but still I dont like ducting them, or how much they weigh.

To each his own though that's just how I do it after trying them all from Life Light Spinners to XXXL Magnums and Melon Heads and everything in between. Ive settled in real nice with the 5 oz Adjust wings.
Less is More keeps ruling my world!

 

[BlueBlood]

There's no way you're going to be cooling your lamps so much as to effect the spectrum.

As far as ceramics go, I've used the Philips CMH, and they have a good spectrum, not great. They're probably better than running a sodium and a halide together.

Here's the Retro White, the key numbers here are the Photosynthetic Photon Flux per Watt, and Photosynthetically Usable Radiation per Watt

This is good, better than most. The Plantastars are a bit better as far as 400's go.

You can compare these two to a 1Kw Hortilux Super

The kicker with the Ceramics is that they have a ridulously low rating, like 6000 hours or something, whereas Hortilux is rated for like 24000, or something like it.

 

[ttystikk]

I've just removed the entire equation from the game, 10% loss, 15% loss, Not Concerned, HVAC is King Imvho and ducting, heavy hoods, intake fans, exhaust fans, etc are unnecessary, Id rather have less equipment, more room, less work, cleaning glass sucks ass! Changing lamps on alot of hoods sucks ass!
The hinged ones are cool but still I dont like ducting them, or how much they weigh.

To each his own though that's just how I do it after trying them all from Life Light Spinners to XXXL Magnums and Melon Heads and everything in between. Ive settled in real nice with the 5 oz Adjust wings.
Less is More keeps ruling my world!

in another thread, I asked about how to quantify the amount of cooling actually used in various setups. No one has suggested any workable solutions as yet. The reason I need these numbers is to help a growroom designer- and we all are, at least on our own grows!- make more informed decisions about the relative costs of operation for various approaches.

As it happens, I love adjust-a-wings, and I plan to use them as part of a light rotator system I'm designing. My favorite feature about these hoods isn't necessarily the light weight, but rather how you can set it up to get a lot of light shining sidways out of the fixture at a nearly horizontal angle. This means I can have the light on one side of a grow and still send good usable light to the other side, leaving no part of the grow in the dark. Meanwhile the hood travels around its circle, intermittently beaming down intense levels of light on the plants directly beneath it, yet not staying long enough to cause any damage.

The truth of the matter is that the xxxl hood room I'm running now is basically an experimental baseline to establish yield per watt, per square foot and per kWh expended data. The results from the rotator will be compared to these and we'll see which does its job better!

 

[ttystikk]

Speaking of Lifelight, I met their chief engineer and got the full pitch directly from the source. Just as Schwoop implied, I'm not impressed, either. Gimmicky, expensive, flawed and just plain dangerous- I mean, I still can't figure out why they chose to whip hot fragile bulbs around in circles at speeds more appropriate for ceiling fans! I mean, 30 to 60 rpm? My old record player didn't spin that fast! And the flicker it makes while doing it is enough to drive you nuts.

By comparison, my rotator design is the slow boat to China, taking two to three minutes to make a full revolution. That's a whole hell of a lot less likely to gash your head if you stand up at the wrong moment, right? And it still gets cooling from its movement.

 

[BlueBlood]

I asked about how to quantify the amount of cooling actually used in various setups

You can figure HID's for about 3-4 BTUs/watt. Magnetic ballasts convert more energy into heat, so it matters if you have the ballast inside or outside the op.

So, from there you could figure that, if you're using AC, the Energy Star ratings that are on huge yellow stickers all over the boxes are BTUs per watt hour.

If you're using air-cooled hoods/tubes as well, you can simply subtract those two numbers to see what you're not using in AC.

 

[ttystikk]

You can figure HID's for about 3-4 BTUs/watt. Magnetic ballasts convert more energy into heat, so it matters if you have the ballast inside or outside the op.

So, from there you could figure that, if you're using AC, the Energy Star ratings that are on huge yellow stickers all over the boxes are BTUs per watt hour.

If you're using air-cooled hoods/tubes as well, you can simply subtract those two numbers to see what you're not using in AC.

I have a chiller as opposed to AC, and I'm not yet sure how to quantify its output- no stickers. That said, I like your approach. It gives a good framework, and from there I can fill in the remaining blanks and start working some numbers.

 

[ttystikk]

So like I said I'd ask eye hortilux and here is their response, as expected dude in that video is full of bs....

​

Answer: Running cold air over the bulb inside the fixture will not reduce the lumen output of the lamp. That air is only cooling the air and the outer jacket (bulb) but it is not cooling the arc tube.​

​

To cool the arc tube the air would have to be significantly cold (sub zero temperatures) and even if it were that cold the only real affect it would have on the lamp is it would take longer to warm up and get to full power.​

​

You can run cool air over your grow lamps without any adverse affects.​

​

...and here in Colorado we have subzero temperatures every winter. This is why I don't recommend people actively cool (such as AC or an Ice Box) their sealed and vented hoods, or to pull outside air in to vent them. Air from the living space, between 55 and 85 degrees and then vented outside (or anywhere you want hot air!) will do very well and over time will save a great deal of money on power bills.

 

[BlueBlood]

I have a chiller as opposed to AC, and I'm not yet sure how to quantify its output- no stickers. That said, I like your approach. It gives a good framework, and from there I can fill in the remaining blanks and start working some numbers.

You could try one of those Kill-o-Watt thingys, and monitor the power being drawn along with a water thermometer and a clock.

The specific heat of water is 1 calorie/gram, and 1 BTU is 252 calories.

 

[ttystikk]

You could try one of those Kill-o-Watt thingys, and monitor the power being drawn along with a water thermometer and a clock.

The specific heat of water is 1 calorie/gram, and 1 BTU is 252 calories.

It's looking like a Kill-a-Watt meter will be necessary to get where I need to go with this. Many thanks.

 

[seebobsled]

Any meter that reads amps you can just convert to watts. Amps times voltage equals watts. For those that have a multimeter You do not have to buy a kilowatt. But kilowatts are definitely safer for unexperienced people.

 

[StickiestAbyss]

can we get some glass in our reflectors that actually magnifies our spectrum's finally?? how hard can this be?
and maybe a built in filter to keep out the dust?? the technology has got to be here...

 

[ttystikk]

Any meter that reads amps you can just convert to watts. Amps times voltage equals watts. For those that have a multimeter You do not have to buy a kilowatt. But kilowatts are definitely safer for unexperienced people.

Only one little problem with this approach; without simultaneously running a voltmeter, you're always guessing what it is, and therefore your numbers will be suspect. And yes, it turns out the power company turns the voltage up and down all the time. If a multimeter does this, cool. Otherwise, a kill-a-watt does it for you in real time...

 

[ttystikk]

can we get some glass in our reflectors that actually magnifies our spectrum's finally?? how hard can this be?
and maybe a built in filter to keep out the dust?? the technology has got to be here...

Well you don't 'magnify spectrum'. You can focus light, you can shift spectrum, you can filter spectrum, but not 'magnify' it.

Dust shroom or pantyhose. Still gotta clean the glass though.

 

[El Cerebro]

can we get some glass in our reflectors that actually magnifies our spectrum's finally?? how hard can this be?
and maybe a built in filter to keep out the dust?? the technology has got to be here...

It's the UV getting filtered out by normal hood glass, only solvable with quartz or some other specialty glass (pretty expensive if I'm not mistaken?) Anybody know if the regular glass also filters on the other end, IR?

 

[Aerojoe]

Thanks for posting up that chart just shows how much AN 's bs stinks, there melon head 8 is comparable to 6 inch cool tube lol. I was talking to my buddy that's a glass blower, he makes quartz nails for the nail+dome pieces, says that stuff is expensive material to work w/.

 

[Illmind]

Im with ya shwoop. Adjust a wings are good for warehouse grows imo because they are open and the light flows. What craxks me up is the huuge reflector ppl. They are getting a larger footprint of less light. Get another light!!! Lol. Them things are dumb $$ and the biggest ripoff yet imo.

 

[El Cerebro]

plus the vented hoods can be a major heat-sink