St3ve
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Sure, I've done it, but I only have one digital ballast. I like the energy-savings, even if slight, that can be afforded this way and the plants do adjust more easily when being moved from fluoro to HID lighting. Previous to buying the Quantum I was raising the light and lowering it daily to acclimate the girls.So I'm really liking the dimming feature on my ballasts. I'm thinking on trying some things with it and would like to know if anyone else has tried similar or different ideas.
Veg
1) Dim it coming out of clone entering veg for the first week to ease them into it.
2) Last week of veg, raising it UP from 400 to 600 for a week to ease it into hight watts going into flower. (obviously using higher wattage bulb not 400w :) )
On 4 you'll just have to try it, it's not something I personally have done and I don't know that any of my other indoor-growing friends have done anything like that. On 3 I sort of don't see the point, they've spent a couple of weeks at least under those lights at full strength, I just drop the hoods down to the point I think they can take it, then raise as they stretch. Dimming could increase stretch, just as raising can increase it.Flower
3) Dim it down and drop the hood closer for the first week of flower to save a little elec and not shock the ladies. Raise it one setting the second week then full watts at third.
4) Drop it down again the last week as I've heard the plants don't use as much light anyway while they are ripening. This would also keep it cooler which again I've heard helps ripen. (?)
I haven't played around with that yet, so I don't know that going to a 14/10 will ease stretch, but if it works then I am totally down to try it. I've played around with using a 13/11 photoperiod to increase yields and it wasn't worth the extra power.Thoughts?
I've also been wanting to try going to like 14/10 the last week before flower to ease the stretch. Dunno..
theres alot of confusion around dimming, ive been told buy many that you dont dim say a 1000w bulb to 750 or 600w, you run a 600w bulb if you dim it to 600w not dim a 1000w bulb to 600w. but some say different, bulb companies wont replace your bulb if you dim um.
Huh, really? So, what you experience a brown-out, will they replace a bulb if something's happened to it then? How would they know (unless you told them)? I usually overdrive my bulbs, not underdrive. We had our first strong brown-out the weekend before Christmas and it was extremely weird. Tv's and computers didn't work, fans went really S L O W, lights were super dim.
Sure, I've done it, but I only have one digital ballast. I like the energy-savings, even if slight, that can be afforded this way and the plants do adjust more easily when being moved from fluoro to HID lighting. Previous to buying the Quantum I was raising the light and lowering it daily to acclimate the girls.
On 4 you'll just have to try it, it's not something I personally have done and I don't know that any of my other indoor-growing friends have done anything like that. On 3 I sort of don't see the point, they've spent a couple of weeks at least under those lights at full strength, I just drop the hoods down to the point I think they can take it, then raise as they stretch. Dimming could increase stretch, just as raising can increase it.
I haven't played around with that yet, so I don't know that going to a 14/10 will ease stretch, but if it works then I am totally down to try it. I've played around with using a 13/11 photoperiod to increase yields and it wasn't worth the extra power.
I have heard that you can save some money on power by having the ballasts turn on at 50% power to keep the initial power surge down and after about 15mins you can crank em up to 75 or 100%.
So.... (trying to wrap my head around what you're planning on doing @#3) you would drop the dimmed light during that first week or two of stretch? Am I understanding you correctly? I wonder what kind of savings could be realized doing this... (I am terrible at math.)Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. And the point of #3 would be simply to save electricity. Just using the hood height and watts together to achieve the desired lumen reaching the plants.
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