Looking To Purchase A Cmh/lec Setup

[Ryboburton]

I'm personally going to be adding a Sun System lec to my arsenal of light.. my intention is to run 2 315 lecs and put my kind 750 in center.. but the SunSystems are pricey.. but comes with the MasterColor Phillips bulb. Best on the market from what I can tell. But I'm sold on it for not needing to be cooled. Runs cooler than my led. Unreal light spectrum. Looks so natural

I have two of them. Great lights and the heat can be controlled easily enough but my space is super reflective. Sour d flowering Saturday

 

[namahs]

Well Gentlemen it happened. Thats what led me to the forum. I have a 315w CMH open type fixture, used the Philips Mastercolor C182/O used for open style fixtures. Today while at work it exploded and caught my grow on fire. Luckily my girlfriend was home, she is usually at work. Heard it and put out the fire. Thank God, because I crate my dog during the day and my house would be gone otherwise. In a matter of two minutes it melted all my pots, stands and the floor started to burn. I spent nearly 40 minutes on the phone with Philips and they have requested a ton of followup information. Im sending the bulb away for testing along with my others. Im terrified of using CMH bulbs now. But hearing that my issue may just be a one off puts me at ease. Hopefully they can find some user error or blame my ballast because I really dont want to blame the bulb. I like these lights and so did my ladies, but this should have been contained and simply destroyed the bulb.
If anyone has questions or possible explainations, id love to hear them.

Cheers and Happy Growing
J

Thanks for sharing.. What ballast did you use could you give us some more information regarding the equipment you had and for how long did you use everything? The crack on the bulb on the photo made me wonder if a glass covered hood reflector would be any better in this case or it can crack just as much. Seems that LEC/CMH were made more for warehouse environment and correspondingly Philips made a ballast for 315w CMH lamp industrial in look but even before that CMH lamps were known to explode. How much the ballast can affect the lamp life is a question. Maybe air cooling hoods are a good choice to consider if using these lamps. Also if you are growing in a house then the grow could be protected with a tray of water beneath the pots and used as an irrigation system for soil similar to hydroponics and consider metalic or concrete surfaces as a walling material. Adding a smart smoke detector would be cool if its connected with water sprinkles unless you smoke in that space.