how to use common shit to make one hellva hood for cfls

nitroman

nitroman

Active Member
hey guys just wanted to show off my handy work on my new cfl hood it will look like the side with the y sockets whenever the store here gets some more in stock but this is what it looks like as of now. this has to be one of the biggest cfl light hoods i have ever seen right now it has 17 lights and will be adding a few more. i used a piece of air conditioning duct work that was a 5 inch diameter some 2x4s and alot of intiution


 
nitroman

nitroman

Active Member
i am putting out 27,800 lumens and in my cabinet i have 6 sq feet so i am putting out 4633.33333333 lumens per sq foot it should make them bitches veg when they veggin and bud when there budding. when i switch to flower i will change all bulbs to soft white and that should make the lumens go up a pretty good bit.
 
nitroman

nitroman

Active Member
i had some heat issues with them last night and a few tech diff as well. tied the hood up and it feellast night and burnt two plants to a crisp and temps hit 100 degress i installed two pc fans for intake and one tench inch fan for exhaust temps are staying at 77/78 degres now. iwilllink to my grow when i start flowering in bout two weeks or so
 
nitroman

nitroman

Active Member
thanks guys the burn did suck but hey im glad its all bag seed and i have plenty lol. also im glad it happened early and not in flowering i woulda been pissed. i will most def link to the grow when i get underway.
 
stumps

stumps

Well-Known Member
I'm going to be the bad guy. when you put a hood on a bunch of low watt cfl's all you do is trap heat. now the math. you need to keep a cfl 2-4" off the plant to use them for growing. lets say what your using has 100% reflectiveity. It doesn't by the way more like 30-40% at 100% you would only get about 50% light off the reflector. I do back off my statement that the reflector does no good with low watt cfl's. It does have some value. but the heat build up is a much larger neg value. cfl light is great I use it myself. I know my expalatoin sucks but if you reserch how light works I think you'll figure out what I'm trying to say.
 
F

fdd2blk

Well-Known Member
stumps said:
fdd are you making fun of my last post.lol
Click to expand...
i making fun of the OP. i know i shouldn't, but how many actual watts is that thing pushing? a 250 MH would do really nice in the area he is growing in. much easier to vent as well.
 
tom__420

tom__420

Well-Known Member
Not only is it pushing a lot of watts but it looks like the most unsafe CFL setup I have seen. That thing has got to be at least 400 watts... I can tell ya for a fact that a 400 watt MH would grow better plants than that thing. And fdd does have a point about the metal halide being easier to cool, good luck cooling those 16 bulbs or however many are there. :blsmoke::peace:
 
AquafinaOrbit

AquafinaOrbit

Well-Known Member
An HPS system is capable at peak to achieve 140lumens per watt,(Usually a fair amount less then that) a CFLs is 90 but it's lumen per watt range doesn't vary as much. Of course heat is simply the current flowing in the bulb so watts represents heat. So is what your trying to say is that a CFLs light is not worth reflecting, but an HPS bulb is? People reflect HPS often because if you can get back even say 5% of the light on a system that powerful then you've added a lot. CFLs are of course much weaker generally speaking but if the room is properly ventilated then I don't see a reason a reflector would be bad. That being said CFLs are so cheap these days I rather just buy a couple extra bulbs. I actually like this guys reflector, though I think he should add a few cumputer fans to the sides and I'd seriously make sure those bulb sockets can handle those amps.
 
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