lighting Indoor Lights & Sun

bucdout57 said:
Good set up. Actually been looking into redoing my current set up. Problem is I always get to inpatient and move to early. Then seedlings die off with not enough light or too much sun. Last year I started to late but this year I feel like I'm starting too soon.
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I started my seeds and setup in early Feb last year and it was a couple months late for what i had expected. My plants did great but I didn't get ripe pods until late July. This year I'm getting started right now in hopes that a lot of my peppers will be ready in June. I think you can never start too early really... cause you can just keep pruning them back until its time to go outside. That would probably make for a better producing plant anyway.
 
 
ajdrew said:
On the turbo flourescent, unless you have an issue with space for the light I don't see the benefit. 

1. You are using nearly twice the electricity, so why not just use two fixtures?
2. The bulbs burn out much faster, so why spend the extra money?
3. The additional heat means you have to keep them further from the plants, so less of that light is used.
 
Seems like a bad idea in the $ department.
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+1 
 
and for me, i'm not home to respond if one of those overwound fluorescent ballasts catches fire. 
 
Dana, on that last bit about a fire, then there's folk like me who will never be the same after being electricuted.  I don't know why, but people do not seem to be afraid of electricity.
 
Too true... and i hear that the output from an unmodified fluorescent's ballast is already more dangerous than the output of a domestic wall-socket.

Miguelovic's notes about possible spectrum changes are worth noting. Simple, incandescent-filamented, quartz-halogen bulbs emit dangerous UV if over-supplied with power. I don't know if the same principle applies to phosphor-based systems -- such as t8 bulbs -- but even unmodified fluoros emit a significant (retina-damaging) amount of UV at close range.

@ winland: i regret seemingly attacking your idea, when you're doing the nicest thing a thread-poster can do -- sharing info. I found this fascinating, and will continue enjoying your posts. Thank you for this.
 
Yeah i mean i'm not trying to poo on anyones parade either. Its just not worth it to me since i have great success with my simple, cheap, and standard setup.
 
 I just thought the video on how to overdrive T8's was interesting.
I have never used T8's and do not use T8's now.
All the points you guys have made should be considered before anyone goes ahead with such a project.
 
Im not suggesting you so this, so if you so its totally at your own risk. The penalty for failure could be anything from a shock to burning down the house or the neighborhood. Burn you and your family...
But with that being said, I have done the T-8 "overdrive" a few years ago. For me it worked out fine, for times the light was in use to for seedlings and such. It was on a timer, plugged into its own outlet on its own dedicated circuit, had a heat activated hanging chemical extingusher in the room, I was always on site, I had a smoke detector hooked up right above it as well, so if by chance there was an issue whether lights were on or off.
It was a very cheap alternative to the same size HO T-5's. It puts out plenty of lumens and the bulbs didnt burn out prematurly, they didnt get much warmer than before they were overdriven so I was able to keep them just as clise to the plants as I could before they were overdriven.
But, I never really felt "safe" even though this room had safeguards. So after awhile I just sucked it up and bought some purposebuilt T-5's for starting seedlings and whatnot until they were ready for my big HID or be take outside.
I think I spent $20.00 to convert each T-8 to an overdriven T-8, short term savings with a high risk. The T-5's were a bit over $100.00 each but the safey is priceless.

*edit: Trying to type this on my cell-phone so there might be some grammaticals, sorry.
 
boostdemon said:
did you notice a significant difference in the plants development before and after overdriving the bulb?
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I never ran them at their normal operating strengths so I cant make that comparison. What I can say though, they seemed to emit the same amount of lumens as their T-5 counterparts (cant give specifics as I didnt measure with equipment). And the growth rate between the overdriven T-8 and standard HO T-5 were identical.
But even though the overdriven T-8's worked flawlessly for me, I never really had "the warm fuzzies" using them.
A standard T-8 alone should be fine for very young seedlings but IMHO Im suspect of their capability in later stages of vegetation or more over, once the plants begin to produce flowers I feel they are lacking in lumens.
 
I am currently old school: Flourescent shop lights for seedlings work great.  I use metal halide for veg and hps for flowering.  I figure if I do not make enough money with peppers, the lawsuit after swat throws a flash bang into my bedroom will give me enough to retire on. 

Seriosly, all three of these waste light and heat, so they waste electricity.  I think the future of growing indoors, a future that might make seedling to fruiting profitable will be with very specific spectrum provided by leds.  Not the leds we have today, but something even more fine tuned for specific plants so we dont waste energy producing light the plants do not need.

I dont have the smarts or money to play with the things, but that is where I would expect experimenting to be worth while.
 
Thats an interesting thing to consider - LED with specific (exact) spectrum for certain plant types. The big indoor growing enthusiasts are starting to share some incredible advances now that they're not being arrested in CO and WA. I suspect hydroponics will be a regular setup for plain ol' veggie gardeners in the future.
 
Miguelovic, it gives folk the illusion they are doing something bright (pun intended).  Most folk arent figureing watts per square foot vs light per square foot to figue out cost of production.  The only reason I do is because I am married to a woman who put up with nearly a decade of my money loosing ideas.  Seriously, I can spend ten bucks to earn one.
 
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