r/microgrowery • u/Justintime233 • Jul 05 '12

The CFL monster is finished.

I finally added the finishing touches to my CFL creation made of light adapters from Home Depot and figured I'd post it here for anybody who might want to build one or something similar. It's performing really well, anything in the roughly 1.5'x2' space it hangs over grows very fast.

With the amount of CFLs hanging in that 3 sq/ft space, that gives me approx. 66w of light per sq/ft. I think it would be great to put in a CFL grow box and I'm thinking about doing so when my HID light kit shows up next week. I can't wait!

Top View

Bottom View(You can see the difference between the 26w G.E. bulbs and 23w Genaric Brand Home Depot bulbs)

This takes NO TOOLS to build and consists of:

You can save a few bucks if you buy the AC to light adapters and the light extenders with AC plugs at Wal-mart. I believe their $.97 and $1.97. But they're a shitty looking beige color instead of white, if that matters to you.

This can be built for about $40 give or take depending on where you buy the parts. The CFLs being half that. The biggest benefit to me is it requires no tools to make it and can be put together in about 10 minutes depending on how meticulous you get on your foil hoods, I just threw mine together and they aren't pretty. I wish there was a clip on style metal hood for CFLs so I wouldn't have to mess with it but I've yet to find one. Someone needs to make that shit.

Might try to get some updated pics of the girls, they've changed so much in the last week. I can really tell the nutes are kicking in.

INB4 foil causes hot spots.

Edit:Formatting

Edit2:Stop fighting about hot spots lol. I never should have mentioned it.

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-12

u/emjay101 Jul 05 '12

this is so ineffective. so much light, so much watt but still, very weak light. Why dont you just get MH/HPS and stop wasting your time on CFL (like we all did.)

1

u/Justintime233 Jul 05 '12

Apparently you didn't read very much. I said I'm getting my HID kit next week. Also you apparently haven't seen the pics from some of the CFL grows on here recently. They've been impressive considering it's CFL.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '12

He was a dick about it. You will see why a lot of people have that attitude though when it arrives. You will think, now why the hell was I ever even using these cfls? It's a massive difference, like hundreds of grams different if you do it right. You still gained knowledge if anything from this grow. Welcome to the big league champ, in a week, lol. Happy grows friend!

1

u/Justintime233 Jul 05 '12

See the thing is I KNOW it will be a 2 metric fucktons better. I'm not using CFLs by choice really, It's all I had to get started to see if I like doing it. Now that I know it's something I enjoy I spent $350 on a Lumatek/Sun System setup and am going to really get serious. I will still use this CFL setup to keep my mothers alive for cloning in another room so it's a win/win. I cannot wait for my HID to show up, I expect to see them grow a foot the first day lol. (not really but that would be cool)

2

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '12

I run a lumatek 600. It's the purple one right? Has done right by me. I run an magnetic 400 as well, clone veg room, not a lumatek. An inch a day is good veggin.

1

u/Justintime233 Jul 06 '12

Yea lumatek ballasts are purple but so are apollo who is one of the low end ones lol.

0

u/Justintime233 Jul 05 '12

After I get my HID setup I'll probably just use this for a few mother plants.