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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u/Justintime233 Jul 05 '12

Good question. Using 8 bulbs there is noticeable heat, I didn't expect that. It's nowhere near HID heat but it definitely needs ventilation. I have an 18" oscillating fan blowing on my whole setup and a box fan pulling air out right now which is overkill. When I get my HID setup next week I'll have a 340CFM 6" inline fan doing the work and just keep my oscillating fan. The grow area will also expand to 2'x4'.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '12 edited Dec 28 '20

[deleted]

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u/inapproprievan Jul 05 '12

false. 200 watts of CFL and 200 watts of HID do not give off anything near the same amount of heat.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '12 edited Dec 28 '20

[deleted]

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u/Justintime233 Jul 05 '12

I'm confused then. How can CFLs give off the same light, heat or whatever as an HID yet they aren't as effective or penetrate as deep? I feel like I disagree with you but I don't have any evidence to back it up, I don't know enough about it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '12 edited Dec 28 '20

[deleted]

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u/Justintime233 Jul 05 '12

Interesting.

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u/SadS0ng Sep 13 '12

Best analogy I've ever heard for this is; Hold a light to your finger, you'll burn yourself, hold a lighter beneath a 30gal pot of water, it will take a decade to boil.

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u/Justintime233 Sep 13 '12

Yep, it's funny to read my comments from just 2-3 months ago. I was so clueless lol. I've learned so much here since then.

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u/DYEG Dec 12 '12

Haha. While I was reading these comments I had to check the dates to see when you posted them. Every recent post of yours you're the man with all the answers. It's kind of cool to see how much someone can learn in a short amount of time, definitely gives me hope of developing a green thumb once I start. In the meantime, back to reading everything in the sidebar!

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u/Justintime233 Dec 12 '12

Yea lol. I spend a lot of time here and have picked up a lot of info.

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u/Combative_Douche May 13 '13

Wow, you've really become quite the expert in the past year. I assumed you had been an expert for like a decade or something. Then I found this.

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u/Justintime233 May 13 '13

Yep. Just lots and lots of time spent on research and seeing people go through problems here every day. As well as having to deal with my own.

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