DIY propogation light

[Tom]

Yeah, you can improvise with a lot of things in the grow room and save yourself heaps. Grow cabinets from hydro shops have to be one of the biggest rip-offs I've ever come across, my current 6' x 6' x 7' flower room cost me around AU$30 (about 14 pounds) to build excluding only the lights, my veg cabinet cost me virtually nothing including the 200w compact fluorescent.

[MM outdoors]

Hope to see more of this kind of topic -- great job, RD!! DIY is my philosophy all the way!! -- MM outdoors

[still stoned]

[QUOTE

Stick with us and if we can show you a way of saving money, we will.

RD[/quote]

rd mate,you helped me save money b4 i even joined the cannazine,thru articles in weed world and soft secrets.hope ur blue peter moments r plenty and fruitfull![feel a little bit sorry for ur sister tho mate,haha]

[TrilbyMonkey]

Could a similar setup be used for vegging? I had a setup like that once but it all went horribly wrong... (first time growing lol)

But then again, I had 6 compact fluro's spaced around the plant, so maybe that's why it didn't work out.

[Red Dragon]

Yeah deffo. Just add more bulbs and build a reflector out of something with high reflectivity.

When using flouro's the reflector is the key to getting all of the available lumens going in the right direction (down on the plants).

Good luck

RD

[TrilbyMonkey]

How many bulbs would I need? I was just using standard household fluro's, I think they were 20w each...

[Red Dragon]

I think a standard 400w HPS (High Pressure Sodium) or MH (Metal Halide) lamp is pumping out around 50,000 lumens and a small domestic flouro like that used in the article above gives off about 1200 lumens. You do the maths.

Going start to finish using small domestic lights like this would be a big ask, but it can be done just as long as you don't produce lots and lots of foliage. Which means moving into the flowering phase just as quickly as is humanly possible, or at around 4 weeks from seed.

Even better if you can create a broad, flat canopy by doing some pinching & training, as opposed to a number of tall plants, as these are the most difficult to light with low-powered bulbs.

Do some search's on the ScrOG (screen of green) or SOG (sea of green) methods. The trick is to keep the canopy dense, flat and level. The plant tops nice and even.

This way you can get your home made reflector and domestic flouro's literally an inch or two from the tops of the plants, and keep them there throughout.

Everywhere is selling these flouro's for cheap as chips in a bid to get everyone to convert from the old filament bulbs for the sake of the environment, so you should be able to pick up quite a few for not much outlay.

Of course for every bulb you will need a bulb fitting, but once you have the hardware its pretty straightforward to 'daisy-chain' the wiring between the light fittings meaning you ultimately end up needing only one plug socket, and as a result, only one plug.

Coat the whole thing in some reflective black & white sheet, attach your fittings, fit the bulbs, wire it all up, and bobs your uncle.

Your tomato's will thank you for the reflective material.

RD

EDIT TO ADD: An envirolite costs about £25 with an E40 screw fitting, and will pump out about 12-15,000 lumens. If you're serious, I think this would be a better option. Lots more light, but still nice and cheap to run. Cool in operation too.

[TrilbyMonkey]

Yeh, I was considering an envirolite, but having the cash at one time is where the problem lies. I'm currently unemployed, so I only get around £45 a week off the government (a drop in the ocean compared to the NI contributions I've given over the years lol) so a DIY setup is pretty much my only option at the moment.. Add that to Christmas coming soon... It's a hard life lol