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150w HPS Club and Resource Guide......

uptosumpn

Active member
Veteran
THESE...THANKS!
A shot of the harvest from last week, trimmed and jarred up last night thanks to the wife. She was able to fill up 3 x 1/2 gallon jars and a 1 quart mason jar.

View Image

They are slowly getting up to the cure zone so I'll be keeping an eye on these for the next few days.
 

jaksa8

New member
led

led

hello...i have 150w hps for a couple of years,and now im planing to put in my box aditional 150w mixed cool white,and warm white 10w leds as a side lighting...what do you think about this is it a good idea... i alrady have 60w cool white led ligt for veg room and it works great... this chips are chines and its realy cheap...
 

Pipedream

Proudly Growing My Own Since 1969
Veteran
All additional light is good light, and while they may not be the ideal narrow band spectrum, your plants will take what they can use, ignore the rest, and thank you for it.

With the advent of readily available high-output, low-heat and low-cost LEDs, I'm sure it won't be long before many of us will feel this thread will need a title modification. But for now, I'm still all about the "150".
 

afroman25

Member
All additional light is good light, and while they may not be the ideal narrow band spectrum, your plants will take what they can use, ignore the rest, and thank you for it.

With the advent of readily available high-output, low-heat and low-cost LEDs, I'm sure it won't be long before many of us will feel this thread will need a title modification. But for now, I'm still all about the "150".

I'm still rocking the E-conolight 150 watt hps from 2008. It's a champ!
 
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H

healTHCare123

Hi guys what are the minimum measures to mount a 150w hps?
I was thinking about a gb with measures 60x60x80 it's too small?
I want to use V Scrog it's possible with these measures ?
(my english is bad but i hope you understand)
Many thanks :tiphat:
 

Bueno Time

Active member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Its roughly 23.5 x 23.5 x 31.5 inches I think you could do vertical in there it will be a tight fit though but could be done with a little effort.
 
H

healTHCare123

Its roughly 23.5 x 23.5 x 31.5 inches I think you could do vertical in there it will be a tight fit though but could be done with a little effort.
then it's possible do that? i need extractor or maybe is enough a pc fan but i think it's crazy put an hps whit only a pc fan.
 
I've been looking around for a proper 150w setup but I can't seem to find anything efficient.

Most ballasts use like over 195w while in use and peak at something like 300w on startup (from what I get from it atleast, I never really set up my own lamp+reflector+ballast).

I don't mind it drawing a little bit more but compared to a 200ish watt CFL that has just a couple 1000 lummen less... I want to make an efficient choice cost wise.

Most Electronic Ballasts aren't for 150w so it's just the magnetic ones right?
I don't mind spending slightly more for something that actually makes it draw 150w in total (maybe a bit more, 155w) instead of wasting 40w+, I'm more concerned about my power bill then about the cost of the equipment (within reason ofcourse, I'm not paying a 500 bucks for a ballast lol).

Could someone please advice on what I could best get, that delivers to Europe or is somewhere in Europe or just names and models or whatever.
 

dudin

Active member
I've been looking around for a proper 150w setup but I can't seem to find anything efficient.

Most ballasts use like over 195w while in use and peak at something like 300w on startup (from what I get from it atleast, I never really set up my own lamp+reflector+ballast).

I don't mind it drawing a little bit more but compared to a 200ish watt CFL that has just a couple 1000 lummen less... I want to make an efficient choice cost wise.

Most Electronic Ballasts aren't for 150w so it's just the magnetic ones right?
I don't mind spending slightly more for something that actually makes it draw 150w in total (maybe a bit more, 155w) instead of wasting 40w+, I'm more concerned about my power bill then about the cost of the equipment (within reason ofcourse, I'm not paying a 500 bucks for a ballast lol).

Could someone please advice on what I could best get, that delivers to Europe or is somewhere in Europe or just names and models or whatever.
150w HPS/MH 50$ inc shipping. I have two china ballasts and they have worked nonstop 12/12 for three years.
http://m.aliexpress.com/item-desc/2003429653.html
 
150w HPS/MH 50$ inc shipping. I have two china ballasts and they have worked nonstop 12/12 for three years.
http://m.aliexpress.com/item-desc/2003429653.html

That looks great :) 3 questions though.

1) Did you ever (or could you) measure the actual wattage pull from this? If I should believe the stats shown it has a 0.99 power factor so that would mean running your light would cost you something like 151.5w total draw (which your electric company will bill you for, not measured inside the circuit itself, just at the wall socket). I wonder if China numbers are actually acurate haha.

2) Am I correct to assume that (according to the description) it pretty much slowly starts up the lights so it doesn't exceed the 150w draw with something like 300w like most normal ballasts seem to do (according to online research, I know something about electricity but I'm no light expert nor electrician :p).

3) The link you gave me, uhmm never shopped directly at alibaba before, don't they ship only in big cases? I think the site said something like 23 or 26 a box, I just need 1 lol.

And last but not least, a general question.

Any suggestion for light and reflector coupled with above mentioned (or better if anyone knows one) ballast? I'm going for a cabinet setup pretty much like Pipedream's bubbler cabinet :).
 

dudin

Active member
:biggrin:1. I don't have that specific ballast. It gets hot but I could put my dick on it ( not that I would). So yes the 99% is probably BS. But it is not magnetic hot.

2. Don't know about that specific ballast. But probably true.

3. Aliexpress is aimed towards the private market and Alibaba ( buy 10.000) is aimed at company's.

Just search at aliexpress.com for 150w ballasts and you will find shitloads. I have shopped there +10 times and always got my shit.

But if you are a bit scared of burning to manny w ( or high start current (?)) maybe you should look at PLL's. Maybe 165w of PLL's fit you better. They are great to and much cooler.
3x55w 13$
http://m.ebay.com/itm/330897573459

Here is another link to the 150w ballast I fucked up the first one a bit.
http://m.aliexpress.com/item/2003429653.html
 
Ah i dont really mind the heat, it's the power factor that concerns me.

Here read this, you'll know exactly what I mean then :p
http://www.cannabis.com/growing/electric-How_Much_Power_does_my_lamp_really_use.html

I've used PL in the past for another hobby, had about 10x 80w hanging there, they where put together by someone else so I had no idea what was used but hey, I figured, 80w a pop right? Ehhh wrong, I got the power bill and was like "wtf?" so I measured the power and one light was pulling 160w from the socket because it was a pure piece of garbage. That means half of the power (80w) was lost just to power the damn light WHILE RUNNING, I didn't even bother to check what they where drawing when starting up because that was most likely double that lol.

Hence me looking for a good ballast. If it has a >=0.9 power factor I'm fine with it, it'll most likely use something like 165w then, if it's an electronic ballast and I can get one that's 99% efficient (and thus has a powerfactor of 0.99) I'll be even more pleased since it'll only use 151.5 watt to keep it powered.
If it's electronic (from what I understand from it with my limited knowledge) it'll make sure it's not drawing 300w while powering up the first 15-30 minutes either, it'll steadily increase and not exceed the powerfactor.

Something like that :p.
Sooo that's what I'm looking for, if I'm drawing 300w I can just as well get a 300w CFL and be sure that's what it actually draws rather then getting a 150w HPS that draws 300w aswell :p lol.

On a sidenote, I was looking at Tneon aswell (3x55w and then rotate colors) but it doesn't look like many people have experience with it. Same thing goes for LED. I'll try it but won't exceed 200w because it's a stealth-ish grow :).

Small edit: The PL link you gave me, check the specs, Power Factor: Above 0.65, that means you can pretty much guess that it's loosing atleast 30% extra power so if you're running 165w it'll cost you around 50w EXTRA to power the device making it roughly use 215w :)
 
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dudin

Active member
Well heat is really the only option for those extra w and all I can say about my electronic china ballast is that it's not hot but warm. Not at all like a magnetic ballast.
My PLL ballasts is hardly warm so... I'd say no way they use almost x2 the power they should use.
Don't know anyone with a meter so I'll never really know.
 
Yeah heat would be the obvious giveaway but I didn't notice much heat generation from the PL ballasts I had either. Ok they where hot but still touchable (I'd say something like 50ish degrees celcius or something), I only measured that while they where running once, I had no idea they actually drew more when powering up lol.

Sooo where the power went? Not a clue really, it all ran for about 2 years so it wasn't a miscalculation it was really using more then double the amount of power.
You can safely assume that the power factor written on the ballast is of that quality or less (if it's from China it can be just as correct as from where ever you buy it around the corner) so if it says 0.65 you can be pretty damn sure you're losing 35% power on the ballast, if it says .9 it's only 10% and so on and so forth :). Or it could be a really crappy one that says .9 but actually does .3 or something :p.

If you ever want to measure it (even for shitz and gigglez) you could do it the hard way (easy way for most people and most accurate but I find it a lot of work) and measure it with ANY multimeter, even the cheapest ones are somewhat correct enough to see the power drawn oooor the easy way, buy one of those cheap ass wall socket kWh meters (couple bucks) , plug in your light there instead of your normal socket and let it run for a day, see how much kWh it used and just roughly calculate it (1000w=1kWh so 150w on for 10 hours is 1.5kWh and so on but you moust likely know that much already lol).

Most of my friends don't really care about their ballasts because they just borrow *cough* power so if it uses 5000w to power a 600w bulb it doesn't mean squat to them, they usually buy the cheapest ballast+reflector+lamp sets at growshops so they are of 0 use if it comes to actually picking a stealthy set for someone that ISN'T borrowing power lol.

Hence me asking on here ;)
 

dudin

Active member
I'm a schooled electrician ( but not practising ) so I have a rough idea how it works even if it was two decades ago.
Well is there another option then heat for the extra w? I'd say no ( if there is no light, sound or mechanical work instead and there is not). The w can't just disappear.

Edit: but I see your point in getting what you want from your ballast.
 
Yeah my electrician skills are pretty much limited to what I picked up myself from reading up on it and uhmm screwing around with electronics :p.

What else could cause the extra w usage is a magnetic field created by magnetic ballasts. That's really the only thing I could think of and I don't think that has to generate heat either. An EMP doesn't generate (or nearly any) heat either but is a giant wave of electricity.
Mostly guessing here though lol.

But yeah, you really want to get out of your ballast what you can, if I have to pay 20 bucks more for a ballast that has a PF of .99 meaning my lamp will use 151.5w vs one that has a PF of .7 you quickly earn your 20 bucks back if you have it running for a couple weeks lol.

Sooo if anyone knows a proper ballast that's known to put out 99% fo shure I'll get that, if not, I'll give the China ballast a go. I'm not really in a hurry, gonna build it in the spring or something I think :). Just gathering information in advance.
 

dec

Member
Hey!

I'm constructing a small personal grow 2,06x 1,5 x2,26(height) with a vertical 150w in cool tube in the middle for small vertical SOG style.

Because I would like the grow to be almost completly silent I would like to use PC fans, but don't know how hot does a 150w hps get. I was thinking of putting 80mm fan on bottom of cooltube and a 120mm 70 CFM with DIY scrubber as exctractor fan. Intake would be passive.

Do you think I would be able to control temperatures with PC fans only?
I have a 70w cmh PC grow and it's as silent as a laptop but would like to upgrade.
Thank you for your anwser!
 
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