Behold! The ULTIMATE FLOROS!!!

[Hydro-Soil]

Just pack more tubes in. I could double the amount of tubes in my space if I wanted

You don't see the need to overdrive because you have plenty of space. There are tons of people, who aren't you, that don't. (I'm one of them)

 

[AP KUSH]

nice job man... you would definitely need some decent space to put the whole light... but then again anywhere you can fit it, itll grow some really nice plants.

 

[magiccannabus]

You don't see the need to overdrive because you have plenty of space. There are tons of people, who aren't you, that don't. (I'm one of them)

Um, space? I have 2 square feet and 512W packed into it.......

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Yes T5's are easily over driven, I used to over drive them with icecap ballasts for my aquarium. Problem is, the bulbs useful life is cut to 1/3, efficiency suffers (lumens per watt), and the color shifts to a higher kelvin (more blue). They are seriously bright almost look like HID's, almost as hot too. I tried over driving a 55w PL-L with a 96w ballast and the bulb fried after about 3 hours, maybe a weak bulb? I'll have to try again when I get more bulbs.

they do run hot, I have a fan blowing on the bulbs and there still hot, when they use to be cool to the touch with the fan. I feel the heat is worth it as with my light meter I'm getting good results like 3-5 inches down from the bulb that in the old bulb would have tog et right up to the bulb to get those readings.

good for people who like projects / messing around / limited space.....


thanks once again, good stuff. jsus ordered some more ballasts to fill up my other light

Heat is an issue with overdriving. If you noticed in the original writeup I said that I was personally using the technique with T12s. There is a very good reason for this. Over the years, manufacturers have been getting away from T-12s, marching on into concurrently smaller and smaller diameter tubes, leading us to T-5s like we have now. Scaling back the surface area of the tube meant more effective lumens-per-watt as there is far less heat loss. Even though the bulb's surface temp is hotter, it wastes less energy as heat. This seems counter-intuitive but it is true. The surface temp of, say, a 250 watt HPS bulb will be many times higher than the surface temp of 250 watts worth of normally-driven T12s. However, the T12's are throwing more of their 250 watts away as heat because of their far larger surface area. That same attribute makes them 'cool to the touch' also makes them wasteful, all of those wasted BTUs are distributed over a relatively huge area compared to a single HID making even more light in the tiny space that is it's ceramic core.

So we have nice efficient T-5s, but their gained efficiency over T12s comes at the cost of higher surface temps. The temp at a given surface area at a given amount of wattage increases exponentially as that surface area is reduced or wattage is increaced. This means that a 48 inch T-5 that runs nearly the exact same surface temp as a 48 inch T-12 at normal wattage will run more than double the surface temp of the T-12 when they are both overdriven to the same degree. This vastly greater heat delta means that T-5s, as Aerohead mentioned, only live 1/3 their normal productive life when overdriven. T-12s on the other hand are effective for closer to 2/3 their normal life, making it much nearer to a negligible difference as you aught to be replacing them before they stop producing light anyway; overdriven or not. This is exactly why I favor T-12s or T-8s for overdriving. The technique really only makes sense in bang-for-the-buck scenarios. Introducing pricey T-5 ballasts and tombstones coupled with the vastly reduced bulb life just doesn't make sense to me. Unless you are so height-restricted that you literally need the 3/4 of an inch advantage that T-5s will give you over T-8s I think that T-8s are the way to go. (and in that case, space would be so tight that you couldn't possibly deal with the mad overdriven T-5 surface temps anyway)

In summary, larger-diameter floros are much better suited for overdriving, and I personally think that nothing smaller than a T-8 should be selected specifically for the purpose. (retro-fitting like habeeb did is another kettle of fish that I shan't jump into) The only advantage that T-5s have over T-8s is increased efficiency, and that gets thrown right out the window as soon as you go about overdriving.

like Aerohead said, overdriving shortens the life, bigtime. It also color shifts them. I can't see why it's necessary. Just pack more tubes in. I could double the amount of tubes in my space if I wanted, but there's just no need. I'm not overdriving anything.

Fair points one and all. However, those problems all stem from the increased running temps of the bulbs. This problem is huge when working with T-5s as Aerohead was talking about and is exactly why I'm not to sure about overdriven T-5s. Shortened life and color-temp shift are much less significant with larger diameter bulbs (especially T-12s). Also, the color-temp shift is predictable and therefore easy to compensate for. The wonderful thing about T-12 floro tubes is the stupefying variety of color-temperatures available compared to CFLs and T-5s. 5600K is just about perfect for veg, so simply buy a 5200K T-8 tube and Bob's your uncle. Blue color-shift gets more problematic when you try to flower with them, but there is a solution for this as well.

If you have a look early in my origional post, you will note that I recommended GE plant & aquarium tubes for any flowering under floros. These tubes are unusually red in color temp for a floro and it is because they pack secret sauce. The inside of the bulbs is coated with a special phosphor which is slowly consumed over the course of the bulb's life. This is actually the same technique used to create specialty floros such as the ones found in tanning beds. The red light in these bulbs is not caused by the mercury vapor in the tube becoming electrically excited which is what generates all of the blue light. The phosphors are actually being 'burned'. The red light is a product of a chemical reaction, not ionized gas molecules, and is therefore unaffected by the increased electrical frequency that overdriving creates. The only thing that overdriving does to the phosphors is speed the rate at which they are 'burned'; creating more intense, but not bluer, light. Now, if you where to measure a plant & aquarium tube for its color shift when overdriven, you would still see some. These tubes still contain the regular vapors in normal ones and so a percentage of the light they produce is indeed bluer, but that blue shift does not subtract from the red spectrum produced. (indeed, the red spectrum is also boosted due to the increased consumption rate of the phosphors) Depending on who you ask, this is actually beneficial for flower.

So, if you build your floro setup from the get-go to be overdriven, you can overcome nearly every problem that has been mentioned. This is why retro-fitted overdriving is not as effective.

Also, the merits of overdriving cannot be fully replicated by simply doubling the number of tubes as magiccannabus claimed. The additional total energy output (lumens) that you get from the bulbs from overdriving is a big help, and can indeed be replicated (more efficiently) by upping your number of bulbs. However, more lumens isn't actually the best bonus overdriving gives to floros. Anyone who has tried to grow to harvest using only floros can attest to the fact that their penetrating power is pathetic. The lamps have to be parked less than an inch away from the plants to really make them work. Overdrivng does wonders for floro's light intensity, which is different than total light energy (lumens) and much harder to measure. Intensity is more of an intangible quality, something that HID lamps have in spades. With overdriving, a set of T8 tubes can deliver effective light energy for growth of plant matter up to 18 inches away, and if you are cleaver with your reflector setup, even further! You can cram as many normally-driven floro tubes into your lamp as you damn well please, there is no way in hell that the normally-driven lamp will be able to manage this feat.

Thank you all for the responses, I am very happy to see so much interest in the subject. Good luck, and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Um, space? I have 2 square feet and 512W packed into it.......

That isn't really fair. Your grow is a vertical style and so you have to take total volume into account if you want to talk wattage for a given space. According to your (I must admit, rather lovely) schematic, you are working with a grow chamber that is 33 by 24 by 55 inches. This works out to 43,560 cubic inches, or over 25 cubic feet. This is a HUGE volume compared to what many growers have to work with, I have personally grown plants to completion in a fraction of that space. A real life example:

One of my earliest grows employed a lamp very similar to the one I outlined in this guide. It had 4 overdriven 48 inch T-12 florescents running a total of 280 watts. The lamp they where mounted in measured 49x12 inches at 1.5 inches thick. It would be lighting 3 plants in a flat ScrOG setup. It was hung in a cabinet that was 52 inches wide, 24 inches tall and 14 inches deep. This works out to 17472 cubic inches, or about 10 cubic feet. Let us do the maths!

Your grow:
25.2083333 (repeating) cubic feet
512 watts
=

20.31 watts per cubic foot

My grow:
10.1111 (repeating) cubic feet
280 watts
=

27.69 watts per cubic foot

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Uh oh, looks like you came up short. Well, let's see here *maths* In order to match the light density of my 'uselessly' overdriven setup you would only need to add 3 more 64 watt lamps! However, take into consideration that with my instructional you could easily cram 6 overdriven T8s in the that same 10 cubic foot space, yielding an unprecedented 37.34 watts per cubic foot. Think you could make that by simply adding more tubes? No problem right?

Hah, I jest.

Really though magic, its a lovely setup you have, I was just picking on you because you where fastidious enough to post the exact dimensions of your cab, making it an easy example to use. I applaud your efforts to overcome the disadvantages of floros in your own innovative way, and I see no reason why it should not work beautifully. In truth, my favored technique for growing in small spaces (overdriven floros combined with ScrOG) would be a poor match with your tall and narrow space. Necessity is the mother of invention and I think you have your particular predicament licked. It will be interesting to see how you yield. Given that space, I personally would have used a 250 watt HPS or something like that. You've managed to get a HELL of a lot more wattage than would be practical with HID lamps. (could you imagine a 400 watt HPS in a space like yours? LUL! You would spend a fortune on ventilation and STILL wouldn't generate the watts-per-cubic-foot numbers that you have achieved.) Keep up the good work!

Good luck, and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[magiccannabus]

You make a lot of good points. The actual watts per square foot when looked at from all dimensions is definitely less than the floor wattage. Then again, most HID grows have a pretty low watts to square footage ratio too, just that it's very dense light at the top, low at the bottom. For top-down fluoro growing, I think overdriving is great. I am just too paranoid to run my equipment that far past specs. If you can make it work though, more power to you

I did used to run a 400W metal halide in this same closet, with a bit more space. The heat was bad, but probably not much worse than my current setup since the ballast plus bulb = about what I am using now. I had a 150W HPS in there too. Terrible plan really.

Without overdriving though I could easily add at least 8 more 2-bulb T-8 strip lights in there. Cost is a factor though. The lights without the reflectors cost more(for whatever reason), so that's like 20 dollars a fixture, 8 dollars a 2-pack of bulbs, so not cheap, but relative to HID it's good.

 

[Aerohead]

Overdrivng does wonders for floro's light intensity, which is different than total light energy (lumens) and much harder to measure. Intensity is more of an intangible quality, something that HID lamps have in spades. With overdriving, a set of T8 tubes can deliver effective light energy for growth of plant matter up to 18 inches away, and if you are cleaver with your reflector setup, even further! You can cram as many normally-driven floro tubes into your lamp as you damn well please, there is no way in hell that the normally-driven lamp will be able to manage this feat.

Yes Intensity is the reason we overdrove T5's in aquariums so they penetrated the water much deeper. Agreed, you can't match that by adding more tubes. I am going to have to look into overdriving larger tubes, thanks for the info DrunkenMessiah. This thread caused me to calculate the watts per cubic foot of my current grow (PC case) and wow I have 2.44 cubic feet and 165 watts = 67.6w per cubic foot!! or 117 watts per foot sq.. holy crap LOL....

 

[Hydro-Soil]

So we have nice efficient T-5s, but their gained efficiency over T12s comes at the cost of higher surface temps.

Good News!
The PL-L CFLs are essentially a T5HO tube, bent in half with a 2G11 4-pin base. They are much cooler than a standard T5 and the 55w 22" lamp is 4,800 lumens for a 3000K lamp.

The wonderful thing about T-12 floro tubes is the stupefying variety of color-temperatures available compared to CFLs and T-5s.

That's another point in favor of the PL-L lamps. They're available from 2700K to 10,000K and also Actinic 03 and Actinic Blue/White.

Anyone who has tried to grow to harvest using only floros can attest to the fact that their penetrating power is pathetic. The lamps have to be parked less than an inch away from the plants to really make them work.

Though I park mine an inch away (The PL-L's are extremely easy to cool, vs. a regular T5) it's definitely to my advantage.
If you're flowering with CFLs and you're limited on plant numbers, there's nothing like a scrog to maximize the effectiveness of fluoros. I actually see being able to be within an inch as a plus.

Overdrivng does wonders for floro's light intensity

Indeed! And the reason I'll be looking into it.

I would like the ability to penetrate light into a thicker canopy for sure. The additional intensity will build a denser bud structure as well, as long as the temps are kept in control.


Is there anyone that can do a timed test for overdriven PL-L's using a Fulham (or equivalent electronic ballast)
I'm afraid I don't have any to spare at the moment.

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Good News!
The PL-L CFLs are essentially a T5HO tube, bent in half with a 2G11 4-pin base. They are much cooler than a standard T5 and the 55w 22" lamp is 4,800 lumens for a 3000K lamp.

I'm sure this is true, but I was not talking about normal running temps. T-5s run a lower wattage for a 48 inch tube (40 watts for a T-12 compared to 28 for a T-5) than T-12s and therefore run very similar surface temps when normally driven. It is when you introduce overdriving that problems begin to arise. The smaller surface area of the T5 tubes mean that as wattage goes up the temp quickly spirals away from that of an overdriven T12. You really have to look at the numbers to see what is going on.

A T12 tube is 12 eigths of an inch in diameter (this is where the numbers come from, a T8 is eight eigths, or exactly one inch, etc.) whereas a T5 is 5 eigths. Some quick calculations:

surface area of a cylendar:

pi * d * h

surface area of a T12: 226.08 square inches

Surface area of a T5: 94.2

As you can see, the T12 has two and a half times the surface area to deal with heat dissapation. This would be bad enough if the relationship between surface area and surface temp had an linearly inverse relationship. However, those two aspects of the bulb share a logrythmically inverse relationship in this case because not only have we dropped survace area but we have upped the wattage by overdriving! So, even though the overdriven T5 is only 2.5 times smaller in surface area, it is much more than 2.5 times hotter in an overdriven state! I think this could spell out big problems for any small-diameter florescent tubes, including CFLs. Seeing as that your beloved PL-L bulbs are based on a bent T5HO (thats High Output) which already push the boundries of floro tech I think that overdriving could be too much for them. Couple that with the way you love to hunker the lamps down to within an inch over your flat-screened plants (hey, no blame, I do that myself with overdriven T-8s!) and I think you may have issues.

I could be wrong, I am only going on what I have heard about conventional T5s, but all of my expiriene with electricity, lighting and overdriving is setting off warning bells at the thought of an overdriven, high output, compacted T5 tube. It just sounds like trouble to me. However, I have no first-hand expirience on the matter and really can't say anything other than my speculation based on past expirience. I encourage you to experiment with it, I am interested to hear about the results. If it is possible to keep the surface temps in check then it could be very interesting indeed. Good luck, and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[Hydro-Soil]

I could be wrong
-DM

I hope you are At least as far as the PL-Ls go

BTW.... The 22" tube is a 55w lamp and it does run much cooler than a T5 standard output.

My only concern is the plastic base heating up too much. Beyond that, I have high hopes. LOL

Thank you

 

[Elite]

I original post reminds me of a job we did, just finished Installing some 45+ lights. Turns out the customer requested "electronic ballasts" not my fault, but completely my problem

They where all perfectly inline, mounted, and wired up. So I deemed it was easier just to swap the tombstones and ballast because we had plenty "magentic ballast" fixtures that where the same...

LOL, I feel the opposite about the Floros. I like the idea of the concept compact Floros.

To each their own, looks like I'll be doing a new SOG...Help show what CFL's can do.

Elite

 

[nekoloving]

I original post reminds me of a job we did, just finished Installing some 45+ lights. Turns out the customer requested "electronic ballasts" not my fault, but completely my problem

They where all perfectly inline, mounted, and wired up. So I deemed it was easier just to swap the tombstones and ballast because we had plenty "magentic ballast" fixtures that where the same...

LOL, I feel the opposite about the Floros. I like the idea of the concept compact Floros.

To each their own, looks like I'll be doing a new SOG...Help show what CFL's can do.

Elite

i'm with him here - i'd love to see what they would do being scattered in a vertical tree grow - cfl and florescent lighting is easy and simple to find, own, operate, and justify; thus for a home grower in my opinion, one of the most natural choices of all!

Elite here has shown some very interesting possibilities with cfl's, and i'm convinced that this would be even more amazing lined with a couple florescents [in my mind future poss. build ]; anyhow sunday shoutout!

 

[Elite]

Thanks nekoloving, excellent points!!

Sorry we had a misunderstanding in another thread...I realized that and never took it personally.

I figured we had more in common, no need to waste either of or lives bickering...

As far as the mounting of T5's or whatever....by flower I'll be pushing 1008w CFL...Should be sufficient over 8' space...

Elite

 

[habeeb]

T-5's still going strong, super bright, I have a fan on the tubes and the air con going now so they are warm to the touch now, not super burning like before. temps are 75...

Do I understand correct that the page you linked stated that over-driven lights cannot change spectrum ? I'm worried of my phillips red's changing spectrum

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Good to hear that you've got your temps under control habeeb. As for the color-shifting of red bulbs, I actually addressed that in an earlier post:


If you have a look early in my origional post, you will note that I recommended GE plant & aquarium tubes for any flowering under floros. These tubes are unusually red in color temp for a floro and it is because they pack secret sauce. The inside of the bulbs is coated with a special phosphor which is slowly consumed over the course of the bulb's life. This is actually the same technique used to create specialty floros such as the ones found in tanning beds. The red light in these bulbs is not caused by the mercury vapor in the tube becoming electrically excited which is what generates all of the blue light. The phosphors are actually being 'burned'. The red light is a product of a chemical reaction, not ionized gas molecules, and is therefore unaffected by the increased electrical frequency that overdriving creates. The only thing that overdriving does to the phosphors is speed the rate at which they are 'burned'; creating more intense, but not bluer, light. Now, if you where to measure a plant & aquarium tube for its color shift when overdriven, you would still see some. These tubes still contain the regular vapors in normal ones and so a percentage of the light they produce is indeed bluer, but that blue shift does not subtract from the red spectrum produced. (indeed, the red spectrum is also boosted due to the increased consumption rate of the phosphors) Depending on who you ask, this is actually beneficial for flower.
(*END SNIP*)

Over-driving does tweak the color temp of light outputted from the excited gas in a floro tube. The amount it changes is related to the increased heat of the tube. Keep your temps in check and it won't be too significant.

Good luck and happy gardening

-DM

 

[forestlaw]

Awesome DIY DM!!

I've been following your exploits one here for a while now (OBBT=the best). I was wondering if you or some one else on here could point me in the direction of the thread that explains how to tape the floro tube with reflective tape? I remember reading it a while back but haven't been able to find it...probably just searching the wrong words.

I'm planning on using over-driven T8's in my new veg box

thanks for all the knowledge

-FL

 

[Hydrolized]

There have been some advancements in the THREE YEARS since this thread was active ...but bringing back threads from the dead is alright once in awhile. You can just use a piece of the reflective tape, make sure it has clear adhesive (some have white) and tape over half the bulb. That's what I would do at least, if were ever to use fluorescent lights, which I never would over a nice low wattage MH

 

[Bonzo]

 

[forestlaw]

Thanks for the reply Hydro,

I just went with some foil tape and did my best to remember the method from memory. I'm just using it in m clone/propagation box and for some vertical side lighting in my veg chamber.


thanks again