Did anyone see the Hortilux ad regarding electronic / digital ballasts?

[dongle69]

In the October issue of Maximum Yield:

"...all lamps tested on electronic ballasts had advanced sodium loss and reduced lumens."

"...electronic ballast users may need to replace lamps more frequently..."

"...no flicker was detected on traditional ballasts running at 60 hertz, but was detected in lamps running on electronic ballasts..."

Average temp of standard ballast - 130 degrees
Average temp of electronic ballast - 138 degrees


These were tests using modern ballasts of each type.
Very interesting...

 

[ft100]

i would like to hear more about this , just had a 600 horti burn out in like 3 months on a new elux ballast, any ideas what was wrong here?

 

[ShootinBudz]

LumaTek ballasts here, hortilux all around. They were recommended as passing the test of a commercial grower i used to know so i rigged up with them and it looks good all around.

Max Yield is pretty far behind the curve with outdated news normally.

 

[Whatever]

I setup a room with 3600 watts of Lumateks and 1200 watts of coil ballasts over 3 years ago and it's still running strong with no ballast problems. I only used GE Lucalox bulbs and they worked flawlessly. I did try a few Sylvania Grolux but immediately had problems. Considering the GE's were much less expensive than the Horti's and was having fantastic results with the GE's I never tried em.

I felt, but did not test, the bulb life was virtually identical. The 'local' store has an expensive par meter (like $2,000 worth of expensive) and they tested their in-house ballasts against a Lumatek and the bulb in the Lumatek lasted only a marginal amount longer and current draw was virtually identical and light output leaned only slightly in favor toward the Lumatek.

I used an infrared thermometer to check case temperatures of the Lumateks against a conventional coil ballast and they were almost identical. The thing about the Lumatek is it's about 1/4 the size (less mass) so the total heat output is significantly less. They seem cooler because of the great cooling fin design so when you grab a running ballast they 'seem' cooler.

 

[dongle69]

Max Yield is pretty far behind the curve with outdated news normally.

This was from Hortilux themselves, via an ad in Max Yield.

 

[Whatever]

From everything I understand Lumateks were originally designed to fire European Arc II (?) spec bulbs...which are GE and Sylvania. I'm talking about the 600's here. I've seen this for years...some peeps having problems with Hortilux and others not...but no one I've seen has had a problem with the GE's.

 

[toodles]

My 400W Hortilux burned out way early, just a few 1000 hours. I have a Future-Brite ballast. I went back to my old HPS.

Toodles