MH vs HPS for yield?

[blissfest]

Heat will make buds smaller and less dense. You have to keep the climate right. I like high 70's day, low 60's night.

The cool thing about 1000w HPS's is they are so freakin bright you don't need the plants very close. I have strains I can sit in the corner many feet from the nearest bulb that will grow rock hard nugs. But That is in a 13'x13' room pushing between 4400-6000w depending on what I want.

 

[the gnome]

I can vouch for the smaller buds on stretched/burnt plants. I have an OG like wfa that appears to have done that this round.

What color temps did you use snype?

I have a very good idea the Kelvin rating used.
i had the same experience as snype and like his run, hps kicked the shit out of my 1st halide run using 6000-7000k
very blue veg'ing halides
you never want to repeat that one again...ever.

 

[Drek]

Mastercolor CDM-T Elite 315W T12 CL Agro - Ceramic Metal Halide

MASTER GreenPower Plus 1000W EL Double-Ended - HPS

Video
[youtubeif]fRQE2h3NOzU[/youtubeif]

 

[blissfest]

Those 315w Agro CMH's look fine. Put 3-4 of them in a 5x5 tent and you could grow some good weed.

Do you guys use a separate ballast for all these little bulbs, or is there a Master ballast that can run a bunch of them??

 

[Drek]

Hey Bliss. That was some nice looking Pineapple btw...looks like a great strain with good genetics.

The Philips 315 Agro is currently the best, most efficient stand-alone horticultural lamp on planet Earth, imo. It has everything. It's been dialed in by the best research teams and labs that money can buy, and then some.

It's a ballast per bulb I believe, but I am assuming that commercial operations will install them in banks.

It'll deliver the goods at half the electrical costs and heat.

 

[Snype]

I can vouch for the smaller buds on stretched/burnt plants. I have an OG like wfa that appears to have done that this round.

What color temps did you use snype?

I only use 1,000 Watt Hortilux lamps and I buy new ones every other crop for a 12.5% loss.

Heat will make buds smaller and less dense. You have to keep the climate right. I like high 70's day, low 60's night.

The cool thing about 1000w HPS's is they are so freakin bright you don't need the plants very close. I have strains I can sit in the corner many feet from the nearest bulb that will grow rock hard nugs. But That is in a 13'x13' room pushing between 4400-6000w depending on what I want.

Exactly! I use HydroFarm Radient Reflectors and they are 24" away from the top of the canopy and after 42 days of flowering, the light is too intense for all the plants that are right under the reflectors. At this point I either have to raise my reflectors to higher than 24" away from the canopy or I have to turn down the Lumatek to 750 Watts. In reality i'd love to raise the reflectors to 30" above the canopy at 40 days of flower but my ceilings are only 8 feet so I can't do that with 44" plants.

It's very possible that if someone ran a test between HPS and MH, that the MH could win if they didn't pay attention to all the other variables like how far away the reflectors are and if any of them are too close. Placing a MH bulb at the same canopy heights as the HPS may not contain the same sweet spots as the other. Just some other things to consider.

 

[blissfest]

Hey Bliss. That was some nice looking Pineapple btw...looks like a great strain with good genetics.

The Philips 315 Agro is currently the best, most efficient stand-alone horticultural lamp on planet Earth, imo. It has everything. It's been dialed in by the best research teams and labs that money can buy, and then some.

It's a ballast per bulb I believe, but I am assuming that commercial operations will install them in banks.

It'll deliver the goods at half the electrical costs and heat.

That Pineapple Fields is made by Dynasty Genetics, it took Professor P around 7 years making that if I remember right. All his stuff is good if you're ever looking for beans.

I like the 315w Agro's but it would be really cool if they made bigger ones, or you could run at least two per ballast. I bet they would work good in those double socket hoods, two per hood.

Someone needs too start making double or triple 400 watt ballasts. Lumetek used to make a double 600w.

 

[Catatafish]

Yea bliss i understand temps to keep it at.....my environment doesnt currently allow for such. Its f-in 95 outside here already and been that way for a little bit.

The extra stretch from hps isn't helping either. if they would stretch less they would be in a lot better shape and cooler. When some want to 4x+ stretch it kinda hurts with 8' ceilings.

This will be fixed in a 1-2 weeks. Parts are on the way, just have to install.

 

[Catatafish]

Thats pretty much what i have been doing snype, get em as long as i can under 1k then turn down once they get too big.

 

[blissfest]

Yea bliss i understand temps to keep it at.....my environment doesnt currently allow for such. Its f-in 95 outside here already and been that way for a little bit.

The extra stretch from hps isn't helping either. if they would stretch less they would be in a lot better shape and cooler. When some want to 4x+ stretch it kinda hurts with 8' ceilings.

This will be fixed in a 1-2 weeks. Parts are on the way, just have to install.

Like I said earlier, big plants don't stretch like little plants do. Grow them out to 4' and you are fine. Plus I love pinching and bending over tops the first few weeks.

Just took this pic for you. I have 8' ceilings and this plant will go 10 oz's of rock hard bud in a 3 gal. Hempy. I bent the main Top over early and she loved it. The lighting sucks but she is too big to drag out for a better pic.

 

[blissfest]

Some more room pics, those are 6' driveway stakes. Can you see why little 315-400w bulbs wont work with my set up. I need all the light I can get to blast these girls.

 

[Jhhnn]

As bulb science has advanced, manufacturers have turned their interest to MH, CMH & dual arc lamps. It seems clear that they reached the end of HPS tech some while back with the Horti super hps & others with that little bump in the blue range over ordinary hps.

It's been the standard grow light for a long time, works great, has its own set of limitations to be dealt with. One of them is that enormous spike of wasted power in the near infrared. That's not nearly the problem for Dutch greenhouse growers who use hps as supplemental lighting. They have ways of using that energy for heat. The other is that they're hardly used in non-horti commercial apps at all any more. People don't like to live & work by them. For that, MH reigns supreme, and makers have found that they can now tailor the spectral output to more of what people like, which is sunlight, or some near variant of that.

Near as I can tell, all hid lamps have a spike in the near infrared, but hps does much more than MH, and CMH least of all. At any given wattage, moving that energy into the visible range is good for plants, not just for people or for energy savings from burning lower wattage lamps on the same magnetic MH ballasts. More power where you want it, less waste. CMH also offers much longer lamp life while maintaining brightness better, as well.

Philips markets energy saver mogul base CMH lamps for older fixtures. They apparently work pretty well for horti purposes, as well. I'm testing one.

The 315 line & its lower wattage siblings are a whole new standard by Philips originally aimed at the european commercial lighting market & beyond, not the horti market at all. The low frequency electronic ballasts & extremely efficient distribution of power into the visible range make TCO very attractive in that market, particularly for new construction. It costs more up front, but investment is recouped rapidly because of low power consumption & low maintenance at the same light intensity. It's so new that prices haven't come down much, and it's so new that market penetration in N America is small. That's why they're still expensive here. They're still a specialty item.

The introduction of the agro version has been a new departure for Philips, as well. I really don't see it aimed at anything but European small home growers of whatever. It wasn't built to compete with their high output commercial agro offerings at this point. Its ballast also won't run on N American 120v house current w/o a voltage converter. That's a big hurdle in the N American small grower market. No matter how good they might turn out to be, that & the price will slow adoption here.

I'm working with the older generation of 330w cmh largely because I'm both curious & a cheapskate, I guess. Their par rating is still quite good. 400w MH mag ballasts are really cheap, and I caught a deal for a sixpack of bulbs.

I think there are some high wattage MH lamps that deserve to be tested & studied, too, like he dual arcs. With them, hps growers will get results similar to what they have but with less stretch. At least that's been my limited experience.

The dual arcs may be the best of both worlds atm, with CMH maybe being even better.

 

[Drek]

The 315 Agro is the best, most efficient, scalable lamp to date.
That much seems fairly obvious, imo.

Run 12 of them, you'll still save cash on electrical, have way less heat and the optimal spec for plant health....and match yield.

The higher wattage DE lamps seem aimed at large greenhouses as a supplement to natural lighting.

315 seems aimed at small to med commercial op's that want scalability and efficiency.

 

[blissfest]

Philips says these are the best, and they are 2100k, go figure???
http://www.usa.ecat.lighting.philip...ture/ceramalux-agro/36646/cat/?t1=ProductList

 

[rives]

Philips says these are the besthttp://www.usa.ecat.lighting.philip...ture/ceramalux-agro/36646/cat/?t1=ProductList

Where?

 

[blissfest]

Ceramalux Agro



Plant growth (photosynthesis) is not then determined by lux or energy, but by the photons from the blue to red (400–700 nm) part of the spectrum.This is called growth light! For horticulture, natural daylight (global radiation) is in most cases measured in terms of energy (J or W) with a solar meter. This meter is generally positioned on top of the greenhouse.The value of global radiation is important for climate and humidity control in the greenhouse. Agrolite XT lamps are specially developed for maximum growth light and are among the most efficient light sources available for horticulture.

 

[rives]

Saying that it is among the most efficient light sources available is a far cry from saying that it is "the best".

Pretty standard sales pitch. From their 315 literature -

Philips Elite Agro 315W T12 Lamp provides a compact and
efficient metal halide solution for the horticulture market.
This lamp, combined with the efficient ballast, provides
outstanding growth light performance over the life of the
product.

 

[blissfest]

Saying that it is among the most efficient light sources available is a far cry from saying that it is "the best".

Well your hero's are selling it as the "Best" big bulb they make. 1000w 2100k

Remember, Philips is head and shoulders above everyone else when it comes to grow lamps

 

[blissfest]

"Philips Elite Agro 315W T12 Lamp provides a compact and
efficient metal halide solution for the horticulture market.
This lamp, combined with the efficient ballast, provides
outstanding growth light performance over the life of the
product."

How is it efficient to have 3-4 bulbs and ballasts to do the same thing 1 bulb and ballast can do??

It must be impossible to make this bulb stronger?? Why only 315w?

 

[rives]

Again, nowhere does it say that it is the "best" - it says that it is the most efficient. HPS is very efficient, that's why it is the preferred lamp for industrial and street lighting. Unfortunately, it also gives piss-poor color rendition.