New lights for seedlings.

[murihikukid]

Hi...I welcome any opinions on my Chinese hat lighting system....Yes there is a Chinese Hat Reflector with 3 CFL bulbs and a LED Bulb in a 3 + 1 fitting....sitting on top of a Dryer Drum which unfortunately is not reflecting very well inside...but what I am trying to see is with the light being reflected round the drum what will happen with my Tomato plant in a container sitting on the piece of polystyrene...will it grow or even die??

This is just an initial try as in my mind is really how will it work on a plant planted in soil in the drum underneath the polystyrene and as it grows the Chinese hat and reflector drum will be raised with the growth providing light 360 degrees around the plant.....

All I need is a decent light bulb but I will buy some different ones including Grow lights to see if I can strike a happy formula...unless I get shot down first....

Cheers Ron.

[Cole_Robbie]

My first concern would be heat building up. You will want to position a fan or blower so that fresh air circulates through the enclosure. The plants need fresh air, anyway, to replenish the CO2 they take out of the air.

[murihikukid]

Hi..I basicly agree and I am working on it ...I do not think a computer fan would be strong enough and could I get enough if it was cause if it works I would be looking at round 24 of these.....a blower would be the answer ...a vacuum cleaner with a rear exhaust supllying multiple drums or would it last the distance?
Any ideas would be gratefully received cause at the moment I just cannot think of a blower I could use....
Question ..do LED lights create heat ??
and if I join drums together how soon will it be before I have the authorities around trying to peer inside my drums?? of course if i did stack drums how would I harvest all the anticipated beautiful fruit inside??

Cheers Ron

[Cole_Robbie]

Do you have lightning bugs in NZ? One of the really cool things about animals that glow in the dark is that it is the only known source of light that does not create heat, or at least that's true for chemical phosphorescence in general. LED lighting still makes heat, just less so than most other lighting.

I'm not sure what you have available for purchase, as far as blowers go. "Squirrel cage blower" is the term here. You just need a little blower of some sort. A vacuum cleaner is probably overkill, but you could get by with a bigger blower and a timer to run it intermittently if you had to. A small fan would work, too, possibly pointed outward and set on the top with its own vent hole.

[dmforcier]

LEDs create some heat but not nearly as much as incandescent, and less than fluorescent. Computer fans would be just fine. You don't want to blow the dirt away, just stir the air.

Where the h^%&* are you planning to get 24 dryer drums? Should we look out for a string of laundromat burglaries?

[murihikukid]

Hi...I am grateful that my idea has not been dismissed outright....I went to my favourite charity shop today with just a few tomatoes for them cause I have not got many and was told to come back tomorrow morning to pick up 8 small LED lights ($1 each ) ...I came home and wondered what this "thing" sitting at my front door was....It was a Nilfisk Multi 20 vacuum cleaner so I checked it..It goes great and when I did a Google on it I found out a similar unit was only""" $299......I cannot believe it...I could use it to put air into a 100 drums....
Now Re the drums...At the entrance to the cities dump,tip ??? whatever its called I do not know in America...Its where all the rubbish goes....Just prior to the entrance is a reused yard..run by the Habitat for Humanity a charity shop but this one is more like a money making business....Most people doing dumping at the tip stop there first and let this organisation look at what they are dumping so they get the pick of anything going in for free and the person intent on dumping gets a small amount off the fee simply due to the lighter weight he or she has to dump....its amazing the amount of Whiteware that they get and they strip most and use parts etc to put together working ranges/dryers/washing machine/fridges etc which they sell for $100's of dollars...so they get a lot of dryer and washing machine drums left over after stripping and sell them for $5 each and i buy them especially the commercial dryer drums that are pretty rare.....I also built my greenhouse from recycled steel bed frames ...($5 each ) and that is what my new roof will be pre fabricated by....I will post a photo when/if I get it finished..

Cheers Ron

[imp]

It's often called the dump here in USA too. And about the same re habitat for Humanity, depending on the location- some are better than others.

[murihikukid]

Hi..Well I bought 12 grow lights yesterday and tonight I decided to try out miniinthebox??? after getting an email about special deals....I wanted to try them out and only intended buying a small inexpensive bulb but decided to go bigger and after checking Ebay it seemed to me that the bulb I chose was a reasonable deal ...It cost just over NZ$28 (whats happened to our dollar??) but I got the Cool White which is round 6500K....I am sure Worth or somebody will tell me if I can use it....

Cheers Ron

[murihikukid]

Cole Robbie...We have world famous glow-worm caves in NZ that atracks a lot of tourists....Living right down the bottom of the South Island I can nearly see Stewart Island which is NZ's third Island and is said to be very beautiful... Sad to say i was born and bred down here and never gone to Stewart island....I should be ashamed...

Cheers Ron

[Cole_Robbie]

Cool. I have never seen the "corn light" design before. That is interesting.

They make big ones, too:
http://www.ledglobalsupply.com/led-c...dRLxoCo33w_wcB

It's supposed to replace a 1000 watt sodium, which is like 140,000 lumens, despite being only 20,000 lumens. I assume the better spectrum of the light makes up for the difference in lumens.

[murihikukid]

Hi ..I wonder if anyone has had experience with Waterproof LED Flexible Strip Tape Light
http://www.miniinthebox.com/5pcs-mor...ml?prm=2.3.6.0

Scroll down to see the strip tape

I am interested in trying these for one of my "surround light drums"...but I wonder if these require an LED.Power unit or if these are not required on 12v LED's
I am thinking of just bonding a strip of Leds round the inside of one of my drums... connect to 12 V and i would have my own inbuilt Grow light whether it be cool daylight or Red+Blue ...and just raise it with the growth of the plant inside...in fact this method if it works would cut out the expense of the fitting and light bulbs I am experimenting with..

Thanks Ron

[dmforcier]

Dude, you're on your own.

[Cole_Robbie]

I have doubt that you would get anything of much quality for such a low price. Maybe it would grow lettuce, or even tomato seedlings, but I don't think anything at that price level has enough power to fruit tomatoes. The bulb I linked to costs $400 more than that light strip.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

I have doubt that you would get anything of much quality for such a low price. Maybe it would grow lettuce, or even tomato seedlings, but I don't think anything at that price level has enough power to fruit tomatoes. The bulb I linked to costs $400 more than that light strip.

Or it could be jacked up prices they are selling stuff for.
Yes they sell some junk but you can weed through it and fined some really good stuff.


Worth

[murihikukid]

Ok...I am probably a nuisance but as I see it ...One buys the brightest LED lighting strips ....that are available...5630 leds are nearly twice as bright as 5050 leds and 7020 are brighter than 5630's... so in my mind I would be best to buy 7020's....Being for plants I would be best to get waterproof Strips which are a lot more expensive than non waterproof....according to my research .....

But can one buy 7020 Flexible lighting strips ...I do not know ...if not one could change the design and use non flexible strips.....

Next is colour ..should I use cool white or warm white ...What I have read cool white could be the best option ...

Next is RGB Strips but I have not found these in 5630 or 7020 LED's ...I have found them in individual colours IE Red Green and Blue....Therefore I presume one could make up ones own ratio of colour by combining these......

It seems to me that these would be easy to connect up with everything available online including clamping clips...It will not cost me a fortune but would I be throwing my money away..I do not know...hopefully i am not on my own and somebody here could give me an opinion...

I see there is a multitude of extremely interesting videos on Youtube about LED's ...
Regards Ron