Sealing Off Heat With POLYCARBONATE Instead Of COOLTUBES

[faithless]

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So I went out and gots me a large sheet (100cm * 70cm) of 4mm polycarbonate.
Its almost the size of the grow room and leaves a space of like 10 - 15 cm around the edges.
I'm hanging it up as a sort of shelf between the lights and the plants, dividing the room into two compartments.

It insulates very well, and shuts off a lot of heat in the upper compartment of the room.

Anyone think this is a viable alternative to a cooltube? Any opinions?
I'd love to hear any opinions, I'd hate to be ruining my light source one week into flowering...
I've researched like mad, and "visible light" appears to be the light spectrum that plants live in - it also shuts off UV light which plants generally don't like:


The characteristics of polycarbonate are quite like those of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA; acrylic), but polycarbonate is stronger and more expensive. This polymer is highly transparent to visible light and has better light transmission characteristics than many kinds of glass. CR-39 is a specific polycarbonate material - although it is usually referred to as CR-39 plastic - with good optical and mechanical properties, frequently used for eyeglass lenses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate

[faithless]

Various high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps can increase PPF levels in controlled environments. Barrier materials such as glass, Plexiglas (acrylic) and water are usually placed between the lamps and the growing area to provide ventilation of the lamp space for removal of heat. Bubenheim et al. (1988) observed that spectral compositions (in the 400 to 800 nm range) produced by any of several lamp types tested were not significantly changed by filtering through any of these barrier materials. The dry-tempered, 4 mm glass and the 5 mm Plexiglass single sheet filters reduced PPF 7%.

PPF==Photosynthetic Photon Flux (PPF)

http://ncr101.montana.edu/Light1994Conf/7_1_Young/Young%20text.htm

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[dusto2k3]

i've heard of and also have seen someone do this on their grow. There is a thread here, but i have no idea which one. I remember he had excellent control of the heat after he put it up. Hey, but does it block some part of the light.,...who knows....give it a go

[doco]

Lol, after reading the first couple of sentences I was gonna suggest researching the transmission characteristics but you've already done a fantastic job of that. I was not aware that plants don't like UV light (still not sure I accept that). Sounds like what you've got will do a fine job. I love my cooltube and it works so well I'm probably going to go with a 600 or 1000w instead of my 400w next time. It's about 18" from my young plants and they don't mind at all.

[faithless]

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Heh, research is one thing, someones practical experience is another...
The value of my experiment will be hard to judge, because I don't have any control specimens...
They look great after 2 days though, not that that tells us much...

UV seems to be poisonous to most living things. Blue-ish light, which is on the way to violet in the spectrum, which we like for veg is not good for humans, another surprise I found during my research. In particular, it's hard on the retina.

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[dutch.lover]

I wanna know more about this cause my plants are experiencing heat issues. BUMP!