Have to Vent

After looking things over a bit more, I decided to revise my plan for lighting and instead of sticking a second light of the type I already had into my greenhouse, I figured I would have more control if I wired up some sockets and used some Ys to get both more light and get it in the desirable spectrum by being able to change the bulbs. By doing this I can put 4 CFLs (and maybe later 8) in the space where I have just the one little mini task light.

So it was off to Wal-Mart and Home Depot to investigate bulbs. We live in the country so it is about a 70km drive to those stores. First I was looking at the Wal-Mart selection, and they are very good about clearly labelling what they have - but all they had in the "affordable" range were 23 (or was it 26?) watt bulbs in 2700K and 4100K. Evidently the Canadian stores have less selection than the US stores. I know I will want to switch to 2700 when I am flowering (at least, that's what I have gathered from all my reading here), but 4100K was sort of low on the colour spectrum. I bought them anyway, though, not knowing if we would even have anything different at the Home Depot. Just FYI, living in Canada is a pain in the ass as a consumer - very often having 1/10th the population of the US means that we end up with 1/10th the selection of items.

Home Depot had some other different options - 13W bulbs in 6500K which is supposed to be the colour that is ideal, and 27W in 5000K. I opted for the 27W bulbs since the 13s would mean I would need twice as many sockets for the same amount of lumens, and just grabbed the box that was closest - one sitting on top of the display. We returned the 4100K to Wal-Mart and came home.

I started getting ready to wire up my lights before I go to bed since we have a very busy weekend, and picked up the box of the new bulbs, which had been handled with great care all the way home. And of course, as is always how things happen for me, I hear a tinkle. I NOW realize that the reason the box was sitting where it was is because someone at the store must have dropped it and I had not noticed that it was dented nor that at least one bulb is broken inside the sealed package.

I'm so ticked off at myself for not paying attention. I am also really aggravated that the cashier at HD apparently did not notice that the bulbs weren't exactly in good shape either, and that these damn things contain mercury and I won't even consider opening the package to even make use of a couple of them. Now it's another trip back to HD spending more than $20 worth of gas because I was more worried about getting the right Kelvin number on the bulbs and forgot to make sure they weren't broken - something I had made sure was done at Wal-Mart.

I'm going to be kicking myself for the next few days. But, at least the little plants are still alive and OK under the other light (so far).

That definately sucks..
With the price of gas the way it is, you could almost buy an HPS for the cost of going back and forth a few times.

Now I don't know whether to laugh or cry. We returned the bulbs today. But, rather than replace them with the same I found a better option - at Canadian Tire I found 6500K bulbs of the same wattage on sale for 2 for $7.50. I guess sometimes things happen for a reason, although saving $4 doesn't exactly offset the cost of gas.

I now have the better lights in place using my homemade fixture, and I'm going to hope for the best from here.