Quote Originally Posted by khyberkitsune
I've never had to do that.

Vertical T5HO to the rescue!
How big is the area? How many watts each? How did you secure the middle tubes from any kind of accident? Isn't it easy and safer to set PLL's like that? Plus they don't have much different outputs than T5's. They're shorter, and only needs to hanged from one side. If we go deep into that i'll find more reasons to not use T5. So I'll just keep comparising.

Quote Originally Posted by tevfik
The comparison based on 5 years continuously flowering and for one plant only! In reality it may make much more difference.

All say CFL's are hot. Yes they are, 2 computer fan is enough to cool them down ($5).Thats what i do. If you still say too hot, there are some other options such as two pins CFL's. They work as cool as these lights (Writing 25C on Osram's website).Outputs 85lm/w. I don't know exact prices of those (bulb+ballast) but i must say if you buy, in 5 years they'll average self ballasted CFL's.
This "two pin CFL" i meant PLL's. I made a price and some other information research.

So here we go:

RA 80-90 bulbs (8xx) :
18,24 and 36w bulbs are $6.20
40 and 55w bulbs are $7.70
12000h lifetime (3 years in our comparison)

RA 90+ bulbs (9xx) 7500h lifetime:
18,24 and 36w bulbs are $11.80
40 and 55w bulbs are $13.60
7500h lifetime (2 years in our comparison)

I'll need one ballast for each two bulbs.
from 18 to 55w ballasts are $29.20
Life of 100,000 hours and more (22 years in our comparison.)

i'm buying 2x55 and 2x40 = $58.40 + $30.80 (+ $20 if i want 9xx's)
That will make 190w, and give the lights equally if i put 55's on center and 40's on sides. This is another advantage.
16600lm in total. Reached 3860lm per square meter.
Quote Originally Posted by Roughrider
4000 lumens sq. ft./43000 lumens sq. m. = Very good growth. Once you pass around 3500, growth rate and ability goes up fast.
Or we can go 100w of PLL and 100w of Fluora. That makes more sense to me than paying a half thousand on a tunnel light and hanging cfl's around.

[attachment=o260617] [attachment=o260618] [attachment=o260620][attachment=o260621]

Still, tell me, what makes this "inda-Bro" lights %96 useful for plants? Is it because all those light companies didn't know how to make plant lamps and they were messing around with all their sources to produce some grow fluorescent called gro or bio or natura then some genius engineers suddenly found that they were wrong???