3 Top Grow Tents Tested Out. Heres the Results!

[irydyum]

or not. For the most part anyways :thumbsup:

irydyum Reviewed by irydyum on 10-15-2009. 3 Top Grow Tents Tested Out. Heres the Results! I have had the pleasure to test out 3 different grow tents for various operations. We have the Homebox XS, GrowLab 80 and Secret Jardin DR80. I have read various sites of people claiming which they feel is best, but never heard anything about people testing more then one. I have always used a Homebox as you can tell from my other grows. I feel that was always my standard for grow tents. For starters the Homebox I have has the white interior, 3 4" ports and the flaps. After one year of Rating: 5

[FreeDaHerb]

What's the "high heat spectral range?" New one on me....:i feel stupid:

I'd like to avoid those wavelengths if possible. I hope it's not Starburst Orange.

The higher the Kelvin, the "hotter" the light.

The Kelvin rating (the term degrees is not used) is a color index that is
derived by heating a black body (a Carbon instrument). As the black body is
heated it glows and emits light. EG. at 3,000 K the black body emits a very
red orange light (similar the color of your standard houshold tungsten
filament bulb). At 9,000 K the black body is emitting a very blue light
(similar to the light reflected off of a blue sky). And by the way it's very
hot!

Kelvin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thermodynamic temperature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So in essence this would say the majority of the light a MH creates is hotter temperature wise ( except they are not equal in light output to the HPS which creates far more lumens) It really depends on the bulb..a hortilux HPS with the added blue for instance is one of the hottest bulbs there is temperature wise / radiant heat. Being that bulb is the only one I ever really used that would explain the HPS always being "hotter" than anything else. More lumens + tons of blue light = hot as hell lol

[oldmac]

What's the "high heat spectral range?" New one on me....:i feel stupid:

I'd like to avoid those wavelengths if possible. I hope it's not Starburst Orange.

Hey DH,

I think "Starurst Orange" is a candy and "Sunburst Orange" is the new LED colour de juour. And don't feel stupid about not knowing about "high heat spectral range" that was a new one to me, I feel stupid too.

Yo' irydyum,

You can't go questioning FreeDaTerd's experience, didn't you hear that he's a genius who's just here to help us all. Never mind what your observations are, how the heck could they be right, he's knows it all and then some.

I love this gem, "the higher the Kelvin, the "hotter" the light."-FreeDaTerd

Gentlemen we are truly in the company of greatness. He has the ability to turn color tempertures into thermal tempertures. I am humbled.

[irydyum]

I shouldn't be questioning anything anyways. I'm just here to fight and talk shit. 1700 plus rep points, I must be damn convincing then if all I'm doing is fighting. :rambohead:

I'll go back to lingering and not commenting, apparently all the new members know what's best already. Good thing, cause they sure the hell don't know how to listen.

Where the heck did all the fun go? It must have left with Stinky

[FreeDaHerb]

Well hate to break it to you but it's in essence true if you were previously unaware. Different spectrums of light have different heat properties. The kelvin scale is related to the light produced at lower or higher temperature.

Objects that are made hot will glow red. The hotter they get, the more white or even blue they will glow and thus light they emit, the blue light spectrum carries more energy per photon than red light and thus more heat. Proven fact.

Also, on the other end of the spectrum why do you think they use Infared heat lamps to heat food? It's HOTTER light. Maybe you did'nt actually read the Wikipedia links about thermodynamics and what kelvin actually is...figures lol

You care to dispute these facts with a relative argument of supporting info?

Of course not, just more posturing from the experts of nothing but drama.

[irydyum]

I'm not going to argue at all. I'm just going to post what I feel to be the pertinent Wiki info from "Color Temperature" as it relates to heat.

"For colors based on the black body, blue is the "hotter" color, while red is actually the "cooler" color. This is the opposite of the cultural associations that colors have taken on, with "red" as "hot", and "blue" as "cold". The traditional associations come from a variety of sources, such as water and ice appearing blue, while heated metal and fire are of a reddish hue. However, the redness of these heat sources comes precisely from the fact that red is the coolest of the visible colors, the first color emitted as heat increases."

This would mean they use infared because it takes less energy to create heat in the infared, than in the visible, since it is the first color to appear upon heating. So for heating lamps, it's about energy consumption more than anything.

I still feel this supports my observations about the heat output I got with my MH vs. HPS.

[FreeDaHerb]

Exactly, just like I posted above in post #12

So in essence this would say the majority of the light a MH creates is hotter temperature wise ( except they are not equal in light output to the HPS which creates far more lumens) It really depends on the bulb..a hortilux HPS with the added blue for instance is one of the hottest bulbs there is temperature wise / radiant heat. Being that bulb is the only one I ever really used that would explain the HPS always being "hotter" than anything else. More lumens + tons of blue light = hot as hell lol

Also, since the infared is so far red it has a different wave length and is absorbed more by matter (more like x-rays) = hotter :thumbsup:

Thus the quirks of the HPS being hotter than the MH, esp. when it's the hortilux type most growers use that contains the hotter blue too. But yes, pure blue is hotter than pure red for certain as it contains more photon energy.

So we agree here dude.

oldmac is all by himself out on that branch in the wind lol.

[oldmac]

Yup, that's me out on my branch in the breeze.

I tend to agree with Irydyum about light tempertures. MH lights run hotter then HPS lights. I've measured the difference in 600w HPS vs MH and the MH bulb produces much more direct heat then an HPS. The reason is as Irydyum stated, for 600w energy in the MH bulb produces about 40,000 lumens of light, while the HPS converts 600w into 90,000 lumens. What does not get converted into lumens goes to extra heat. If you want to consider secondary heat generation, then the HPS will heat an object greater because it has more then twice the radiant energy then the MH. But the greater radiant heat produced is a product of simply more light energy then spectrial differences.

This can be seen better with say a T5 fluro tube. If you measure the heat output from an actinic white @ 420nm or abt 12,000K, a 6500K daylight tube and a 2,700K bloom tube, they all produce the same heat output even tho they are way different in Kelvin temps. According to FreeDaHerb this can not be, the 12,000K should be much hotter then the 2,700K tube. But in the real world it is not.

BTW, there is a nice cooling breeze on my branch and the view is awesome.

[FreeDaHerb]

MH lights run hotter then HPS lights. I've measured the difference in 600w HPS vs MH and the MH bulb produces much more direct heat then an HPS. The reason is as Irydyum stated, for 600w energy in the MH bulb produces about 40,000 lumens of light, while the HPS converts 600w into 90,000 lumens. What does not get converted into lumens goes to extra heat. If you want to consider secondary heat generation, then the HPS will heat an object greater because it has more then twice the radiant energy then the MH. But the greater radiant heat produced is a product of simply more light energy then spectrial differences.

Well, you are wrong dude, IF the pure MH bulb is hotter it's due to the kelvin difference in the light, hence the "color temperature" and kelvin scale. Even Wikipedia and the known laws of physics state the blue light has the most photons or really "Photon Flux Density", thus produces more radiant heat as it has more total energy. The extra heat is not from an inefficient ballast although that does produce heat due to electrical losses in all HID set-ups and that is nothing new, we all know that. PLUS the heat is outside the tent in this conversation so we are talking about light produced in the tent and the radiant heat energy it creates based on it's Photon Flux Density. The HPS light just has less photons per lumen and thus more lumens per watt produced by the light. (along with alot of infared which is very very hot, hotter than blue) The HPS has far more infared light than the MH, hence it ultimately is hotter. Then consider most HPS users run the hortilux bulbs with the blue added to the spectrum and you have a very hot light creating alot of ambient heat just like the sun that heats the earth does through light energy and infared heat, etc.

This can be seen better with say a T5 fluro tube. If you measure the heat output from an actinic white @ 420nm or abt 12,000K, a 6500K daylight tube and a 2,700K bloom tube, they all produce the same heat output even tho they are way different in Kelvin temps. According to FreeDaHerb this can not be, the 12,000K should be much hotter then the 2,700K tube. But in the real world it is not.

Well, again missing the simple stuff but I guess it's all too easy with a simple mind and worrying about falling off that soon to break & very thin branch.

The lights in fact are all very different temperature kelvin wise to begin with due to their obvious color differences, blue light having more photons / light energy and red having less photons per lumen. Because of their revelant spectrums they produce varying amounts of lumens or actual light in that range per watt burned, so yes they all do produce similiar heat levels most likely but from very different total lumens of light, i.e. some light is hotter, some is cooler based on the total amount of light being produced and their spectrum. Pure Blue light is much hotter energy wise in equal amounts of light than say 660 nm Red.

Plus, my original statement clearly states it's the radiant/ambient heat too.

I mean it say's it right there in Wikipedia, maybe you should argue with them.

Don't confuse yourself again. :jointsmile: :thumbsup:

[oldmac]

"As much as I love science and believe in the law of physiscs....."

The thing I really find really annoying about people like you is thier inability to accept when someone is actually agreeing with thier facts but try to point out there are other factors to consider before drawing conclusions.

At no time do I dispute the physics of light. Listen carefully; I beleive you are right about light energy, various wavelenghts have more energy then others. This can be seen when designing say LED lighting. To achive proper ratios of red / blue we need to take into account how much energy each diode provides and that is effected by it's wavelength.

In the case of MH vs HPS you are overlooking one very important item, MH coverts electrical energy into light energy less efficently then HPS. We see it when we compare lumens/watt of each. The "lost" lumens are not wasted in an inefficent ballast but in the inefficent bulb....as extra heat. Some of this extra heat is in the form of some "non-visable" light like IR and UV, but the MH bulb's glass envelope will be considerably hotter then the HPS.

As to the fluro tube comparison, who's overlooking the simple stuff here? This is one experiment where it is easy to prove that "color temperature does not equate to thermal temperture."
I know: "theoretically the higher color temp tube should run hotter..." but it don't. The heat differential caused by spectral differences is so slight, that spread out over a fluro tube the differences become almost unmeasurable. That's what I refer to as real world vs theoretical.

Now before you start typing your responce, I will point out to you again, I am not disputing the science you have sited more then once now. I am just trying to point out nicely to you there are other physical factors you need to take into account when dealing with real world stuff.