vertical vs. horizontal

[ospray83]

I have a standard hood with a horizontal bulb attachment and a china hat with vertical bulb. I know the horz. is more efficient for light going down.
/---\
/ \
and the vert spreads outward. >l<

My question is if i am able to control heat would it be better to run the vert right on top /in the middle of four so long as i rotate 90 to 180 degrees a day or go with horiz. I currently have up the horiz light and is doing what it should but i also have the vert. and am trying to maximise light dist. ..........is there anybody out there that has had experince with the veritiacal and the horizontal both? What was your discovery???

ospray83 Reviewed by ospray83 on 02-24-2010. vertical vs. horizontal I have a standard hood with a horizontal bulb attachment and a china hat with vertical bulb. I know the horz. is more efficient for light going down. /---\ / \ and the vert spreads outward. >l< My question is if i am able to control heat would it be better to run the vert right on top /in the middle of four so long as i rotate 90 to 180 degrees a day or go Rating: 5

[WashougalWonder]

If it were me, I would try to get the bulb socket remounted so it is horizontal, but I am handy doing that kind of stuff.

[justpics]

vertical can match what horizontal is capable of, but there are a few caveats.


1st, you have to train your canopy into an almost doughnut shape, this isn't easy to understand your first time out, and as any experienced grower knows, square footage of good canopy = what you can possibly yield. If you've only got 4 square feet of solid canopy under a 1K, you can't get more than really 8ozs (2 oz per square foot is about the limit for most strains, actually I'd say most wont even do that).

So then assuming you've got your plants trained into the correct shape to stack around the vertical light, you must make sure that you train them close enough. But not too close or you'll cause burn and block light from reaching your entire canopy. Vertical lights will produce less intense of a foot print, since they are not reflecting any light back into their foot print but rather creating a foot print extending in all directions from the bulbs (except straight up and down).


So if you've got your plants trained into the correct shape, and you position them properly, you will find that growing with vertical is just plain old harder than horizontal in sealed hoods. Heat is harder to control (or youll need sealed tubes which is a pain to setup and expensive), the plants are harder to work around, you don't want to accidentally bump your face into the 5,000 degree bulb, and did I mention everything is just harder?


There are claims of people getting double (ROFL) yields from vertical lights (claims of 3lbs per 600 haha) on the internet, but I've yet to see anyone do that in person. I have a strong suspicion that most of the claims of more than 1 gram/watt of flowering light are just people that don't know how to properly dry/cure their bud and are weighing it along with a 40%+ moisture content. If you weigh everything right when you harvest you can see 4X normal yield numbers, cause 75% of what you pulled is water. I believe a higher moisture content is more likely to be the cause of these discrepant high yields than the vertical lights.


hope that helped.