Can I use perimeter lights HPS/MH?

[Curiousnoob]

Hello, I have a question about using industrial perimeter lights for grow room back ups. At work we have just replaced 3 perimeter lights with LEDs, not minding a little tinker I opened them up to find they are 2 x 400w hps and 1 x MH. These are them..

As the internals are all in near perfect condition only the blown globes are the issue. After pulling the ballast out with cable to globe holder and hard wired plug, can I put a grow light in these and use one for a back up in my grow room?

 

[TorturedSoul]

Yeah, they work great and that's a pretty good ratio of lighting types (2x HPS to 1x MH) to take you all the way to harvest. Recycle the glass shields (shut off the MH when working in the grow room if it's an unjacketed one, as you might be receiving some UV while it is in operation with no glass, but otherwise no worries) unless you are going to modify the fixtures for forced air cooling, because the glass will attenuate the light output by around 9%. Make sure they're correctly wired for your location's voltage.

Consider getting some actual horticultural reflectors, because they'll work better for your purpose (you're trying to concentrate the light onto a small area, not illuminate a parking lot well enough to see to walk from the building to your vehicle - and the material should be of higher quality (higher light reflectivity)) and most of them have provisions for air cooling. Also, they're generally a lot lighter than industrial-use fixtures.

Strongly consider setting the ballasts up "remotely" so as to get those sources of heat out of the grow space.

EDIT: Buy a set of new bulbs. Horticultural-use ones preferred, but it's not absolutely necessary (might affect your yield a bit, is all). By the time the Mark I Eyeball, Human can detect a degradation of the output, it has already dropped off a significant amount. But you'd still be paying for the same amount of electricity each month, so...

 

[Curiousnoob]

Like so...

 

[Mars Hydro]

They look great ! Any light can grow, the factor matters are : wattage, spectrum, PAR. lol

 

[Curiousnoob]

Legends! Thank you very much. Plan would be to get new bulbs, like you said @TorturedSoul set them up remotely (heat wise), extend globe coupling or get some reflectors. Can you tell me do the ballast degrade over tIme, power out put wise?