Is anyone using car hid lights for growing?

[bigm]

i added 4 55w 6000k bulbs powered from a computer power supply. they look very bright, i used them for 2 days before i had the genius idea of making a reflector using a stainless steel bowl.

it kind of focused in a small area but i only used it for less than a minute before i took it off. now the plant is burnt to a crisp where it hit. a line right across two leaves lol.

are these efficient? does anyone have them in better reflectors?

 

[Bandit420]

Halogen lighting is not suitable for horticulture on any level. The light spectrum they produce is not absorbed by plants and they produce an obscene amount of heat as you found out by cooking your little plant.
Your best bet is to look at cfl, T5HO, LED and MH/HPS hid lighting options for your grow op

 

[PitViper]

mebe he can pillage some old mercury vapor lamps

 

[Bandit420]

Dang seeing PV I forgot to mention Super Penetrator Technology.
I got a free system when I ordered a 55 gallon drum of h2o2 and my buds are better than ever!
My dogs wont stop barking and I grew a third nipple (probably because I turned my Nomex suit into cut offs) but I'm seeing .786% increase in yields and I quote Snowmans review of my herb saying " this is good sh!t!"
Another added benefit to Super Penetrator Technology is that my friends clones 7 houses down the street took root when I plugged in the system!

 

[PitViper]

Dang seeing PV I forgot to mention Super Penetrator Technology.
I got a free system when I ordered a 55 gallon drum of h2o2 and my buds are better than ever!
My dogs wont stop barking and I grew a third nipple (probably because I turned my Nomex suit into cut offs) but I'm seeing .786% increase in yields and I quote Snowmans review of my herb saying " this is good sh!t!"
Another added benefit to Super Penetrator Technology is that my friends clones 7 houses down the street took root when I plugged in the system!

I have to send the new and improved model...Now douple the power rated at
2 Watts....powered by a Quantum Singularity....Ill send you the new suit too. Yes women all over a 3 block radius may become pregnant....

 

[Bandit420]

I have to send the new and improved model...Now douple the power rated at
2 Watts....powered by a Quantum Singularity....Ill send you the new suit too. Yes women all over a 3 block radius may become pregnant....

Sweet! I'm gonna use the SPII with my new ebb & flo that has a 350 Cummins Turbo Diesel powered pump rated at 854967854736gph. I think I'll set it to flood for .0042 seconds 97500 times a day! Combine that with Miracle Grow ProTech Closet Garden Formula Fertilizer them folks at the cannabis cup dont stand a chance this year!

 

[bigm]

hah, i had no idea how these lights worked. a quick google just showed that they are *up to* 3 times brighter than regular halogens. it is over 25,000 volts. so im hoping they work better than you guys make them out to be. Xenon isnt even a halogen (row 17 periodic table) so maybe the spectrums are better.

 

[bigm]

In the case of HID headlights, the same high-pressure technology is used. The lamp is similar to a mercury vapor lamp. However, designers of the headlights had to solve one problem with normal mercury vapor lamps -- the fact that they have long start-up times. Xenon helps solve the start-up problem, as does a special controller. All of these tricks mean that these headlights are expensive now, but mass production should bring the cost down eventually.

and this from wiki

Automotive HID lamps are commonly called "xenon headlamps", though they are actually metal halide lamps that contain xenon gas. The xenon gas allows the lamps to produce minimally adequate light immediately upon powerup, and accelerates the lamps' run-up time. If argon were used instead, as is commonly done in street lights and other stationary metal halide lamp applications, it would take several minutes for the lamps to reach their full output. The light from HID headlamps has a distinct bluish tint when compared with tungsten-filament headlamps.

im told that these HIDs actually produce less heat than incandescent. they seem efficient enough for me, i just dont know about colour or what the hell this means V

The correlated colour temperature of HID headlamp bulbs, at between 4100K and 4400K, is often described in marketing literature as being closer to the 6500K of sunlight compared with tungsten-halogen bulbs at 3000K to 3550K. Nevertheless, HID headlamps' light output is not similar to daylight. The spectral power distribution (SPD) of an automotive HID headlamp is discontinuous, while the SPD of a filament lamp, like that of the sun, is a continuous curve. Moreover, the colour rendering index (CRI) of tungsten-halogen headlamps (≥0.98) is much closer than that of HID headlamps (~0.75) to standardised sunlight (1.00). Studies have shown no significant safety effect of this degree of CRI variation in headlighting.

 

[TorturedSoul]

220 watts of 6500K automotive MH lights? How much light do they produce? Might be ok for vegetative more so than flowering but would probably produce something if used all the way through. I would guess that they would have to be somewhat more efficient than CFLs, but somewhat less so than a 400-watt MH on a watt-per-watt basis (and that is less efficient than the same wattage HPS in terms of yield).

But... Why? What did the setup cost? With economy horticultural 150-watt all-in-one HPS fixtures going for around $75-90 (including bulb) delivered, I find myself wondering if such a thing would be economically-feasible. It doesn't seem like you would produce enough bud for the electricity that you would use to make it more economical to run, either. I could be wrong about one or both, and I like to see odd DiY projects - but I am a bit skeptical. Still, I wish you luck and would like to see your results.

 

[bigm]

thank you tortured soul for being the first to take me seriously.

i have 4 t8 florescents with the hid. the four 55w bulbs with ballasts were less than $100. i didnt think it was that expensive.

i have two 150w sodiums for when i start flower that i will add to them all.

after a lot of reading i found a study on how they reflect street signs and the colour spectrum graph looks identical to metal halide.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I think you lost some of them because they didn't catch the "hid" in your thread title.

I try to take everyone seriously regardless of whether I agree with their ideas or not.

In your case, I guess you could say that I am somewhat doubtful that they would work... enough. The fact that the illumination profile matches a MH is helpful. I still wonder about their efficiency, but really am just guessing. Does the packaging mention the lumen output? I know those things are pretty bright for headlights, but...? A purpose-built reflector and orienting the bulbs horizontally above the plants would be of benefit.

And how hot do those things get? I know 400- and 1000-watt MH bulbs can get really hot.

But when it comes down to it, the more light you can give plants in useful portions of the spectrum, the better. And being 6500K, they should help in vegetative and provide useful supplementation to your 300 watts worth of HPS in flowering.

Now you've got me wondering how well they'd penetrate into a canopy, lol.

 

[bigm]

now that ive been using them for 3 weeks im confident i have enough light for veg. i have the four fluorescents a couple inches above the tops and the hid are a little to the side to touch the top and penetrate down. about 5" away seems like the magic number. the plants without the hid are growing pretty slow in comparison.

as far as lumen output i cant find any info on that. i would like to know the lumens/watt. plus i hope this 500w power supply isnt using 500w for 220w.