Anyone tried using xenon lights for a grow, the phisics seems to suggest that they would work, a single 35w bulb gives out over 3000 lumens so for a small growing are I rekon they would work well, any thoughts on this ? They are cheap, efficient and bloody bright. They gotta work better than CFL ??
A HID emits alot of heat as opposed to a CFL. A 23w CFL would give something like 1300 lumens. So that is 56 lumens per watt. The HID you mentioned has 85 lumens per watt. A 250w CFL gives you about 60 lumens per watt. The question is, with the extra heat and the fact that these CFLs give out 100% PAR and the HID does not, which is the most eficient? I really don't know the answer. Maybe someone else does... The light you have in mind would work. I don't think it matters that it's a xenon light, since it has the right spectrum (3000 K). That is good for flowering. You need like 6400 K for veg. It also seems very eficient, but that depends on how much heat it produces. Maybe someone else has some experience with this type of light....
Thanks for the reply, some intersting facts there on lumens per watt, I guess the only way to solve this is to flower some girls under xenons alongside a CFL setup & weigh up the difference,
Yeah. there is probably some mathematic formula you can use and plot in the different factors, but I don't know. It would be an interesting experiment though... Are you going to start a journal?
Not sure how much heat a xenon produces but if the light has to be 5 inches from the plant at 3000 lumen vs a 26w CFL at 1 inch with 1750 lumen then the xenon should actually fail the task as the distance between light and plant is cut in half the lumen is cut by 3/4.
Hrmmm, Start a grow and a journal and I bet you would get a few subs to follow along. I would sub to see how good the grow went and if it did well I might try useing them with a 12 volt converter to see how well I saved on Electric Bill
Ok the challege has been thrown down as soon as ive popped some beans ill veg/flower a plant or 2 under HID 6000k/3000k(35w) & CFL 6400k/2700k(250w) this should be interesting
I have two pairs of 3K HIDS for my car laying around, they seem like they could work, besides the whole heat issue. In my car you can feel the heat coming off of them without touching the lens.
Obviously there are going to be heat issues but with a decent extractor and lots of air movement, i think it could work.
they would get hot, & eventually burn out, b/c they arnt meant to stay on for long periods of time, + the light is focused to a smaller area, & might burn the plants, & youll be changing 12v batreries every day or two
Xenon arc lamps have an incredibly short lifespan and are NOT the same as MH/HPS HID lamps. They are significantly less efficient than HID lights used for growing, and their efficiency isn't even as good as CFLs. I'm not sure where you're getting the lumen figures, op, but I'm guessing they're not accurate. Xenon lamps aren't very efficient and produce a lot of heat. edit: after further research it appears they use various salts in the car headlamp xenon arc lamps which boosts the lumen output by changing the spectrum. The total photonic output is still relatively poor for input wattage as it is with all xenon arc lamps (when compared to the most efficient technologies, anyway). Apparently their major advantage is that you can make very very very high wattage lamps... get a 12kw xenon arc lamp and you should be able to grow some serious shit.
I noticed another interesting fact about xenon arc lamps. They use fused quartz envelopes so the lamps do not naturally filter their own UV, as Metal Halide bulbs do. It's possible that most consumer ones have an additional filter to get rid of the UV, but if not then it could be a good source for supplemental UV lighting during late flowering.
From what i can see it looks to me the majority of HID lamps do block UV as to not to damage plastics within the headlamp housing.