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Originally posted by Tigger:
Is it true that NO (even over driven 2X) won't have enough intensity to provide enough Lummens at the bottom of the tank?
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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I never said you couldent have enuf intensity for shrooms and stuff at the bottom but the question was which would give you more.
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Let me know if I understand the properly. If I overdrive the 4 NO lights 2X then it would be like having 8 NO's instead of 4 NO.[/QB]
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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">no not realy.. the intensity of light is not a linier factor, so a two fold increase in power doesn't mean you will get a two fold increas in intensity. when I ran my original tests for overdriving I only had a lumen meter. I am planning on redoing the tests using a par meter also to get the #'s for the increase in usable light. I will do thease hopefully in about a week as I am flying back to alberta wensday for a funeral.
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according to StirCrazy, 4 NO's are not even half as intense as 2 96W PCs. [/QB]
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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">hmm not quite. what I was saying is that one NO is not as intense as 1 PC, by adding more bulbs you do not increas the intensity but rather the amount of light. so lets say your coverage will be better with 4 bulbs as aposed to 2 PC's but the PC's will still be more intense.
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Assuming Stircrazy was not overdriving his lights, then even if I overdrive them (double the PAR, I think?), it will still not have a PAR Value as high as 2 96W PCs. Is this correct??[/QB]
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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have tested valuse at normal power and while overdriven for lumin output. as stated above I will do a PAR test to see how that increases with power increase.
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StirCrazy - are your T8's on a workhorse 7 Ballast?[/QB]
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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Mine are on a electronic T8 ballast, I am going to buy a workhorse 7 to run another set of PC's so I will compare this ballast to other electronic ones I have also.
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One more question: Does anybody know a good place to get end caps for PC lighting? Are they about the same price as the end caps for NO lighting?[/QB]
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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">J&L has the endcaps.. if my memory serves me right they were about 7.00 each..
Ok to give you a example of the different intensity levels of a NO bulb compared to a 96 watt PC.
1x on the NO tube resulted in 139.23 LUX @ 12"
2x on the NO tube resulted in 203.49 LUX @ 12"
3x on the NO tube resulted in 267.75 LUX @ 12"
a 96 watt PC resulted in 4391.10 LUX @ 12"
I am going to redo thease tests using a PAR meter but as you can see in light output it took 3 leads to get twice the power.. just hooking up 2 sets of leads doesen't mean you have twice the power.
I myself was going to run all overdriven bulbs onmy tank but I decided to rethink a few of my ideas and decided that I would only unes the overdriven bulbs for actinic. nothing wrong with using them for main lighting I think Victor is doing quite well from his reports, I just felt it limited me to much after I did my tests. if you are on a tight budget.. by all means go with the overdriven.. then when you can aford to spend more.. you can look at going to PC's if YOU decide you need them. the great thing about a WH7 is it will run both so only tubes need to be changed.
Steve