Giant 3’
Reflector
w/Six
Wings delivers
More
Light for
Higher Growth
This next
generation reflector clearly out classes the
light wasting batwings!
Why lose
$217/year on electricity?
The biggest
expense of any lighting system is not what
the fixtures cost! It’s the electricity! In
a big set up, you can use fewer of these
fixtures using less electricity. (Math shown
later)
VIRGIN Light:
Don‘t
get stuck
with a
"refurbished"
light that's been junked once before! Why
buy something that costs more to fix than
what you paid?
It Features:
Giant 3’
Reflector just for Indoor Use.
It measures 3 feet
long!
This is the secret:
The larger reflector, the easier it is to
capture light that would be wasted lighting
up your ceilings and walls , and redirect
this otherwise wasted light down on your
plants. The reflector has
4 extra wings to capture and redirect
the light shed off the ends of the light
bulb. It offers extraordinary high optical
efficiency.
Compare this to the “batwing” or
“shoebox” lights that some people hawk and
you will see that this reflector gives you
usually 50% or more light for the money:
Don't get stuck with
something that you'll have to fix later!
We are not
taking used, scraped lights out of a
factory, cleaning them and calling them
“refurbished”. You are getting a brand new
fixture which includes:
GIANT
REFLECTOR: 3 Foot Long!
The reflector
is made of lighting grade anodized high
reflectivity aluminum - not a laminated
product that can peal. Total reflectivity is
95%. It is so shiny
that you can see your reflection, just like
a mirror. This is what the real lighting
grade specular aluminum looks like. Others
just use dull sheet aluminum.
Be careful: without
treatment, aluminum is not very reflective-
as low as 30%.
New Ballast,
Igniter, Capacitor.
All three
electrical components are new, not half worn
out.
Quality Capacitor
A quality high
temperature dry capacitor is used, not an
oil filled one that can
leak.
The
capacitor is very
large
1.75" by 4.87" so it can easily dissipate
heat. There are cheap mini-capacitors that
maybe called "high temperature", but because
they are so small, they actually heat up
enough to exceed their ratings. Tricky
offshore manufactures often take two such
small capacitors and put them in a big
case. Not so here, this is a solid capacitor
all the way through.
Better Ballast
The Low Heat S51 400 watt HPS
Core (uses 5 watts less energy than
competitive ballasts) This ballast’s
laminations are vacuum impregnated with
insulation to optimize cooling and generate
about lowest sound rating in the industry.
Cheaper cores
are just
slopped full of orange varnish
that’s prone to have air bubbles.
Reliable
Igniter High Temperature (105
C) igniter is the big bottle type, not the
little bolt on type that can cause problems.
New Socket.
Not something used
pulled out of the scrap heap. So the socket
is sure to be good.
Remote
Mounting Hardware.
The giant reflector hangs from chain bails.
An approximate 10’ power supply cord
connects the ballast enclosure to the
reflector.There are two reasons to use a
remotely mounted ballast: (1) It’s easier to
hang a lightweight reflector . (2) The heat
of the lamp is kept away from the ballast
and capacitor. The ballast enclosure and
reflector can be stored separately. Reusable
quick connectors make disassembly a snap.
New
400 watt HPS (High
Pressure Sodium Bulb) and 400 watt
metal halide
conversion bulb.
WARNING:
Not all
conversion lamps are the same. 3 out of 4
are made to be burned in the vertical
position with the Base Up to within 15
degrees! Be careful, we’ve seen vertical
lamps burn out in less than two months if
used horizontal. This conversion bulb works
in any position.
New Die Cast Aluminum
Electrical Enclosure
The aluminum enclosure is
a massive heat sink with cooling fins. It is
designed to wick heat out of the
ballast. There is a ventilation shaft to
exhaust warm air. Again it has factory new
finish. So the fixture you’ll get will be
nice, just like it is in the picture. We
don’t cheapen the product by using the more
common sheet metal enclosures. that leave
the ballast exterior exposed.
Prewired 120 volt
Power Cord.
Cord length is approximately
6’. This can be rewired for
208, 240, or 277 volt. The power cord to the
lamp is approximately 10'.
Quality
Workmanship.
There are no sharp edges to
cut your self on. The edges are neatly
folded over. The reflector does come with a
protective quick release film. Stiff
structural aluminum is used to support the
hangers and socket. Two chain bails are
provided to hang the reflector by. The
ballast is not Chinese.
We didn't just slap a
light bulb under a sheet of corrugated
aluminum. With pencil and paper, we
figured out how light actually bounces to
construct the best reflector for you. Sure,
it's more work and takes craftsmanship to
build. But the result is an unusually
strong, lightweight optics that does not
trap light like a shoebox light, or waste it
like a batwing.
Compare this to the “batwing” or
“shoebox” lights that some people hawk and
you will see that this reflector gives you
usually 50% or more light for the money:
Batwings
are for Bats!, not
Plants
Look at the grow
"lights" that are being cobbled together
and sold here. Most of them have open ends.
Light flies out the ends of these “batwings”
and hits your walls. What a waste! Do you
want to light up your room or do you need to
feed your plants with light?
Here’s the critical and
costly
error
that
others make: They act like light only comes
off the side of a bulb at nearly 90 degree
angles. Light actually comes off of each
portion of a light bulb in all possible
directions. The truth is our competitors
have really blown it. They need to think in
3 dimensions. The electric arc inside of an
HPS or Metal Halide lamp emits light in all
possible directions as shown in the picture
That’s why we’ve built our large,
multi-faceted hoods to fully enclose the
bulb. It’s what required to fully capture
and redirect light down on your plants. Low
end fixtures are made by just bending
corrugated aluminum in a hump. Light will
fly right out the open ends over the tops of
the plants. Or the light ricochets off of a
batwing reflector and out the open ends and
onto your walls. What
a waste! Are you
trying to light up your plants or the wall?
If you want to grow plants, use this
reflectors, not crummy open ended ones.
Shoeboxs
are for Shoes!
Other common grow lights
have a hood, but not a large complete
multi-sided reflector like ours
has. You can’t throw a light bulb in a
little box and hope that much light will get
out. If you put a reflector with open
ends in a the box, light gets trapped in
internal reflections, bouncing back and
forth between the ends of the box or the
ends and the reflector or the reflector with
it's self. The optical efficiency of these
"shoe box" lights is so poor that hardly
anyone in the lighting industry publishes
the numbers. Typically only 40 to 60% of the
light generated by the arc gets out of the
fixture. You are simply not getting the
light you are paying for. That's why
we designed our reflectors with flared end
walls. Light strikes the end walls and
quickly reflects out without being trapped.
When you need Dual
Spectrums (HPS/MH):
HPS
bulbs usually make
more light energy than
metal halide (MH)
lamps. However, the orange
HPS (identical
to street light) HPS
spectrum is defective
so that it produces unnatural
lanky growth. On the other hand, natural
white light metal halides produce lush
compact growth with lots of leaves. So a
good strategy is to start under metal halide
until the plant is nearly fully grown. Then
you switch to the higher light energy
HPS bulb for
budding, flowering,
and fruiting.
You wouldn’t
buy used spark plugs, would you?…. So why
buy a
discarded light
fixture that
someone
“refurbished”
into a
grow
light?
Light fixtures don’t last
forever. Eventually the ballasts blow out.
That’s why we use all new ballasts, lamps,
and electricals of the highest quality. Yet
some guys, looking for the quick buck, buy
up discarded industriallight fixtures and
convert them into grow lights-- calling them
“refurbished”.
In general, you are
looking for trouble if you buy a grow light
made from discarded HPS fixture. The high
voltage pulsing created when starting HPS
lamps is very hard on the ballasts,
especially since industrial lights are most
often used in hot high ceilings.
Consider where these
discarded light fixtures come from. As
ballasts fail, its reaches a
point where it’s cheaper to buy all
new light fixtures than fix the old. As many
customers complain, it’s often cheaper to
buy a whole new light fixture than buy a
replacement ballast. It is simply not cost
effective to hire high priced electrical
contractors or rent lifts to maintain
fixtures.
Savvy building owners
often evade waste disposal regulations by
dumping their old light fixtures for cheap
rather than recycle them. So there is a
ready supply of nearly burned out light
fixtures available for you to buy as
“refurbished” grow lights.
Reused HPS fixtures are
especially troublesome because they are so
old. HPS was a very common industrial light
source about 15 years ago. It’s very
efficient but makes an orange light.
Eventually people have recognized that you
just can’t see as good and concentrate as
well under orange light as you can under
white light. And very high energy efficiency
white light sources were developed. So
around these parts, factories stopped
installing these lights about 10 years ago.
To me it seems likely that if you buy a
refurbished (reused) HPS grow light, you are
likely getting something that has had at
least a decade of hard industrial use.
Grow light
myths
Switchable Grow Lights:
They don’t exist. At least not
those that use a switch. Standard metal
halide and high pressure sodium lamps
operate at different voltages. (310 volts &
215 volts respectively). Just because you
can start the wrong lamp, or switch out an
igniter doesn’t mean you won’t prematurely
burn out the ballast or bulb, or reduce
light output.
'used to
sell a lot of ballasts to a store owner that
insisted on using metal halide lamps on HPS
ballasts.
If you want
to use metal halide in high pressure sodium
fixture, a completely different lamp is
required ( a specifically designed
conversion lamp as offered here)
High Output Bulbs
- A Tortoise
400 w bulb beats the
Jack Rabbit 430 w bulb.
Light bulbs lose light
output as they age. Fast buck salesmen like
to quote initial light outputs. But lighting
engineers measure light using “median” or
“design lumens” to truly measure usable
output as the bulb ages. That's why we use
bulbs that make more light over the long
haul!
Some companies may try to
sell you 430 watt bulbs that they call "high
output" 400 watt bulbs. HPS bulbs are not
like normal light bulbs. You can't screw a
HPS bulb into any wattage ballast and get
the light output labeled on the box.
So the high output bulb
ratings can be phony, even though a 430 watt
bulb will start on a 400 w ballast.
Manufactures data clearly show that at
6,400 hours (which is only 27% of the
claimed bulb life) a
Jack Rabbit 430 w bulb makes only
47,770 lms of light. Our
Tortoise
400 w bulb is making 48,000 lms then. -- But
it’s using ~30 less watts to do it!
Over the long haul, we give you
More Light
for
Less
Money.
Even when the Jack
Rabbit bulb is at full brightness
when first run on a full (430) watt ballast,
it is no more energy efficient than the
Tortoise bulb. After the bulb
ages it is actually less energy efficient
than a
Tortoise
bulb.
Why
lose $217/year
on electricity? ...Continued.
A standard 400 watt HPS Lamp & Ballast uses
465 watts. If you replace 3 "batwing"
reflectors with two of these, you'll save
$217/year
(Assumes e=$.08 and 16 hours/day of use)
