Hi Terri,
I'm wondering about the difference between your T5s and and mine, too! Here's what I have:
Hydrofarm - Hydrofarm FLT54 T5 Fluorescent System, 4 Tube, 46-1/4" x 13" x 2-3/8"
Maybe the problem is my room setup, but I have tried and tried different arrangements, but no luck at all! When I can clean up the room, maybe I can take pics and attach them so that you'll see what I'm trying to tell you. Pics would be better than my way of explaining, I'm sure.
Ok, here's what is going on now: My orchid room is attached to our garage (somewhat like a rather large utility room...10x10x10...my husband's ex-electronics hobby shop). There is one small air duct blowing into the room from inside the house. There is also a return duct. As I was telling Royal, I don't have nearly as much light output from my T5s as I would if I moved them closer to my plants....BUT....there's the bigtime problem. If I DO move the lights closer down to my plants, as yours are, the heat from the T5s is way too hot on my orchids. (You should see a catt leaf I burned...almost half of it is dark brown--burned to a crisp). An example would be one morn. last fall: I usually run both of my humidifiers at night, but that's all. In the morn. I turn my lights and fans on, but one morn. I forgot to turn my fans on when I turned my lights on. I just happend to come in the room a little later that morn., and the temp. on my orchid leaves was approx 106 degrees, etc. Another example is yesterday. It was about 60 degrees outside, but the 2 sets of T5s above my orchids were hot enough to warm the room to 82 degrees and about 85-88 degrees on my plants. That's with both fans on. By the way, at this time, the distance from one set of T5s is 21"-down to the counter. I have the other one hung at 17" from the top of the counter. I have the two fans (one floor fan, and one small one on the counter) blowing over my orchids, and also 2 humidifiers in the room which keeps the humidity to approx. 50%. If I left the door to the garage open, that would most likely help the temp. a bit....(prob. not enough to make a good difference, though), but I would also lose the humidity from my humidfiers.
Soooo, if you have advice that would help me, please let me know. Also, if anyone else happens to read this, I would appreciate all of your help.
Thanks for reading chapter 2 of my book.
Vicki
Quote:
Originally Posted by quiltergal
Hmmm, wondering about the heat from your lights. I'm using 2 4' T5s per shelf (3 shelves) and I'm not having any trouble with heat. I do leave the orchid room door open so maybe most of the heat dissipates into the rest of the house. I have one shelf in particular that is very close to the lights....like so close the spikes are growing between the two bulbs. I don't run fans either.
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I'm also using the 6400K, 54W bulbs. I have burned a leaf or two, but only when they were actually touching a bulb.
I'm sure he'd have a better suggestion.
Hybrid Mode
