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Home / Blog / Uncategorized / Bulb Depreciation Is No Joke ­ Regular Lamp Replacement is Essential
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Bulb Depreciation Is No Joke - Regular Lamp
Replacement is Essential
This entry was posted on August 15, 2014 by Admin.
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What
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Start Up Firing: When your ballast strikes (fires) your MH or HPS
bulb, it sends a massive voltage pulse to the bulb that is much higher
than what the bulb runs at once it has been fired. This massive
voltage ignition slightly harms the lamp. This is the primary source of
blackening within the arc tube, which is actually microfractures
caused by this intense voltage ignition. This process will slowly cause
the properties of the arc tube to change, causing decreased intensity
and color shift over time.
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Temperature: Another factor that can decrease your lamps
potential output is heat, or lackthereof. High Intensity
Discharge (HPS and MH) bulbs create light photons via heat and
pressure. Air cooling a lamp will cause a minimal decrease in bulb
intensity. Refrigerated air such as that from an air conditioner or
when it is very cold outside can cause a noticeable decrease in
brightness. This decrease in brightness is caused because bulbs are
designed to be ran at specific, hot temperatures that burn the
beneficial salts and halides within them to produce the spectrum
optimal for plants to photosynthesize.
Old Age & Power Draw: As a lamp ages, it may require a higher
voltage to operate correctly. Digital ballasts can sense that a lamp is
not coming up to full brightness and increase the power to a lamp.
Unfortunately, magnetic ballasts do not. Instead, magnetic ballasts
will keep the voltage to your lamp constant, and the intensity of your
lamp will decrease. As lamps age on digital ballasts, the digital
ballast will attempt to compensate by increasing the power to the
bulb. So, digital ballasts will help keep your light output more
consistent as they degrade, but possibly at the expense of more
energy used. And this is no cure all for bulb degradation. If the aging
lamp requires too much voltage, the ballast will shut down as a safety
precaution. Your lamp may restart but it will continue to shut down
because the voltage requirement is too high for the ballast.This is a
typical sign that it is time to replace your lamp.
Regular Lamp Replacement is Essential
All that said, many of the beneficial salts (HPS) and halides (MH)
within the lamp arc tube that are used to create the spectrum we're
looking for is used up within 9 months of typical usage at 12 hours per
day. As these magic chemicals are burned off, the spectrum
of your lamp changes away from the photosynthetically
optimal spectrum. The intensity of your lamp will also degrade
over this same period by about 10%, depending on your lamp and
possibly even more. These two factors combined can lead to more
than +15% decreased yield after 9 months using the same bulb.
Growers House wants to make sure all of our customer's
understand this information. With this information, our customers
can make educated decisions on how to optimize their gardens and
their budgets. Including our crazy low price on Eye Hortilux 1000W
Super HPS Enhanced Lamps.
Happy Growing :)
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged bulbs, lighting on August 15,
2014 by Admin.
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One thought on “Bulb Depreciation Is No Joke - Regular Lamp
Replacement is Essential”
Kyle Thomas
August 19, 2014 at 7:01 pm
I love reading all your tests especially on lights and I enjoy learning the
more technical side of things but no where can I find a par output test
applied to the new gen t5 ho or vho flourescent light fixtures anywhere
would have been perfect to test the bad boy t5 in your alternative light
test instead of 4 leds so please test some t5s looked everywhere and
have no idea what a 6 or 8 bulb t5 fixturewill do Iin a par test you guys
have covered everything except for them but great work keep it up
thanks!!!
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