How often do you replace your HPS bulbs?

deno

deno

Well-Known Member
I used to replace my bulbs every grow, but now I'm wondering if it's worth it. I've got a 1kW if it matters. How often do you replace your bulbs?
 
deno

deno

Well-Known Member
Well, I suppose I need to replace it. It hasn't been used in 15 years, but I've got at least one grow on it. So are these bulbs pretty generic? BTW, it's a MH, not an HPS. Looking at a Sylvania for $53 on Amazon. Good enough?
 
chemphlegm

chemphlegm

Well-Known Member
no guesswork needed with a par meter aye?

I accept some degradation before discarding, generally every 1.5 yrs. I dont know how to change with every cycle, as my lights are on non stop daily in a perpetual continuing harvest, with plants of all different ages in the flowering room full time.

my last t5 bulb change was recent but was years before that. they were degraded but I didnt care in veg.

hps;

But this Ushio has been burning for three with very little loss over time. Ima sticking with the Ushio for now.
I absolutely loved the badass bulbs, best performance ever, but she degrades quickly. Digilux was super fine to grow with, and little degradation, but my gen ready ballasts dont play nice with them, so I scrapped the digilux.

a meter is 30 bucks, lasts forever and will keep good bulbs from seeing the trash bin prematurely.
 
OrganicGorilla

OrganicGorilla

Well-Known Member
I used to replace every other grow. 2 grows and in the trash.
I've since converted over to LED COBs. Gunna be nice not having to replace these for about 10 years :bigjoint:
 
jarvild

jarvild

Well-Known Member
Metal halides every 4-6 months, HPS every 9 months. But I'm almost a year on my 6-750 pro-flex de and it's still doing great.
 
deno

deno

Well-Known Member
I'll probably eventually go LED, but I'm going to let the dust settle for now. Right now I just want to get up and running, after such a long break. I'm also interested in a light meter recommendation.
 
PSUAGRO.

PSUAGRO.

Well-Known Member
You can also use a cheap killawatt meter from homedepot/lowes....... set it on the power factor.

Brand new, decent setup should be around 0.98..... once it ages/ drops to 0.93 or under you've lost about +/- 10% of output and should be replaced. Obviously this testing should be done at full brightness of the hps lamp.

Good luck
 
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deno

deno

Well-Known Member
Kerovan said:
Does your ballast do both mh and hps? For flowering you definitely want hps not mh.
Click to expand...
Just MH. I bought it about 30 years ago. Took a 15 year break while my son was in the house. I get pretty good yields off of it, but I know they'd be better with HPS. I can get about 2lbs. I've got a circular light mover, so that allows me to drop the light pretty close. The real question is do I buy another ballast that will handle HPS, or go LED. I can't run two 1kw lights - trying to be stealthy. If I could, I probably would. Probably just run with what I've got for now, and maybe build an LED setup over the coming months.
 
Kerovan

Kerovan

Well-Known Member
I would buy a new electronic ballast that does both, you've already got the fixture. Led's aren't going to get you the same yields as a hps, and for a grow as big as yours sounds they would cost you a fortune for good ones.
 
SoOLED

SoOLED

Well-Known Member
when I was running SE 1k HPS it ws about every three runs. you can tell with your eyes when they started to dim, it was a spectrum shift and things had a bit more shade.

we gave them to this guy who, some how would recycle them for a bit of cash; I have no idea what he was doing.
 
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