@pet: you wanna talk expensive? Compare my sunblaze 48 against my Pro-200-PAR, one year projection:
------------------- Sunblaze 48 -- Pro-200-PAR
MSRP ------------- $280 ------------- $610
annual bulb cost - $120 -------------- $0
wattage ----------- 432w ------------ 200w
after one year, the sunblaze has had a raw cost of $400, but costs more than double the electric bill as the 200-PAR. The 200-PAR puts out at least double the light intensity of the Sunblaze 48, but it's greater PAR, and the plants respond to it much better. Depending on what 1 kWh costs where you live, the one year mark may be the break even point for the 200-PAR in this comparison. It's so funny how entry price is a common topic brought up in objection to these lamps, despite the better performance over HID lighting, but those price objections come from people that would rather spend many times more money over time in the form of bulb replacement and higher electric bills. imagine the breakdown of the 420-PAR vs a 1000w HPS; 150$ bulbs every 3-6 months... LOL, and you talk expenses... I think you are addicted to buyin bulbs!
@tet1953: i agree with you. Plants have spent several millennia evolving in earth's environment to come to their current mode of functioning. As such, the indoor gardener has the opportunity to craft a custom environment for their plants, one where the light is on or off at our whim, we set the RH and temp ranges, we choose when water happens, and how nourishing the soil(medium) is for the plant. So long as we have an understanding of the cause and effect of environment variables to plant activity, we are then free to change variables in order to control what the plant does (ymmv). It's not a matter of mimicking nature indoors, it's a matter of improving upon nature indoors.
I have rarely heard of hps catastrophically failing when a quality bulb was used unlike MH.....
I'm just curios about these panels/only other grow I know is at icmag..............
