can you use reflectix reflective insulation as a grow closet liner? is it safe?

hey does anyone know from experience or someone elses experience if you can use this reflectix reflective insulation that they sell at home depot. Will it effective at reflecting light and how willit handle heat? hot spots?

can I line my whole grow closet with this stuff?


http://www.homedepot.com/Building-Materials-Insulation-Reflective/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xr5Zbedf/R-100020855/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

cant get no love here or what

Yes you can use it. I use it in my veg cab with cfls. It reflects light decently, not the best though, mylar or flat white paint are better. As far as heat goes I can literally put a 23w cfl on the material for days(of course I don't) and when I touch the spot that the cfl was on it's cool to the touch. I think the stuff disperses heat throughout the sheet.

I used the stuff as outer walls of a pvc frame I built for a few months with 2 150's inside with cooltubes and it worked well.

Yes you can. It is great for keeping your heat signature low if you are worried about that sort of thing. Also it is good for keeping cold out and warmth in. As far as reflectivity, it is silver but with the textured surface the light won't be reflected as efficiently. Mylar is a great reflective film but offers no insulating value. You could line your space with reflectix and then place mylar on the lower half of your room over the reflectix. I considered using reflectix but found it to be too costly for my grow area.

Tyrannabudz said:

You could line your space with reflectix and then place mylar on the lower half of your room over the reflectix. I considered using reflectix but found it to be too costly for my grow area.

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great, thanks.

Actually according to their specs the reflectivity of this material is 97 % mylar is around 93-95 percent. So technically it is more reflective than mylar. This product can handle 180 degrees Fahrenheit of heat to the surface. As for the texture being rough and not a good reflective surface, it is not much different from the texture of the reflector on a light.

It reflects 97% of radiant heat, not light. Damn single-post noobs.

Yes u can use it, radient energy(heat energy) is a form of light energy, how do u think I.r. scanners work, they pick up the heat energy and in turn turns it into a form that you can see, they dont give it an actual light reflective rating cuz the product is being marketed as an insulator not a grow room reflector, the exact same product is used to block the sun in car windows, why? Because light energy is radient energy and if you relfect all that light back out of the car your also reflecting all the heat that comes with it. Not to be mean but I think alot of people need to go back n take physics classes lol hope this helps!

The 97% figure for radiant energy is for infrared. For visible light, esp. blue, the figure drops to the low 80s iirc. germania, i admire your pluck. However being not-mean about it is more effective when you're actually correct. Jmo. cn

To sayyes - It's not the best product available but quite serviceable.

I gotta say it does help when your correct... so do your research, infrared is light, just not part of the visible scale, 80 pull that number out your butt??? Lol they havnt rated it for visible light reflectiveness cuz theres no need to and since they havnt that number you said is made up dont be cool trying to put someone down when they actually paid attention in school. this material is litterally a mylar sandwhich, and has all the same reflective proporties, it reflects not blocks, therefore if it reflects I.r. it will reflect all visible light at almost the same percentile, I.r. lightwaves are long and thin and hard to reflect because it will slip through even the smallest holes (that's why I.r. scanners can see you through walls if thin enough) now u have a material that has holes smaller than 97% of I.r. lightwaves, that means you'll be reflecting the visible light at the same rate, if you really wanna to argue about how light works your going to be very wrong argueing with me unless your agreeing with me, not saying I'm the smartest Guy in the world but I have been through a lot in my life( testicular cancer at age 18 now 23) and going through all those machines and scanners made me wanna learn everything about them and how they work, my knowlage of light is imense. Besides that I've done meters tests with the material with my meter and I know for a fact it reflects 95-97% just a little math of a b4 and after its hung test with the meter told me , so the simple fact is is if it reflects I.r. it will reflect the visible scale just as well, what your saying is basicly my mirror will reflect my t.v. remotes I.r. signal but wont reflect my laser pen.... does that make any sense to you...???? I think not.. mirror only reflects 80-89% I.r. and coincidentally the same percentage of visible light, anyone making any connections here..??

And a quick lil reply its great to use because it doesn't burn your plant (no hotspots) because of the way its pleated into the bubblewraps it reflects and defuses beautifully

IR and visible light are both electromagnetic radiation; I certainly am not challenging that. However none of these materials has a "flat" reflectance spectrum in either of two dimensions: wavelength and angle of reflection. I am unable to find the reference, but I recall seeing reflectix listed as only 86% reflective (I did say 80s, not 80) at the blue end of the visible EM spectrum. "Space blankets" (a slightly different execution of the aluminized polymer sheet) are ~95% reflective in the thermal (0.8-3nm) range but only 70% in the blue. I grant that this is argument by analogy and not conclusive for Reflectix, but I'd be surprised if they sweated blue reflectance in a product designed to bounce thermal radiant energy.
Your using a meter is a good thing. Does your meter have a spectral feature, or are you taking a "bin" value across its detector sensitivity? How is that sensitivity at the red and blue ends? What trend do you observe for decreasing (more grazing) angles of reflection? I am not trolling you, germania. I am asking questions because reflectivity is not a simple scalar quantity, even though it is presented as such for simplicity's sake.

sayyes, none of this really matters practically. Reflectix will do the job quite well.

Its a full spectrum, yes u do lose light on the blue side but its not as much as your recalling, its 95% for blue side of the scale n 97 for the red. Think about the product itself how it works n how it was invented, bassicly a Guy took Mylar and put bubblewrap between y bubble cuz it traps air and air is a poor conductor of heat, so u save alot of space by being able to trap that heat and block the rest of the EMR in a small space plus its cost effective to take a product already being produced and put it through 1 extra step in production and call it something else and make more money for using the same thing in a different aplication, I'm currently in the middle of building a new grow box so ill take b4 and after readings again and post them in the next few weeks, you'll be quite amazed at the results, specially since I'm only using three 4 foot 40w floro shop lamps

i lined my whole room with it and noticed with the HPS lights, there is alot of heat reflected back from the reflectix. i left the reflectix and have covered over it with panda film on the walls only and notice a huge diference.

I have a question will the reflective insulate the hard kind u use for portable air conditioning units as good as mylar?