Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozark
We have lots of 4-foot double-bulb flourescent shop lights in and around our home - they're in my wood shop, on the patio, in our recessed kitchen ceiling, and every spring I raise tomato and pepper seedlings under three hanging shop lights, 6 bulbs total, covering an area of 4' x 2'.
I bought a case of 25 LED tube bulbs and I'm replacing all the flourescent bulbs with them. The bulbs I bought are "T8 LED Bulbs, 5000K Daylight, Ballast Bypass Tubes; 14 watt - 1800 lumens - One Sided Direct Wire - 4 Ft." We really like the ones I've installed so far.
I intend to install these in the shop lights I use for seedlings also. Those fixtures are old and I've been putting up with flickering lights, buzzing ballasts, and old bulbs that often burn out. With the LED's I shouldn't have any of those problems.
Possibly 6500K bulbs would have been better than 5000's for seedlings, but I'd like to use the bulbs I bought - after all, I'll be using 6 bulbs for only 8 square feet. Thinking that should work OK, what do you think? Thx.
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They sound pretty good to me. Their efficiency is quite high and the drawbacks of ballast luminescent tubes can really be annoying. And I am not speaking about the fact that they lose a lot of their intensity with age (up to 40%). If I understand right, you won't have to replace the fixtures.
From the plants' point of view, it's a good idea to have a look at their color spectrum. Not that fluorescent tubes are optimal in that respect. With 5,000°K, I wonder if the LED bulbs radiate enough energy in the blue wavelengths.
Milan HP