budget lighting

[jewels]

What kind of spectrum / colour temp / CRI may we expect from this system ?

Edited May 21, 2010 by jewels

[Jayba]

Halogen lamps have higher color temperatures than standard incandescent lamps—their light output contains more blue and green. Halogen lamps therefore appear whiter and brighter. Although both types of lamp essentially have a CRI of 100, the higher color temperature of halogen lamps provides more pleasing and vibrant color rendition across a wider range of colors. They will also create quite a bit of heat.

[Baos]

I know a guy right now using a 150w halogen made for plants with the purple/pink color coating. He has water hyacinth and water lettuce, plus a few fast growing submerged plants doing very well. The heat hasn't been too excessive either. You can locate the halogen further away because the light doesn't scatter as much and still makes it there.

[JLake]

For growing any plants these lights are certainly not the best.Lumens per watt too low, doesnt have much if any watts in the PAR zone. Nothing touches HID for growing anything indoors(except maybe LCD but very expensive), cfl is a distant second, T5 and T8 will grows plants but at a much reduced rate than even the lowest watt hid. The farther ant light is away from the plants reduces the amount of light it gets. The inverse square law, the law affirms that the intensity of light changes in inverse proportion to the square of the distance.

I=L/D2

intensity=light output/ distance squared.

The trick is to find the right medium between the bulb burning the plant and giving maximum par watts. Closest the better in all cases without burning.

Edited May 21, 2010 by JLake