New Hortilux 600w CMH bulb

I just happened to be looking at the Hortilux webpage and noticed a new product. They call it a Ceramic HPS with a red spectrum. I could not find any for sale anywhere. Anyone have info on this bulb?

BP

wow, this must be the "white" HPS someone mentioned earlier. Right off the bat, there are 2 big problems - it's not a tubular bulb, it's fatter like an MH, won't fit into my reflectors. 2nd problem - only 34,000 lumens? My Philips 600w HPS bulb does 90,000 lumens. So this bulb will be crippled by low efficiency.

You'd be better off with a 315w CMH bulb if you want "full spectrum". I believe those are also around 34,000 lumens at half the electricity.

I don't understand this mentality that somehow premium horticultural HPS bulbs are lacking for cannabis production. in my experience, they're nearly perfect for flowering cannabis. Best yield per watt, highest potency, best calyx-to-leaf ratio.

Eyehortilux tells us that regular HPS bulbs yield shitty, sick-looking plants at the end of flower? Then why do I get towering green beauties? This is bullshit. Eye Hortilux exists to sell over-priced products to a bunch of stoners who don't know about commercial horticultural products.

After two years of side by side test plants back in 2006-2008 the HPS bulbs were discontinued from my garden. My finding were identical to Hortilux.
I distribute clones and set up gardens in my area. Some folks prefer to use HPS due to the high photon count and I help them do it correctly.
HPS can grow towering plants with fine buds, but the effort and oversight labor is quite a bit higher than using a complete spectrum specialized for marijuana plants. The effort and stress level for full spectrum growing makes it the preferred method for beginners and commercial growers both.
The margin of error allowed is much more forgiving with full spectrum allowing for less hands on time in the garden. For many folks this is not a factor and the increased yields due to increased chlorophyll production trump efficiency.

My product costs triple what the average garden takes to grow. The government has set the price high enough that I can make a living even with the higher cost of growing. I do consider most gardeners greedy. I had a visit from an ethnic growers group requesting me to raise my retail pricing. It was strongly suggested that my garden would have problems if I persisted in reasonable profit.

Half my crop is donated to the less fortunate, the majority are military veterans with PTSD.
I was not visited twice.

There are as many reasons for a garden as there are gardeners, the choice of lighting is one of the main differences in the gardens.
40 year old information persists due to the illegal nature of the gardens, leaning was from those who already grew.
40 years ago HPS was the only discharge light that would not kill plants. In the 1980's technology completely surpassed the HPS bulb for growing, it is now the most inefficient bulb marketed for growing, bar none.

What's that saying, "science does not care if you believe or not"?
Weeds want to live and will do so under most any circumstances. But better lighting makes them grow better.

Phaeton said:

After two years of side by side test plants back in 2006-2008 the HPS bulbs were discontinued from my garden. My finding were identical to Hortilux.
I distribute clones and set up gardens in my area. Some folks prefer to use HPS due to the high photon count and I help them do it correctly.
HPS can grow towering plants with fine buds, but the effort and oversight labor is quite a bit higher than using a complete spectrum specialized for marijuana plants. The effort and stress level for full spectrum growing makes it the preferred method for beginners and commercial growers both.
The margin of error allowed is much more forgiving with full spectrum allowing for less hands on time in the garden. For many folks this is not a factor and the increased yields due to increased chlorophyll production trump efficiency.

My product costs triple what the average garden takes to grow. The government has set the price high enough that I can make a living even with the higher cost of growing. I do consider most gardeners greedy. I had a visit from an ethnic growers group requesting me to raise my retail pricing. It was strongly suggested that my garden would have problems if I persisted in reasonable profit.

Half my crop is donated to the less fortunate, the majority are military veterans with PTSD.
I was not visited twice.

There are as many reasons for a garden as there are gardeners, the choice of lighting is one of the main differences in the gardens.
40 year old information persists due to the illegal nature of the gardens, leaning was from those who already grew.
40 years ago HPS was the only discharge light that would not kill plants. In the 1980's technology completely surpassed the HPS bulb for growing, it is now the most inefficient bulb marketed for growing, bar none.

What's that saying, "science does not care if you believe or not"?
Weeds want to live and will do so under most any circumstances. But better lighting makes them grow better.

Click to expand...

So what kind of lighting do you use Phaeton? Normal HPS has a narrow spectrum in the yellow. This has a white light with a much broader spectrum heavy in the red.

Phaeton said:

In the 1980's technology completely surpassed the HPS bulb for growing, it is now the most inefficient bulb marketed for growing, bar none.

Click to expand...

semantics, large commercial ops are not running led for the best products. so what may be inefficient in one thing might well be very efficient another, i.e quality of produce

http://www.eyehortilux.com/products/CHPS600-PerformanceSpecs.aspx

I'm interested. It looks like a very short HPS arc tube.
From my possibly inaccurate knowledge; a ceramic metal halide is basically a normal MH with a different arc tub material so that it can run much hotter than a quartz tube could take. That arc tube material is very similar to a normal HPS arc tub.
I wonder if this bulb is just a HPS that runs ridiculously hot. They claim to get normal bulb life out of them. I won't be rushing out to buy one, but I'm interested.

forget semantics, how about simple benchmarks? Micromole per joule (watt). HPS is 1.9, CMH is 1.8, LED is all over the place but the best ones go up to 2.7. But HPS is hardly obsolete, 1000w HPS lights still dominate commercial greenhouses. LED saves electricity but still costs 4 times HPS.

The very best 600w HPS from Gavita or PL Light is around $400, the 1000w $550, 1190 and 2100 umol/J, bulb replacement every 2.5 years, so only another $80 for 5 years of operation. Only another $160 to run from years 5-10, etc.

Older post back to haunt me.

HPS is used extensively as a supplement light and as such is excellent in the proper setting. Like all supplement lights, its spectrum is severely lacking for stand alone use.
Cloudy areas (entire country of Holland) with outdoor greenhouses growing ornamental's find HPS supplements mandatory to stay competitive.
Lucky for us we are growing an extremely adaptable weed which is capable of adjusting itself to match available light. And due to the illegality and teacher to student learning, the techniques to effectively use HPS is widespread.
But as Hortilux is bold enough to say, HPS is far far from the best light to grow plants with even though it will function. Hortilux did not use the special techniques to get the most from HPS, probably because of the much closer tolerances that must be maintained.

Hortilux's new bulb having 34,000 lumens, well, if they are using real lumens and not the fake number 90% use then it is possibly an extremely good efficient light. Lumens are green light at 555 nanometer, originally specified for maximum human visibility. If the 34,000 lumens is in the proper ten to twelve percent ratio with the rest of the light then Hortilux has the best light made to date on the planet.
This is why I side by side all lights, including LEDs, before using. Company specs are worse than useless in most cases. I see lumen ratings for LED's that have no green at all, in actuality a true zero lumen rating. Those companies take a quantum flux reading and guess at a lumen number that sounds reasonable, but has nothing to do with truth.

I have a gourmet garden and help set up other gardens. Many feel HPS is the only way even while acknowledging my garden's buds have not been outmatched (yes they have been equaled) by the best available HPS bud, no exceptions. I manage to convince most to put a low cost CFL alongside, any color temperature they wish, all will have the blue needed.

I grow commercially the most cost effective way that maintains the harvests in the top 10% available locally. My techniques are not functional with HPS. I did side by side testing, as I do for all the lighting used.
Setup is done with three color meters, a UVB meter, and a PAR wavelength photon counter. Spectrum is not a mystery to me.

I report on my results for like minded gardeners. In the last ten years five out of six gardens I helped start discontinued their efforts. This is not for everyone. Complaining about how a successful gardener grows is not in me. A harvest is a harvest.

My explanations of the HPS spectrum and how plants respond to light are facts. Not something I get emotional about, they just are. Many of my techniques are foibles and I do not post about them, they are not replicable facts.

Eye Hortilux, being a company that serves almost exclusively cannabis growers, doesn't give us any actual benchmarks to use for comparisons, just a spectral chart. No percentages of light at each wavelength, and most important no PAR ppf number to compare against other grow lights.

The EyeHortilux bulb would have to be TWICE as efficient in YPF (yield photon flux) over the 400-700nm span to outperform the 315w Philips CMH bulb, and I don't see any advantage at all from the spectral chart.

Regular horticultural HPS usually has about 5% blue - the cmh bulb has 12%. 10% is ideal for flowering cannabis. Did they boost blue in this new bulb? It doesn't look like it. It just moves some of the yellow/orange energy into red. For ideal spectrum CMH would appear better.

Lumens are not a legitimate measure of plant lighting performance. Lumens are the measured value of what the human eye will see from a source. As a matter of fact, I tend to stay away from bulbs with high lumen values as that indicates a huge spike in the yellow/green areas that is not overly important to plant growth.

Hortilux ceramic HPS 600w about to hit market

Hortilux ceramic HPS 600w about to hit market

So Hortilux is about to bring this product to market. It looks pretty interesting to me. I have had good luck out of the 315 CMH (through Sunlight's LEC630), which has a broad spectrum and lots of far red. The trichome production in my experience seems to be better than standard HPS (or Hortlux Super HPS). I would be very interested to hear about anyone's experience with this light in case anyone has access to early release.

Spectrum


They are also claiming maximum performance from their ballast. As stated earlier, some Hortilux lamps are quite finicky on the ballast they use (primarily because many ballast mfr's do not stay within ANSI standards).

[url='https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=75616&pictureid=1812600']

I am holding out judgment to see how this compares to Sunlight's LEC630 with the Philips Green Power CMH 315 x 2 (current reflector of choice), but it does look interesting. Hortilux claims to focus light a bit more over a 4'x4' area specifically, with the thought of easy swap-out from standard 1000w HPS systems.

It is a bit funny that everyone argues so adamantly over which light is best. I have use Black Dog LED (IMO best LED), CMH from multiple manufacturers, HPS, MH, etc. All have tradeoff's you must deal with based on your priorities. Let's share knowledge and make each other better growers, not argue over what is "best". Happy growing everyone.

nuggluvv

hps is not 1.9umol/j.

SE HPS pushes 1.0-1.3 umol/j

CMH is pushing 1.5-1.7umol/j

DE hps is pushing 1.7 umol/j

crappy leds like vipar/kind (blurple) 1.0-1.5umol/j (depends on the brand and diodes used)

cobs are pushing 1.9-2.2umol/j

quantums are up in the 2.0-2.7umol/j

This is all according to white paper studies and sphere tests I've seen. I'm not a scientist, just wanted to clear that up.


I have preordered one of these 600w CHPS lights. It looks like it can be a good flower bulb, it looks like its going to be hot as fuck. I'm going to compare it to my 630w CMH, 720w cxm-22 cobs and my 780w vero29 c rigs.

I'll be posting about it when i get it. Should be like beginning of Feb

Im kinda stoked about it, heres why. All these lights we use are made for street lights, warhouses ect then they have been tweaked for horticulture. Save for some of the higher end LED diodes. Hortilux has built this light from the ground up with growing in mind. As far as I know, there is no other CHPS light anywhere. So, it could be pretty baller!

nm

Good read

The 630 watt dual bulb setups absolutely destroy, 1000 watts hps in quality and plant health. I really can't wait to see where this goes in the chps realm. Not buying now but with erates going up everywhere I'm definitely paying attention.

The best side by side that could be done would be a Hortilux CHPS vs 600w of Quantum boards vs a Fluence Spydrx Plus. Winner takes all.

-Funk

P.L. Light 1000w HPS's running on 240V do 2100 umol with the Ushio bulb, at 1060 watt draw that's 1.98 umol/joule. That's where DE HPS is going to top out with 400v bulbs from Phillips (Gavita) or Ushio.

https://www.ushio.com/product/hilux-gro-super-hps-double-ended/

https://www.monstergardens.com/Grow...ng/PL-Lighting-HSE-NXT-LP-DE-Fixture-Dimmable

mcnasty said:

hps is not 1.9umol/j.

SE HPS pushes 1.0-1.3 umol/j

CMH is pushing 1.5-1.7umol/j

DE hps is pushing 1.7 umol/j

crappy leds like vipar/kind (blurple) 1.0-1.5umol/j (depends on the brand and diodes used)

cobs are pushing 1.9-2.2umol/j

quantums are up in the 2.0-2.7umol/j

Click to expand...

thers no efficiency level that midpowers (strips/quantums) can hit that cobs cant, if you reduce the current. its the same tech

Is anyone running these bulbs yet?

Phaeton said:

.
HPS can grow towering plants with fine buds, but the effort and oversight labor is quite a bit higher than using a complete spectrum specialized for marijuana plants.

Click to expand...

Phaeton, which light do you use? I'm curious.