ya, this is the only thread on RIU that i participate in, i fail to see your point there. there are several other sites that i actively participate in on different aspects of cannabis culture. not to toot my own horn, but i'm also pretty adept at organic chemistry as it pertains to various extraction techniques. for any that are interested, here's a few pics of a few of my various oil runs (which generally take one hour, from packing the tubes to taking the first taste off the TI nail):
it can suffice to say that i take cannabis VERY seriously. i have studied horticulture and organic gardening at a college level for several years, and since i am an ommp patient/grower, i felt free to openly discuss cannabis cultivation with 3 of my PHD having instructors; all of which had personal experience growing cannabis.
due to finances, i had elected to have a grower other than myself last year, but in that time i helped them to increase harvest weight 40% with just pruning techniques and changing the locations of their existing HPS lamps. i've help countless other local growers achieve similar increases by educating them on various other topics such as plant nutrition, CO2/heat balancing for peak metabolism, and the addition of light movers.
i had also been learning about HID alternatives in that time, and found out about EFDL (i had previously been leaning towards LEDs), and also Inda-Gro in partiular, which I asked about at a local collective. the owner referred me to her husband, who owned a grow shop. he had a set of EFDL lamps, from a different manufacturer; a 200w and a 400w, both bi-spectrum. he donated them to me, due to my finances, and also due to the assistance that i had given at the collective, to other patients. and so there you have it. my introduction to EFDL in general had zero buy in for me. i guess yay for me, right? but see, one month into bloom, the 400w crapped out. the manufacturer didn't want to honor a transferred warranty so my option was to put out $200 for a ballast replacement... or put that $200 towards a 420PAR, which i, based on research, believed would out perform the 400W that i had been using.
and boy am i stoked with my choice there! all i have been trying to do is share my experience with these lamps here. i found this thread via google and noticed that there weren't a lot of them in general. i had already searched the forums on the other sites that i frequent, and they didnt have anything there either. so i decided to pitch my $0.02 where it looked like others had started tossing theirs.
what's upsetting, and i apologize for letting it get to me earlier, is that all you are doing is poo-pooing what we have to share, and it's not even opinion here. I HAVE PICS. I HAVE VIDEO. its you that has naught but (unfounded) opinion. i'm not trying to be personal here, but i say "unfounded" because you have no first hand experience with them, and we do. regardless if someone has a stake or interest in something that they believe in, that shouldn't negate the passion that they feel for it. all those people that advocate exercise, what are they trying to sell you?
as i previously stated, my passion is earth first. i love cannabis and indoor cultivation, but i wouldn't be able to live with myself if i actually tallied up an electric bill like my ex-grower ($4000 per month, electric alone), just for where i know those kilowatt hours come from... hydro dams that are detrimental to salmon runs. when researching the lights that i was going to use, to take a step towards my own self-sufficiency, i studied long and hard. before i put out a cent on one, i certainly had my mind made up. i know that it's rare to be gifted the chance to try a technology that is "fringe" by some accounts, and that's why i sought to share my experience.
also, Darryl is a good man. he stands behind the medical cannabis community with his personal reputation as well as that of his company. he's not like Sony or LG, where is one thing bombs, he can shift focus to something else... these lamps are his everything, and after using them personally, i can see that his efforts are quite fruitful indeed.
anyways, i just wanted to toss that up before going to bed... watering the plants is meditative for me, and the girls hadn't needed it for the past 3 days... so sorry for being grumpy earlier. off to some oil dabs for me!!!
take care yall.