Hey Alex what's going on? Where's our update? The people are clamoring for more!
So I took the glass off my Vipar last night. Had to be done and I couldn't be happier. The glass itself was very thin, and that surprised me, but because the way the Vipar's housing is built, the area housing the lights was mostly sealed off and was creating quite a bit of heat. Let's put it this way; my temps at the tops of the plants went from 86-88F, with all 4 panels on mind you, to 80-82F. Room temp went from 82-84F to 79-81F, so temp wise it was totally worth the pain in the ass of modding it. Plus it's even brighter now. I can see the dim glow of the 730s which I couldn't before and the whole thing is just visibly brighter. I've wrapped it in foil tape and will be sealing the gap between the case and the panel later. I did it last night but pulled it off just because something told me to and I don't want to fuck this panel up, at least not yet! I'm picking up some white electrical tape later so I can better isolate the panel's wiring. Then I'm going to put a fresh cover of foil tape over that. I hate that area between the lights and the case. It's like a light trap. My 5x60 is like that.
Fans may be next. The 120mm stock fans aren't too bad I found out. Fan-cooling.com makes them and MassCool sells them as model FD12025, though there may be some differences. Very efficient for their cooling capabilities actually, so they may stay but I'm gonna have to hack out those fan covers and get 120mm rubber gaskets and wire fan covers. That's where any fan noise I do hear is probably generating from and should lower my temps even more. I wouldn't mind getting some ultra quiet vortex fans though. I found one type that even come with cages and would fit perfectly but uses 3 watts, while the stock use less then 1 watt, (I think). I need to check out the fan drivers next time I'm playing with it to see if I can just upgrade the fans, and not have to upgrade the driver too. Adding a PWM fan controller is not too far fetched either if the driver is putting out enough watts. There's a company that makes one with digital fan controls and 5 digital thermometers , all with a digital display that could be fit in a few places. That would rock
Looks like my warranty is going to the wayside
. And just for the record build quality was very good, though I did find 2 screws holding on the heat-sinks misaligned, but that was an easy fix. Wiring was perfect and it broke my heart to cut the ties grouping them together. I also really appreciated how Vipar has the panel isolated from the case and screws. It's simple really, just gaskets and plastic washers, but still a nice touch. And cutting out the silicone holding the glass on sucked because of the perfect sealing job
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Take Care and Happy Growing Alex!