Anybody ever use T12's?

I have access to a plethora of T12 fixtures outfitted with ballasts rated for up to two 75w tubes. Anybody ever used these for growing? The only reason I am asking is because they are totally free. Normally I would just use my T8's but damn, that is a 150w per fixture and I have ten fixtures.

its not about watts. it more about how many lumens you get per watt. im pretty sure t12 have the lowest rated lumens per watt and t5 ho have highest

t12 arent that bad actually, not if you got a shitload for free.

I own & use t-5's as well as t-12 standard shop lights,im currently using 12's for my mothers & they work excellent,every bit as good as the t-5 units did when they were over the mothers.

My clone trays are light with t-12 & so is my flood & drain veg table,the shop lights work just as good as the t-5's did also,ive relegated the t-5 units to side lighting since the shop lights work so well.

For veg they are kick ass as long as you use the natural daylight bulbs in the fixtures,you can veg up to 3 feet with tight node grouping,after 3 feet im not sure.

I use 6 dual bulb 4ft long fixtures combigned to light the veg table,each bulb is 24 watts each.

you can't beat free, but i'm wondering how much extra you are going to have to pay in electricity to get the same type of output from t12 that you would get out of a t8 or t5. you could line a growroom with them but that's a hell of a lot of watts. you should do a side by side with some clones to gauge what the difference is. if it's a smaller grow you're not talking about all that many more watts, and free is always nice.

Alright, I am in the process of building an addition to my current room. I will hang them up and do a side by side with my T8's. It will be a week or so before I can get the room finished. Oh and they are the eight foot ones coming out of a warehouse my family owns along with a shit ton of 4100K tubes which are pretty much useless. The best tubes I could find were 5000K from Lowes... It seems that they are phasing out this style of fluorescent. Thanks for replying guys, I'll post pictures as I get the room finished.

For the record ive allready done side by side testing for veg cycle,this is how i came to use 24 watt bulbs in fixtures rated for 75 watts,the higher wattage bulbs offered no benifit,infact i have better results from 24 watt bulbs for one reason,heat.

A 75 watt bulb will burn the shit out of plants,a space between the canopy & the bulb surface needs to be kept at about 4 inches,with the 24 watt bulbs you want the bulb surface to he touching as many leaves as possible,the low watt lights will not burn,with light fading at distance lower wattage bulbs offer much better performance.

With the t-5 being 54 watts i was running an 8 bulb fixture,this comes out to be 432 watts to light a 2x4 veg table,the t-5 are a very hot bulb compared to a like wattage of t-12 being that the bulb surface area is so small there isnt as much surface area to disperse heat,this creates a much hotter bulb surface vs a much larger t-12 or t-8.

With the t-12's im running 8 24 watt bulbs to light the same 2x4 veg table for a total of 192 watts,the performance of the 12's is every bit tue equal to the 5's at a power savings of 240 watts,thats more than 50% less power to accomplish the same task.

Keep in mind that the low wattage 12's need to ride the canopy at all times,what i did was to secure the fixtures to 2 peices of 2x4 with eye hooks on each end & use it exactly as a t-5 unit.

Don get caught up in the t-5 hype,lots of very creative marketing at work convincing an entire consumer group to buy something that allready exists,under the guise of excellerated performance.

The pay offs are not there,use your 12's as i outlined & you will save alot of cash without loosing performance,i wish somebody had shared this info with me before i spent allmost $600 on t-5 units that i struggle to find uses for.