DIY Reflector

I'm about 4 weeks into my first grow and I've had 8- 23 watt cfl's on 4 splitters just hanging down from above. So I decided I needed a reflector to make use of some that wasted light escaping above. I didnt have much to work with but I made two quite nice reflectors from a 5-Gallon bucket that I split in half and lined the inside with some thin aluminum I had had lying around. I have 4 bulbs per reflector and I can already tell a difference with the amount of light my plants are getting. I just thought this might be a good idea for anyone growing on a budget. Peace.

Nice one. My batwing reflector was made with a tall can (beer) and some highly reflective tape. It gives me better spread control then the $50+ reflectors at the hydro store. DIY is a way of life, man.

I just added some pics in my album of my grow. Let me know what yall think!

HipsterDoofus said:

I just added some pics in my album of my grow. Let me know what yall think!

Click to expand...

That's too funny. I have a reflector made from cutting a bucket in half too. I think I have that same fan in one of my rooms for air movement too. Is that one of those RE ones from Target? Mine is mounted to the wall and blows across the plants.
I'll get a pic of my bucket reflector and post it. I'm not using it right now because I went a different route a couple days ago. I'll post a pic of the new one too to give you an idea of another option available to you for $6 or $7.

sorry I've been lagging but I sem to have thrown the bucket reflector away so no pics. I remembered saying I'd post pics of it and my other CFL reflector as I was cutting the CFL reflector up today.

Here's a couple pics of what I did for ultra cheap DIY CFL reflectors. The small reflector used to ba a little different and I'm not happy with how it came out today so I'll make another one.

All these are is some galvanized sheetmetal air vent pipe from Home Depot (5"X60") that was like $7 or something. The bigger one that's in the flower room is attached to a wood frame but that's only so I could hang so many clamp lights off it.

Looks good, I'm about to start flowering soon. So I might give that a try when I put some more lights in. I'm def going to add some of those clamp lights for more side coverage.Thanks for the ideas.

The reflector in the third pic used to be different. It used to be longer and have sockets from three clamp lights mounted in it so they'd hang down through it vertically. I had the splitter "Y" adapters in them so there was six total bulbs hanging from it over the plants. Understand what I'm describing? I think it probably worked better than this setup but I wanted to capture the light that was escaping out of the ends. I'll make a new reflector like the one in the pic but I'll leave the one end long so the clamp light reflector tucks inside like the one on the left. I think I might rivet the clamp light reflectors to the hood so it's all one piece too. I think it'll be easier to manage like that.