Tower of Flower

Tower of Flower

I want to develop a modular lighting system using CFLs. I.E., expandable, so lights can be added or removed as needed. My Criteria are:
1) should be made as much as possible from commonly available materials
2) should require minimal skill to construct and maintain
3) should be lightweight, so it can be moved easily
4) should be safe (minimal profusion of wiring, etc)
5) should be fairly easy to breakdown for storage or transportation

My first effort was a simple PVC rack, which looked like a towel rack (confiscated by police, no known pictures remain) covered in reflector clamp lamps, braced in place by wires. This model was unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, it was top-heavy, and clamp lamps have a disconcerting habit of falling down, damaging plants (hence the wire braces). also, each lamp had its own cord, resulting in a "strangualting octopus" of cords.

I'm posting some pics of my newest hydro tank (swamp cooler pump and sprayers, will add air pump and stone) and my model 2 lighting system.

It was difficult to get the wires back into the tubing after splicing them. i tried small wire nuts, and also tried electrical tape, neither is satisfactory. I don't want to have spliced wires out in the open, but if I don't splice, I'm back to having a wire-octopus situation.

I'm thinking about model 3, which will be more flexible in light placement, i.e., allow height of each lamp to be changed... since the plants grow, and don't all grow at the same rate.

Metal clotheshangers could be drilled and ziptied to the pvc in order to give you sturdy flexible socket mounts.. More wire needed, but that can be run through the pvc and along the hanger..

Ok, developments. I built a simpler variation on the first rack.
I've also built a couple of 3-lamp racks to go over soil pots. (can either be one lamp per pot, or 2-3, depending on how the lamps are aimed) and I used two different ways to make the central lamp raisable/lowerable. Hope to have pictures in a few days.
My preferred new method to allow lamps to be raised/lowered individually, is to mount a lamp holder on the end of a PVC pipe, and set this in a PVC "T" which has been drilled all the way through from the side connector, so that the pipe can slide freely. the T is mounted in the middle of a horizontal bar at the top of the rack, the pipe with the lamp hangs vertically from it. a hose clamp, or a spring clamp can be used to hold up the pipe at the desired height. A six-lamp rack for hydro tank is planned within a week, using this system. Doing it this way requires the lamp wiring to be mostly external, which is ugly and inelegant, but it works.it can be made a little neater with zip ties.
The other method I used for raising/lowering was to use a vertical threaded pipe, of the type used to build table lamps, with a porcelin socket screwed onto the end. it is not an ideal solution, because the thread is fine, and it takes longer than it should to fiddle the nut down to hold the pipe up higher.

HOW would the sockets be mounted on the hangers? (fighting the urge to channel Joan Crawford...)

born2killspam said:

Metal clotheshangers could be drilled and ziptied to the pvc in order to give you sturdy flexible socket mounts.. More wire needed, but that can be run through the pvc and along the hanger..

Click to expand...

Drill two small holes where the orange turns to blue (blue represent hanger inside tube, orange outside).. Ziptie/tape/hoseclasp the non socket end to the exterior snugly.. Ideally have as little slack inside the tube as possible, basically sewing the hanger through the pvc.. It will withstand any reefing tension you give it.. For the socket end it depends on the socket.. Worst case scenario bend the hanger in a small zig-zag and wrap around socket to give multiple contact points to hoseclasp etc..

Here are the new photos...

here are photos of the new model. six sliders or "booms" passed through drilled-out pvc T's, each held up by a hose clamp. i coiled up the interconnecting wire by wrapping it around a piece of pvc pipe, so it would spring together and stay out of the way, but still stretch out when the sliders are at different heights.