Using Automotive HIDs for a grow....??

I Have a spare set of an HID set up and was wondering if they would be good for a grow. The ones i have are about the same specs as these ones im going to post below. I believe the bulbs i have are 8000k in color. more blue. My ?s are would these be good for veg and flowering? id be running two of the bulbs. the way i see it is that they are very small, bright, they put off a bit of heat but managable, and are on the inexpensive side nowadays.

Any other pros/cons concerns. You light gurus plz chime in!! im in the middle of a grow with 2 plants, cfls in soil. just sexed today GIRLSS YAY!!! no balls lol

eBay Motors: HID XENON CONVERSION KIT H1 H3 H4 H7 H8 H9 H10 6000k (item 190263842982 end time Nov-08-08 16:56:04 PST)

comeon no one knows??

i dont think anyone has ever tried growing with headlights before. Could work, i dunno

i may just try it to see what happens. there are also alot of other color temps aswell. id just like to hear some feedback before i try it out

The color temps are spot on. I wonder what the lumen output is? If the lumens are high enough then yes, growing with a cars headlight is indeed possible. Temps of the bulbs shouldnt be an issue either. Only problem would be wiring them to a 120v wall outlet.

Doing alittle quick research it appears as though you have a possible Lumen output of anywhere between 2800 and 4200 lumen's per bulb. There is no reason why this shouldn't work in theory.

http://www.omegaxenon.com/index.html (I understand there not exactly the same in product name but similar product)

The answer is no, this will be completely inefficient. When you switch to flowering, you will be in the completely wrong spectrum, as you will need to be more in the red spectrum, around 3000k or so. In short, I think you would be wasting your time trying this setup. You are trying to reinvent the wheel here.

I don't think that these would be any better than CFL's in all honesty. Unless you're going to use several sets of these lights, it won't be worth it, as they won't have much canopy penetration. If you combine that with the heat that these will put out, you can see you would be better off with a HPS or using several CFL's. Lumens don't add, so save you cash and buy some CFL's or a low wattage HPS.

u know what they very well may work for the veg cus i was going to install im my car and there like 35-50 watts each

They run on 12v and you'd need more than just a wall wart to drive them. If you did want to do it to just prove it's possible then you'd need around 3-5 pairs of lights to do any real good and a 12v industrial sized power supply.

The power supply would take up about the same space as the entire grow area and throw about the same heat of a 400w or larger HPS.

All that to equal less lumens than a $20 150w hps.

JohnnyPotSeed1969 said:

The answer is no, this will be completely inefficient. When you switch to flowering, you will be in the completely wrong spectrum, as you will need to be more in the red spectrum, around 3000k or so. In short, I think you would be wasting your time trying this setup. You are trying to reinvent the wheel here.

I don't think that these would be any better than CFL's in all honesty. Unless you're going to use several sets of these lights, it won't be worth it, as they won't have much canopy penetration. If you combine that with the heat that these will put out, you can see you would be better off with a HPS or using several CFL's. Lumens don't add, so save you cash and buy some CFL's or a low wattage HPS.

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I absolutely love it when they tell you "no, it won't work" without actually READING the post. If they had BOTHERED to read past the words "Auto Headlights", they'd have seen that they come in a wide variety of color temperatures, including one thats 3000K and one thats 4200K. Call me senseless, but to me thats awfully close to what we're using now, MH and HPS. I see no reason at all they wouldn't work, especially in a cabinet type grow.
Here's your homework. You get to be the guinea pig. Try it and report back to us. You'll get all the +Rep you can handle if you do that, and besides, we all want to know. Report on the temps, how the plants do under them, etc.
You could very well have found the HID answer for cabinet growing if they throw out enough light. $50 for 2 bulbs and ballasts aint too bad to experiment with. I got my money on the HIDs working. I'd bet they are alot brighter than CFLs, and more efficient.

I'd sat go for it man..experiment with that shit. Let us know how it works, and I might be buying my grow lights from Pep Boys.

i can just see headlights hanging from this guys ceiling...lol i dont see why it wouldn't work

its strange that they put out such low lumens from the other link, considering they shine out so far on the road in the dark, I have 6000k HIDs fitted to my headlight, full beam and spots and they are all very very bright, I have 2 spare sets of 6000k bulbs as well, need to get ballast to run them, also have a AC to 12v DC PSU, not sure if the ampage is enough though, but I be tempted to try them out on my next grow, I say 4 bulbs should brightens up a 4' x 4' x 5' box fairly well. might need a couple more I'm not sure but I too believe it will work.

they would seem to concentrate the beams instead of the round diffusion of cfls......

for power supply "i think" you could use an old computer power supply.... they are 400 watts and produce some 14 volts dc......

same for case fans..... 80mm case fans can be bought new for under 2 dollars a peice and just run them all off a used computer power supply

JohnnyPotSeed1969 said:

The answer is no, this will be completely inefficient. When you switch to flowering, you will be in the completely wrong spectrum, as you will need to be more in the red spectrum, around 3000k or so. In short, I think you would be wasting your time trying this setup. You are trying to reinvent the wheel here.

I don't think that these would be any better than CFL's in all honesty. Unless you're going to use several sets of these lights, it won't be worth it, as they won't have much canopy penetration. If you combine that with the heat that these will put out, you can see you would be better off with a HPS or using several CFL's. Lumens don't add, so save you cash and buy some CFL's or a low wattage HPS.

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Im going to have to disagree why wouldnt they have good penetration? They wouldnt be like cfls because they are still H.I.D. . They light up the the roads so you can see at night im guessing they will penetrate.

lol and turn the high beams on every now and then durin the grow

Headlights produce about 2800 lumens per bulb. You are better off buying CFL's.

there wont actually be headlights hanging from my ceiling hahaha just the bulbs. same a if i used any other light so it wont be concentrated. the set i have is 55w 8000k temp bulbs. Now adays they even make them at a color temp that makes them red and purple so would that be better for flowering?

also i dont understand how someone could say dont bother its a waist of money, for one i have them already! no money spent. its an experiment. If no one ever did that we would all be ignorant. these fukers are bright! Also hooking them up wouldnt be hard. my idea was a small car battery with a trickle charger attached and all that together isnt very big. im not going for stealth so i dont care.

bxke1414 said:

Headlights produce about 2800 lumens per bulb. You are better off buying CFL's.

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yes they do, a regular halegen bulb does.

hids
3500K Gold Yellow 3,600 (lm)
6000K Pure White - Blueish 3,200 (lm)
6000K Pure White - Blueish 2nd Gen 4,200 (lm)
8000K Purple White 2,600 (lm)
10000K Pure Blue 2,400 (lm)

OregonMeds said:

They run on 12v and you'd need more than just a wall wart to drive them. If you did want to do it to just prove it's possible then you'd need around 3-5 pairs of lights to do any real good and a 12v industrial sized power supply.

The power supply would take up about the same space as the entire grow area and throw about the same heat of a 400w or larger HPS.

All that to equal less lumens than a $20 150w hps.

Click to expand...

I disagree,... by reading over the box and finding the bulbs rating and then finding a DC converter that has identical output you could easily run them together to run off one cord and plug them into 1 outlet...no bulky stuff except a little DC converter.