How regularly should i replace my CFL's? Will I tell by site??

i am planning on changing out bulbs after 3 grows saying i use different bulbs for veg and flower, if your using same bulbs id do every two and switch and keep those as household bulbs you might need or backups, because from what ive read, bulbs tend to loose efficiency i guess y ou could say even way before the 10,000 hour mark, but thats what im doind its up to your descresion and how much $ you may have to spend. you may see some growers use the same bulb for two years , but like i said its personal preference. yoou could always recycle your used bulbs for something if they still work.

Originally Posted by DO3SHA

i am planning on changing out bulbs after 3 grows saying i use different bulbs for veg and flower, if your using same bulbs id do every two and switch and keep those as household bulbs you might need or backups, because from what ive read, bulbs tend to loose efficiency i guess y ou could say even way before the 10,000 hour mark, but thats what im doind its up to your descresion and how much $ you may have to spend. you may see some growers use the same bulb for two years , but like i said its personal preference. yoou could always recycle your used bulbs for something if they still work.

I use separate bulbs for flower and veg, and mostly concerned about flower as I'm more willing to replace my veg bulbs regularly as they run longer. I worked out that the flower bulbs, are on for 3000 hours in 4 x 9 week flower cycles, so i'll prob swap after 5 grows, which is still less than half there expectancy.

I have started marking all my bulbs with a permanent pen so I can keep track!

to be sure, you might have to go to the manufacturer specs
not all cfl's age the same, but fairly similar
my veg's are pretty short, so i've been stretching the envelop on my 5500k's
after 3 years, they seem to be working just as well as when i started, just hard to toss something that still works

Hettyman: As you can see there are a lot of differing opinions on that. Aerogarden recommends changing their high intensity CFL's every six months. I talked to an electrician friend and this was his advice: if you want consistent plant growth do not exceed the manufacturer's recommended limits. Granted they want to sell replacement lamps but that 10,000 hour of operation is usually a good indication of how long a lamp is going to last. I told him that my hydro store recommended changing my T-5 lamps once a year and he agreed that was a good idea regardless of how many hours I have on them; like changing the battery in your home smoke detector on New Years Day once you get over your hangover. He suggested that they naturally get weaker with use and that there are a few things we can look for:
1. Darkening at the tips of florescent tubes; T-5's, T-8's and T-12's. He claims that's an indication that they're weakening.
2. If you notice that they're taking longer to come on to full brightness he claimed that was another symptom.
3. On the curly-cues: the ballast heating up and visible discoloration of the ballast casing.

What it all came down to was that the best way we might be able to check our lamps might be with a light meter. He knows I log everything that has to do with my garden and he suggested I record the initial reading right after I install new lamps, then to periodically recheck them and record the findings. He considered a drop off of more than about ten percent to be enough to justify replacing them considering what we're doing. He claimed that we probably wouldn't notice the difference with the naked eye until it was pretty extreme and that with a light meter we would have a better indication of impending problems. I know I'll be shopping for a light meter. I hope this helps. HSA