Check out my DIY Light...

HEy i was bored and had some cfls and an aquarium hood laying around so i decided to gut it...and the bulbs....haha, i wired it all up, put a bunch of electrical tape on it, a glossy white bottom from a box i recieved a sweater in for christmas, some duct tape to hold it in, i drilled two holes in either end of the aquarium hood, strung a piece of clothesline through the bulbs, hid the wiring behind the piece of box, and then pulled the clothesline taught. To seal the deal i tied a neat little knot in the rope...its pretty sturdy, seems to be really bright...really i was just bored and high but for those of you out there who grow with cfls there ya go...i'll probably use that light for additional lighting in my clone/seedling box

I think the only thing that i would worry about would be it catching on fire. Dry rope and cardboard touching the light is not good. I have just added 3 more cfls to my little grow room and it raised the temps in my room a little. I will check temps tomorrow. But i would change how yours is put together to be safe. But good job.

Nice one!

I made a CFL reflector from a length of 2x1 timber and some white card. I have 2x 175w Daylight CFLs in there, and it gives out great light for vegging.

yea i made this little thing cheap as hell, i was worried about them getting hott so i threw in my floro tube and plugged the cfls into a timer and left em on for a couple hours then off for 15 mins 24/7, seems to work great but i havent gotten a chance to really use them since my clones arent old enough to go into flowering yet (4 days old, little babies lol) and i got one pic of my mommies arent they pretty?

dannyboy1012 said:

yea i made this little thing cheap as hell, i was worried about them getting hott so i threw in my floro tube and plugged the cfls into a timer and left em on for a couple hours then off for 15 mins 24/7, seems to work great but i havent gotten a chance to really use them since my clones arent old enough to go into flowering yet (4 days old, little babies lol) and i got one pic of my mommies arent they pretty?

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no offence but that looks like hell. youll be a lot happier growing in that space if youd clean it up. I find that when my room is cluttered accidents happen and they are usually worse than anything i can do to my plants.

actually you can flower seedlings, they just wont get big. look into 12/12 from seed. cloneing is much much easier though, and takes out all the pain of males.

yeah, dannyboy, i would reccommend cleaning up some of that wiring with some zip ties, mounting your cfls in a horizontal position, and i dont think the saran wrap is necessary, imo it would be a burden when watering. DO you have any kind of ventilation in that room? or an oscilating fan? ANd i think having your cfl bulbs on that on for a few hours off 15 min isn't helping you out very much if anything it is harder on your bulbs and timer...as long as the temps in the room are sufficient, you can keep the cfls a safe distance from the plants w/o worry of burning them

danny boy....... You seem like you have a good hand @ growing....please please please. ignore assholes on this website and use the grow faqs. they will teach you SO many things that will help you on your first grow.
i learned by planting crappy schwag/beasters seeds and growing em out. took about 6 fucking grows to learn half of what was on RIU. I found the site and was like Sonvabitch! where was this shit when i started?
fuck..........i just lost my lighter for 20 fucking minutes till i realized i put it back in my rolling tray when i got my weed out.... stupid, stupid stupid

oh yeah if that is a mirror in ht e left of that closet.... take it out! they eat light really bad instead of reflecting the part that plants can use the most.

i just dont have a whole lot of room for what i need to do, plus im really cheap, i dont find it hard to navigate around the little bit of crap i have, ive been slowly but surely replacing things as i get money, right now im just kinda working out the kinks, and im trying to get things done quick cause i may be moving. anyways it was cheap and easy and it pretty much fullfills what i need to do with the space i got, im running out of room though!!!

Any lighting that uses wood and cardboard is an accident waiting to happen

yeah, i actually decided this is a prettly lame light....and i don't like 26w cfls anymore...but it was still fun to make when i was stoned a couple of nights ago. I tested it out and turns out the bulbs don't get very hot and it is brighter than my t12 light i use in my clone/seedling box but alot more hassle to move and position for good coverage...not to mention i gotta keep it further from the plants because just because the bulbs dont burn me doesn't mean they wont burn my clones

nice hood.

i'm gonna move this thread to the cfl forum.

itd be really cool if you could possibly put some mylar on the underside of it but before that i would unstring the fixture and use some high temp heat glue, expoxy, or gorrila glue to hold the wires and bulb sockets, and mylar over that.

yeah, i thought of that, or maybe just use that krylon spray paint that is made to adhere well to plastic and just spray the inside of the hood with that in white, then replace the tape with some wire nuts and the rope with brackets to hold each bulb...I put some S hooks on it so it's easy to hang from the hooks i have for my t12 fixture, but i still dont like it as well, but im not finished with it.

Jesushasdreads said:

HEy i was bored and had some cfls and an aquarium hood laying around so i decided to gut it...and the bulbs....haha, i wired it all up, put a bunch of electrical tape on it, a glossy white bottom from a box i recieved a sweater in for christmas, some duct tape to hold it in, i drilled two holes in either end of the aquarium hood, strung a piece of clothesline through the bulbs, hid the wiring behind the piece of box, and then pulled the clothesline taught. To seal the deal i tied a neat little knot in the rope...its pretty sturdy, seems to be really bright...really i was just bored and high but for those of you out there who grow with cfls there ya go...i'll probably use that light for additional lighting in my clone/seedling box

Click to expand...

can you post up more close up pics of the wiring please? Im trying to make something like this and need help with the wires.

Yeah, I'd try flat white high temp paint, and maybe some type of clamp or maybe high temp hot glue to hold the bulbs to the hood. You would be suprised how much weight, and how quickly hot glue can hold. I used it alot when making my led light fixtures.

this isnt really "diy"...

its just something you made.. nobody else can make that cause we dont have wat u have and probbaly nobody would want to

I took a piece of plywood and covered it with mylar...then mounted six 2' T5 HO flouros

I have just one question. If you had that hood to begin with, why didnt you just go buy a couple top of the line tubes to put in it and use it as it was designed instead of re-engineering something that already worked? It certainly would have saved time and money.

well it was this hood for a 15w t8 tube but the ballast didnt work....i was like let me have it i might be able to use it somehow. originally i was thinking of putting 2 or 3 single t5 ho inside there and daisy chain them, but the thing isn't long enough to fit even a 2' and i didnt want to go buy those for this project....so i grabbed up the cfls i used for my last grow and decided to put them to use. i came across this thing on the grow faq about taking apart cfl bulbs and just wiring them instead of the whole screw in deal. like i said, i was high and bored so i took what i had laying around and made this. materials used were an aquarium light hood, power cord, 4 cfls, tape, and posterboard. i guess not everyone has a light hood for a 17w t8 laying around, so instead one could substitute a long narrow underbed storage container for the hood and still have a diy light. im sorry my light is so terrible, dont try to make one, you might burn up yourself, your plants, your residence, because obviously this was a horrid idea. good thing it's more hassle than help...if you want good lighting buy a 400w hps from htgsupply.com for about 150 bucks or less shipping included, or buy a ho t5 fixture get a real grow light and quit wasting your time, you're not going to invent something better than what's already available.