# 400W HPS with COOL TUBE. NEED HELP?



## DrFelterpus (Dec 3, 2012)

So I have a 400W HPS with a Cool Tube reflector.

Can someone help me with the idea of vertical growing with a cooltube/hps instead of cfls. I'm confused by it all


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## Canibus7 (Dec 3, 2012)

Never done a vertical grow...but my guess would be to somehow make it stand vertically....and surround the plants around the light...


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## Canibus7 (Dec 3, 2012)

like this


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## DrFelterpus (Dec 3, 2012)

And since my 6" inline is pulling from the cooltube and exhausting out the tent.... how would I hang it vertically trying to connect ducting from both sides of the cool tube


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## dwc rebel (Dec 7, 2012)

DrFelterpus said:


> And since my 6" inline is pulling from the cooltube and exhausting out the tent.... how would I hang it vertically trying to connect ducting from both sides of the cool tube


You would have to build a stand, with a piece of slot angle steel. they sell these at homedepot.


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## Whiteboy420 (Dec 8, 2012)

With flex duct it is easy are you using a carbon filter if so hook it to one end then thur the cooltube then out .


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## joker0020 (Jan 8, 2013)

grab a couple feet of chicken fence or similar, then form a u shape around the cooltube about a foot from it and train your plants aroung it, i first did it in my last grow with a cooltube and 400w hps and got 160g out of 4 plants


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## ManyAndVaried (Jan 16, 2013)

Light is way too low (height). The glass et al reduces lumens, and the whole reflector thing is wrong. You've surely got no better than 70% efficiency. Not bad, but way way way not optimal. I do about 95%....


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## ManyAndVaried (Jan 16, 2013)

Sounds like you're trying to use an extremely inefficient horizontal unit in an efficient vertical mode. That just doesn't work.

Ya gots to build an efficient vertical unit based on physics. (Currently there are ZERO commercial options for such) I'd tell you how I do it, but then again I might want to commercialize my system... Yeah, I know, this makes me sound like an ignorant self-aggrandizer....

But remember, heat travels UP naturally and plants require more air agitation than exhaust (ie, there is NO value in containing the air flow within the garden to a tube), and light travels in straight lines with zero loss per foot of travel. From there, you can build something easily 30% better than the best offered commercially.


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## ManyAndVaried (Jan 16, 2013)

To explain, Leaf has an efficient dark side (the top), and a lightly colored inefficient side (the bottom). By placing a vertical grow bulb in the middle/bottom half of a grow, you're gonna get bottom side lighting. That's inefficient. A vertical grow MUST have top side illumination.


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## joker0020 (Jan 19, 2013)

explain furthermore please


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## tumorhead (Jan 22, 2013)

I use a cooltube and 400w light, I'd probably just go bare bulb in the future though. I started horizontally to veg, then vertical to flower with the same light, just switched the bulb to hps from mh. I vegged for too long and the plants outgrew the light. Live and learn, I'll do a lot better next time having this experience. I don't have a scale but I got about a large paper grocery bag full of buds. I won't go back to horizontal growing. 



I got a shower rod I mounted in the closet, then I hang the light with a coat-hanger inside the ducting at the top of the tube.

I love the exposure it gives to the entire plant...lots of good buds...


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## joe blow greenthumb (Jan 22, 2013)

A bag full? How many plants produced that much? House much from each plant?


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## tumorhead (Jan 22, 2013)

14 plants total, I vegged them for 3 months then flowered for 3 so it was a long time. 

I believe doing it again i could do up to twice as good because I stressed them a few times from lack of water and nutrients, and let them grow too big before flowering so they grew to around 5' while the light coverage was around 3'. They were also rootbound big time, only in 2 gal pots...again I setup to do short crops and ended up letting it go too long for my setup. They grew 3x the size when flowering, I was expecting 2x. 

Some of the lower branches grew buds as big as the cola's since they were getting a lot of direct light. I don't have a scale, it's gotta be a couple lbs wet, probably 12-14 zips dry, estimating how many ounce jars/bags I could fill. I plan to keep around 4 ounces of the best buds and make hash with the rest. I've started iso and water hash batches with the popcorn buds and trim.


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## joe blow greenthumb (Jan 22, 2013)

I'm still horizontal but get that off 7 plants. I veg for 4 weeks at most. I used soil from Walmart and cheap fish emulsions and tomato booster. But I am running a 1k HPS. I'm going to have to try vert on my next run and see what it produces. I've gotten better soil in this run with ff nutes. Can already see a big difference and would enjoy a bigger with vert.


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## tumorhead (Jan 22, 2013)

Yeah the coverage with vertical is excellent, great buds across the plant. Also the heat just goes upward and doesn't hover under the light. 

I neglected my stuff the past 4 months, sometimes only checking it once a week. I did only organic nutes from home depot and lowes (mainly chicken shit, kelp, liquid fish), and didn't feed it late enough so it was becoming deficient right before the end. Also the pots I used are way too small, and I could have secured my screen around the walls better to tie the buds up allowing more light to more buds. 

Lots of room for improvement but it definitely gets more light onto more plant canopy being vertical.


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