Lighthouse Hydro is doing it wrong.

Does anyone else think the blackstar units should pull air in through the sides of the panel and out the top, because I do. Outtakes are usually located at the top of our tents. It would be nice for the heat to be in that direction vs ambient heat out the sides.

A majority of LEDs will have the fans blowing in from the top at the heat sink then out of the sides, because that is how the heat sink stays cool enough to dissipate the heat from the LEDs.

A fan can't really suck heat off of a heat sink, but it can blow cool air onto it and cool it that way.

I honestly don't think it will make that big a difference. The fans on my bs500 are so close to the led panel that whether the fans suck or blow, air will move past it rapidly. But hey... I haven't tested this theory so maybe I'm wrong.

You could test it on your Blackstar and tell us how it works out. Take your Blackstar apart, flip the fans over, and put the panel back together.

If the fan would be sucking from the sides it would be sucking in more moisture than with the intake up top. If your fan is sacking out the top of the room like it should be then the hot air will sucked up to it anyways.

Yes you are correct when drawing heat from a heatsink/condenser/heat exchanger/etc it's always better to draw out the heat instead of pushing it through....heat rises(duh) so it makes it counterproductive to draw the air from the top of the panel


Edit: check any modern electronic equipment(computer/dvr/game console/amp/blah blah) and see that the heat is being drawn out(by the fans) off the units........

stak:7433770 said:

You could test it on your Blackstar and tell us how it works out. Take your Blackstar apart, flip the fans over, and put the panel back together.

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Or just flip the leads.

PSUAGRO.:7433806 said:

check any modern electronic equipment(computer/dvr/game console/amp/blah blah) and see that the heat is being drawn out(by the fans) off the units........

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That is true, but those weren't designed to be used in an environment where water is sprayed around often and moisture buildup is common.

ghettorigger said:

That is true, but those weren't designed to be used in an environment where water is sprayed around often and moisture buildup is common.

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Air conditioners, refrigerators..(water is a by product of these)..etc......still same design......

PSUAGRO.:7434136 said:

ghettorigger said:

That is true, but those weren't designed to be used in an environment where water is sprayed around often and moisture buildup is common.

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Air conditioners, refrigerators..(water is a by product of these)..etc......still same design......

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I don't wanna argue and jack this thread, but while that is true, I bet your grow room is more humid than your house, and air conditioners don't spray the waste water (that was removed from the ambient air) back into the air. I also don't think that a refrigerator's compressor sprays water in the air regularly, nor do I put my electronics behind the fridge when they are running to keep them out of the way.

Edit:
I was just trying to explain the reasoning behind that design, there is a reason for it

Yes the unit will not cease to function if it sucks up some water, but sucking up water every couple days for a year will cause some extra wear.

I have done both ways my 150w model blew air in but my 235w draws air out. My controllers are all IP67 so I'm not worried about humidity Ingress. I prefer to pull cool air in and blow it straight out the top where my exhaust fans are. This is good practice as hot air rises. The only reason my 150w was different is because like water air takes the shortest route and my 150 had no sides so the air would have been sucked in from the top half of the sides and not over the heatsinks. So I decided to blast cool air straight down onto them.

I agree that it would be better practice to pull cool air in than cause a high pressure system purely based on the design of the lighthouse panels.

Thanks for pointing this out TMU, I always assumed the fans sucked the air out. I never checked till you pointed it out and I'm voting that anyone with a BS flip their fans over. To me it makes no sense to run the panel with the air blowing in from the top down. The way it's setup, it will be blowing the hot air in that's it's supposed to be getting rid of. Think about it. So since I decided to clean my panels this weekend, I flipped the fans over. Pardon the quality, I snapped em fast.


I did this to both my BS 240s and my 5x60. If you notice on the lower borders of both photos you can see the BS240's aluminum mount/heat-sink. As you can see I took the rubber gasket that surrounds it and cut out sections of it. There is now some gaps between the mount and the case and since I removed the glass from the panels, it should draw air through the panel this way, though with all the vents on the side I don't expect too much air to be drawn in this way. I'm now looking for material to use as a dust filter for the side vents, I'm sick of all the dust that gets in the panel and fans. I ran the panel for twenty minutes like this and there was no apparent problems, but tomorrow we'll see if the temps in and around the grow change any. Good Luck TMU!

^^ Nice! You actually did it. I want to do it to so let me know how it works out. I want to be a bit experimental about it. iv got a temp gun so I want to do a before and after. Plus it wont be to hard to get a direct reading because, like you, I have no glass. Id have done in already, but I want to order detachable wire connectors so I don't have to cut the wires when I open.

What is the temp difference of the 1-2 inches from the top intake to the sides? I feel the design requires them to blow it down on the board for cooling.

It would be better if they would position the heatsinks between the side vents and the fans, so the cool air would pass through the heatsinks.
Thats at least how I would do it.

^^ These blackstars could no doubt have better designs. But that would probably drive the price up when what they have is "good enough". wonder how the chromes look on the inside?

I was thinking of doing some kind of before and after but I had 3 panels to do, and still have 1 more to go, so I said screw it. The thing that's annoying me is I set my grow tent up for the LED heat to be ejected from the tent and out through my filter which is right above the grow. Now the heated air will finally rise more freely from the panel and I'm fully expecting to be running the AC a degree or two cooler tomorrow. But still I should of checked this out before .

But if the diodes start going POP POP POP you'll be the first person I whine to TMU ! LOL


Hey Vilify what up. Two things come to my mind from what you said. One is you use the fans along with the heat coming off the device itself (convection) to help remove the heat away from what you're cooling and fill the space left by the heated air with cooler air. Blowing down on this messes this effect up, plus the hot air you've ejected from the sides is now rising up the side of the panel and being sucked into the panel again. And two, the mount for the LEDs on a BS240 is the heatsink so you can't do what you're thinking.

Now you got me all excited, but reversing the flow on the 3 fans on my 120w lamp had disappointing results .
Before i started the procedure the unit had been running and the temperature was 42.6°c with fan control at 50% - noise level medium.
After reversing the fans the noise level dropped to low, but the temperature shot up to 46,7°c - increasing the fan speed to 75% equaling
medium noise level got the temperature to drop to 45,4°c - but not even increasing fan speed to 100 got the temp down from 45.°c
I'm running without front glass, but the panel is not raised - wonder if it would be enough to compensate, something for a later test.

On a side note. On image 1 in post#12 the is a 'strange' connection to chassis(the red wires) besides the normal earth/ground
connection to chassis(Yellow/green) could have something to do with the problems peoples are having with dim lighting when
the unit is off, in other threads -my unit only has the yellow/green wire to chassis connection).

There is something about this thread that reminds me of a movie where 3 characters stands in a spaceship control room
and screams -Oh my god she's going from suck to blow.

^^^It's "Spaceballs", but I'm Colonel Sanders, okay?

And yeah I'm not too happy with the results so far. The only temp changes are an increase in temps above the fans and if anything the temps are running a tad hot in the tent, though it is a warm day around here. Humidity in the tent has dropped too, which is not making me too happy.

I've got two BS240s with slightly different cases. One has spacers between the case and fans and is blowing out at 89-90F, the other with no spacers is exhausting at 87-88F. I think I'm going to flip the one with spacers (or see if I can get rid of the spacers) back today and measure the exhaust but first I want to screw with the tent's environment a little more. The 5x60 is running fine, it seems to be OK running this way, but it does have 3- 6x4x1/2" (approx) heat sinks in it so maybe that's why.

And yeah Rasser I'm starting to think it's the grounding/wiring on people's panels with that dim light thing too. My 5x60's do the dim light thing when they're running on digital timers and certain analog ones. When I flipped the 5x60's fans over yesterday I added some small washers to where it's grounded to a screw on the fan and then plugged it into a digital timer. The diodes were completely off when I looked. I'm going to try that again today when it shuts down to see if it had something to do with it being unplugged for a while. I also still need to do the 5x60 in the veg cab, but I need some little washers to repeat the results. Maybe the ground was loose initially.

Let us not forget that these Black stars where designed to have air pushed through them due too the use of a flat heatsink/metal plate for cost reduction/are they still flat??
Their needs to be some other tweaks done too the design for it(adding a finned heatsink/ enlarge intake vents/ect.) for it to be effective and drawing out the heat. We need an electrical engineer to chime in hear......

Rasser might be dead on about the bad ground on the actual units/ I always thought it was a house ground fault/ not the actual units, god the things are designed badly

FranJan said:

^^^It's "Spaceballs", but I'm Colonel Sanders, okay?

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Yes it was, but maybe the warrenty deparment at BS are not far behind

And yeah I'm not too happy with the results so far. The only temp changes are an increase in temps above the fans and if anything the temps are running a tad hot in the tent, though it is a warm day around here. Humidity in the tent has dropped too, which is not making me too happy.

I've got two BS240s with slightly different cases. One has spacers between the case and fans and is blowing out at 89-90F, the other with no spacers is exhausting at 87-88F. I think I'm going to flip the one with spacers (or see if I can get rid of the spacers) back today and measure the exhaust but first I want to screw with the tent's environment a little more. The 5x60 is running fine, it seems to be OK running this way, but it does have 3- 6x4x1/2" (approx) heat sinks in it so maybe that's why.

Click to expand...

I'm thinking about removing the default metal fan grill and mount this kind on my fans:

It's should give better airflow and less noise.