Hps lights and it's location to plants.

[Trueant1]

I want to know how far your HID lights are from your slipper orchids.
Many mottle leave varieties say they only require 400-1000 lumins, can a HID give too much light and burn the plants?

I have a new 600 W HPS, It is on a six foot light rail in the center of the room. I figure the light rail will give more light to "outer" areas and prevent too much light.

What do you all do?

Anthony

 

[NYEric]

Search here for posts on lighting.

 

[SlipperFan]

Also, there is a quite good article on lighting in the current issue of Orchids magazine (AOS journal).

 

[rdlsreno]

I use a light meter to measure as to how much footcandles I need and at what distance because the light intensity differs from light source to light source.

Ramon

 

[Rick]

I want to know how far your HID lights are from your slipper orchids.
Many mottle leave varieties say they only require 400-1000 lumins, can a HID give too much light and burn the plants?

I have a new 600 W HPS, It is on a six foot light rail in the center of the room. I figure the light rail will give more light to "outer" areas and prevent too much light.

What do you all do?

Anthony

Actually its 400 to 1000 foot candles, which I believe is about 4000, 10000 lumins or lux. (Double checking the conversions, lumins are based on unit surface area such as lumins per sq ft or sq meter, and the metric unit is typically used. Lumins per sq ft come out the same as foot candles, but lumins per sq meter are about 10X fC.) If you get a light meter the lumins will usually default to the metric version and you will freak out and try to hang your light about 20' from your plants. Typically I see setups like yours with the bulbs hanging from an 8' ceiling as close to the brackets as possible, and the plants on waist high benches, so the gap between the plants and bulbs is about 2-3'.