Timers on Fluorescent Grow Lights
by Michael E. Basham
(Virginia)
For fluorescent grow lights, I've read that it is best to use mechanical timers as opposed to digital timers. Supposedly, the electronic ones can sometimes blow out the ballast in a compact fluorescent light (CFL). What are your recommendations on this subject?
Answer: Michael- Personally, I have always used fluorescent grow lights for the vegetative stage and HPS lights for flowering. When my plants are under the fluorescents I keep them on 24 hours a day, so there has never been any need for me to use a timer with my fluorescents....however, I do have a few friends that flower under T5 fluorescent lights (TEK lights), and per my recommendation they have always used digital timers and have never had any problem with them.
Now, the ballast in a T5 fluorescent light may be a little different than the ballast in another kind of fluorescent light (such as a CFL), and perhaps the problem truly lies with the ballast of a particular brand or type of fluorescent light....this I am just not sure of.
The reason I recommend using a digital timer over a mechanical one is simply this....eventually the little plastic pins used for setting a mechanical timer wear out, and so you come home one day to find your grow lights are still on when they should be off. This is a particularly horrible problem when you are half way through a flowering cycle....the whole garden gets light when they should be getting complete darkness, which causes some plants to go hermaphordite (which can cause pollination issues that were not a problem before that point), and causes other plants to be confused about whether they are supposed to be in vegetative growth or flowering....which delays the flowering process and delays the final harvest date of the crops in the garden.
In reality, whether you use a digital timer or a mechanical style timer, a significant electrical load is transferred in a split second's time (when the timer kicks on) to the ballast of the light you are running....so if a particular brand or type of fluorescent grow light had a ballast fail, then it probably would have failed whether using a digital timer or a mechanical timer. Thanks for the question Michael, and Happy Growing!
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AffordableGarden Design&Setup
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The Same System/ 10 Weeks Later!
