Should my HID lights hang vertical or horizontal for maximum penetration?

Hey S&C,

The guys over at growlite have done a number of tests with this hood (check out the vids over at youtube), and apparently it blows every other decent horizontal hood out of the water! Even this hood with a 600w globe was performing better than some of the other popular horizontal hoods they tested with 1000w globes. The main reason I'm considering the hood is the apparent very even light spread, on top of that, as there are no major 'hot spots' like in a horizontal setup, it would not be necessary to use the glass, again improving the light getting to the canopy. I've done alot of research into lights and vertical light is said to have much better penetration, and that there's nothing wrong with well reflected light. From what i've been able to dig up, vertical is the way to go given a very good reflector - which this appears to be... the growlite literature on this hood is very convincing! Sadly, it looks like this hood is just that little bit to big in terms of vertical space I have in my cabinet... I'm trying to find out if I can get a good light spread with it approx 12" above the canopy.. as that's all the space I've got, but min height may need to be more...

Heres the skinny. if you have a flat garden horiz. is best(movers even better), for verts . stadiums uc's vert is best. reflected light is not as strong as direct. Remember the Inverse Square Law,the distance is not propotionate to the strength of lumens esp the farther away you are wayy less light than within a foot! the distance the plant can safely be without burning effects the lumens received.Us e the back of hand rule, place your hand over the canopy and slowky riaise it until uncomfortable if it was for you it will be for the plants, savy? So get the set-up that gets the lite closer w/o burning em. Don't waste light by going hoizontal on a stadium waste waste waste. The idea was to get the light lost in the reflector to go straight to plants so more could be grown or larger less numbered faster growing ones.I have seen it from the beginning flurs on plywood sheets to Leds. Heat is the factor so don't cook your plants until after the harvest, lol. And don't use the wrong bulb for either position it was not designed for, best is universals. keep finger prints off bulbs and please be careful if spraying anything!

i gotta question...
im very tempted to try and recreate heath's flowing tube vertical grow...

has anyone been able to recreate his results in the past?
i cant find any examples of this

OGEvilgenius said:

They are completely wrong. Not shocked they'd say this though, as their business is reflectors. Cooltubes are completely useless (and a net negative in terms of heat and light production) in almost any setup. Go horizontal and there are better reflectors (literally almost anything is better). Go vertical and you're better off without a cooltube.

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I know this is old but do you mean better as in like the present day open hood setups.