Grow Lights

Monday, November 10, 2008

See that small pile of timber in the washroom? It used to be stationery shelves, hence the holes for shelf pins every three inches.

Poor Jupiter has been assigned to guarding it ever since the day we moved in a year ago.

I drag two planks out, together with one of the three-panel plastic backing sheets that I didn’t use on my 22 new bookcases from IKEA, and a carton of fluorescent tubes and fittings.

Here is my array of lighting fixtures. Two large fittings with no tubes; a small rather useless kitchen counter fitting with one spare tube; 4 tubes for a small fitting that has never worked properly, which is why a friend gave it to ME!

We will need but two small brackets. “It’s not a load-bearing structure”.

I tack two brackets on the outside of an L-shaped joint. Don’t those planks look terrible?

I rest the plastic sheet against the timber. There will be some overlap.

Here you can see that two panels cover one plank, while a third panel begins to cross the other plank.

I have plenty of plastic panels – 22 of them, still.

I will make use of the plastic-headed pins that came with the 22 bookcases. I have lots of them, too!

I lay the L-shaped timber on the workbench and tap the plastic sheets into place. I have cut a single panel from a second panel set, so that I have a complete panel on one side, and two half-panels on the other side. They butt up neatly leaving so gap.

Here’s the view from the inside.

I might cover this with reflective aluminium foil to increase the light thrown outwards.

Here they are, free-standing at last.

Yup. The inside is quite ugly.

Here is that small fitting being screwed into place. I’ll need more fittings, I know, but it is fitting to experiment (ugh!)

With cover and light in place, power on!

And here is how the unit will be employed.

It looks like a screen, but will provide plenty of good growth light over the winter.

Here's a photo, taken without flash, of the light in action after dusk.

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