Metal Halide/fire hazard

[Anonymous]

Somebody please ease my mind and tell me that my 400 watt MH isn't going to catch my house on fire. Its a retrofit kit, and the reflector/mogul box is mounted directly to plywood. I worked with them for a decade, but never worried much until now, when its in my own home. Now I'm kind of OCD about it.

 

[Anonymous]

Use metal, not wood. Remember, incandescent lamps and halide lamps have metal filaments that heat up to their color temperatures.

 

[Anonymous]

metal halides are plasma-based arc lamps.

 

[ChrisRD]

Personally I would use a few washers/spacers to provide a gap between the wood and the reflector.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm gonna look for a real reflector (enclosed, metal and glass) at Home despot today to screw the mogul base into instead of using at stupid retrofit.

 

[Anonymous]

metal halides are plasma-based arc lamps.

Not a true black body radiation source, but it is about the same temperature as the surface of the sun.

 

[Anonymous]

I've always mounted my metal halide reflectors directly to wood. Got warm but nothing I would worry about. Now wood that was close to a halide bulb that was unprotected by a reflector would always burn.

 

[Anonymous]

metal halides are plasma-based arc lamps.

Not a true black body radiation source, but it is about the same temperature as the surface of the sun.

~5000 K?

 

[Anonymous]

These data is availabe on Philips and other light manufactor site, and I think 5K is reasonable. The temperature drops off dramatically near a plasma (you should know), so the actual bulb temperature is much lower, particularly for large bulb. This has been an issue for low wattage HID engineering, since you only can get so close to the discharge without melting the glass/quartz.

 

[Anonymous]

The wood will be fine setup the way it is. However, you bring up another point.

You would be MUCH better off purchasing a Lumenarc, LUA Stealth, ReefOptix or similar refelctor or pendant. It sounds like you have a crummy retro reflector and are considering upgrading to a crummy HID fixture.

The idea is to get as much light into the tank as possible. It can easily be demonstrated that those crummy fixture waste a large portion of the light.

Put another way: I can get as much light into my tank with a single 250W bulb and a good reflector as you can get with a 400W bulb and a crummy reflector.

Bean

 

[Anonymous]

BeanAnimal: I shouldn't mislead you :lol: the lamp is for several Amazon basin species of orchids that I need to bring in for the winter once the first cold front rolls around.

But your point is well taken, these 'chids take as much light as corals and grow hot and wet all year round.

 

[Len]

If it's in direct contact, it can char soft wood (has happened to me). Simple solution is to use some metal spaces. 1/2" does a world of good when it comes to cooling.