Follow the link below -- someone was trying to sell one awhile back and it looks pretty sturdy -- well built.

Here is a link that might be useful: Light Stand

obrionusa,

I assembled my plant stands from commercial chrome wire shelves and $8 four-foot 2-bulb T8 shoplights from Home Depot.

{{gwi:1768}}

I used 2' x 4' shelves in order to get four shoplights per shelf and four standard 11" x 22" trays per shelf. However, you can get 18" x 4' chrome wire shelves for much less at Sam's Club or Costco. The chrome wire shelves are quite strong and not weakened or subject to warping by exposure to water like wood is.

ZM (not associated with any product or vendor mentioned)

ZM nice setup but you'd be much better off storing your water/fertilizer on the bottom shelves. Those jugs have a tendency to spring a leak once in a while and water and electricity do not mix. Besides being a fire hazard it could put an end to ones life before you realize what has happened.

Now I need to post pics of my setup - which is surprisingly similar to zenman's . . . sans water jugs ;-)

Taz,

"Those jugs have a tendency to spring a leak once in a while and water and electricity do not mix."

I have always shared your concern about water and electricity. That is why I took precautions back in 2005, when I first started this form of indoor gardening, by waterproofing the shoplights with heavy duty duct tape, sealing all orifices in the fixtures. After a year or two I strip off the old waterproofing and replace it with fresh. As you know, commercial fluorescent shoplights are definitely not waterproof when you buy them. It does take a fair amount of work to waterproof one, because there are so many places where water could enter.

"...but you'd be much better off storing your water/fertilizer on the bottom shelves."

I need the bottom shelves for plants. In that picture, it was still early in the indoor gardening season last January, so I still had a spare middle shelf that wasn't being used for plants. Within a few weeks, that middle shelf also had plants, so that I didn't have the luxury of using it for nutrient storage, and all of my jugs went to the un-lighted top shelves. I use one of those "grabber" tools to pull the jugs forward from the back of the shelf. I get seven rows of water jugs per top shelf, with four jugs in each row. Since water weighs about 8.3 lbs/gal, those 28 gallons weigh a little over 230 pounds. It's a good thing the shelves are steel.

Last year I started using a heavy outdoor grade of duct tape to increase the durability of my waterproofing treatment. I also discard the gallon jugs after they have been used for a few weeks, so that I am always using fresh jugs. I adopted that policy back in 2005, after an old jug did develop a slow leak, which verified the waterproofness of the fixtures below it. Since then, no leaks. But I still waterproof all of my fixtures, just in case.

ZM

ZM I hadn't thought about duct tape. I use silicone to seal the lights but just from what might leak when I water. I installed shelves instead of a cart.

The shelves are looking kinda bare now but they will fill quickly. I just started planting seeds yesterday.

Some comments:

The main cause of a modern electronic ballast's demise is the eventual failure of its capacitors due to heat over time. Ballasts usually have both ambient temperature and lifespan ratings, and so do the capacitors. The capacitor's lifespan is CUT IN HALF for every 10ºC INCREASE over that temperature. It is a good thing, for cooling's sake, that there are some small holes and spaces between parts. Covering these will increase the temperature and can cause ballast failure in less than half of its possible life. The safest thing you can do is make sure your fixtures are grounded (have a third ground wire), and make sure they are plugged into a grounded, 3-prong socket. If your wall socket and any extension cords you use are 3-holed (grounded), they should be okay. That way, if an accident should somehow occur, the water will have a "least path of resistance" through the grounded fixture. Besides grounding, I make sure my ballasts have as much airflow as possible. I have had only one ballast fail in 8 years.

Fire is a fairly low hazard here - unless you water with alcohol, or something flammable. I have experimented and played around with electricity for over 50 years, and I can tell you this: So far I have completely failed to ever set water on fire, no matter what method.

By the way, if you are ever worried about rising water in part of your house, might make yourself a free water detector. You need to have a battery-operated smoke detector that has a TEST button which operates by touching 2 metal parts, completing a circuit. If you can, attach a wire to each side of the "TEST switch" circuit(whatever two metal parts make contact to TEST). Dip the other wire ends, about 1/4" apart, into a cup of water. If the detector buzzes, you can then use it as a water detector. Just run any small 2-conductor wire from the detector to the trouble spot and arrange about 1/4" between wire ends. When rising water makes contact, your detector will go off. And, except for wire, its a freebie.

Zink

Thanks for the tips Zink. I'll poke and prod the silicone from the holes. I'll be overdriving them soon and want them to stay cool as possible. My fixtures are all grounded. The rising water alarm is a great idea and would definitely be of benefit to aquarium owners and others.

Zink,

Thanks for the info about heat shortening the life of the electronic ballasts. Actually, I worried about that when I first sealed some fixtures, because some of the holes seemed to have no obvious function except possible ventilation. But the fixtures didn't feel much warmer after being sealed and they seemed to function OK.

However, I will re-think my waterproofing scheme. At least the duct tape is relatively easy to remove. And Goo-Gone removes the residual adhesive. I might even cut some ventilation holes in the bottom of the fixture bodies, allowing the rest of the fixture to act as an "umbrella" for the lights and their wiring and electronics. My fixtures are all three-wire and so are my timer connections.

I have been having some failures of the Park SL15 ballasts in my sealed fixtures. I recently purchased some replacement SL15T's. I have been getting better life out of my Philips T8 bulbs than my SL15's, and I have even had a couple of overdriven SL15's go out, even though they should have a lighter load driving just one bulb instead of two.

All that said, the majority of my SL15's are still going after several years of "sealed in" service. As you know, the ballasts are mounted in direct contact with the sheet metal body of the fixture, which acts somewhat like a heat sink. But my SL15's have not been lasting nearly as well as yours, so I think I need to make some changes.

Incidentally, Home Depot seems to have discontinued their second model of the $8 2-bulb T8 Commercial Electric Shoplights (I liked them better because they were narrower) and they have replaced them with T12 fixtures from Lithonia. I complained to a Home Depot employee about that, because I have no intention of switching to T12 bulbs, but I suspect that we need to "get the ear" of someone higher up in the Home Depot organization.

Meanwhile, I will maintain my existing T8 fixtures and use some of my new SL15T's to overdrive some more of them. My indoor zinnias seem to appreciate the extra light from the overdriven fixtures.

ZM

Zenman
How did you attach the lights to the chrome wire without them sliding around?

The fluorescent shoplights came with short chains. I got some 1-inch S-hooks from Home Depot and hooked an S-hook over a chrome wire and hooked the top of the chain to the bottom of the S-hook. That made a convenient connection that is easily disconnected or adjusted. I also got some wire chain at Home Depot to use as longer hanging chains to get the lights closer to small seedlings. It's easy to adjust the chains as the seedlings grow higher.

ZM