A very professional look to it. Clever use of ducting there. Out of curiosity, why did you decide to use CFLs rather than tubes?

Thanks for the kind words. :)

Fluorescent tubes have a little bit of a dead spot at their ends. Approximately 6" on each end. With a 2' tube I had about 1' of good lighting and the tubes were 1200 lumen each for a total of 2400. Without swapping the ballast, I was stuck at that given the 20W max per bulb position. With a 4' tube, you have 3' of good light but my space is quite confined so I went the CFL route.

Tried to save a few $ too - this was the best bang for the buck setup for me.

Wow, nice! I see you took my advice from the privious thread, and then some. This should get your seedlings going for sure! Dampening off should be a thing of the past with this setup.

Just remember to put you hand under the lights to until it feels just warm. That's the distance that the top of the plants should be to the lights. You'll find that you can put them a little closer to the lights if you have a fan blowing on the plants.

Again, nice work, and good growing!

Here is a link that might be useful: somegeek's old setup

That's a damn fine fixture. Every bit as good as one they'd charge you $80 for without all the needless expense and the added benefit of pride in workmanship.

You can't beat that with a stick. I'm tempted to copy this design.

Man! that is a power house. Good workmanship too.
I have a simple one I made with the same Aluminum duct, but a two bulb socket that points opposite each other. Two 40 watt 6400K bulbs. Realy makes those seedlings get up and grow.
My thoughts on CFLs is that they are great with reflectors but too hot or too far away when used without a reflector. I burned some branches of my container tomatoes with bare bulbs that way.

Thanks guys. :)

Here is the result so far with some new seedlings...

Night and day compared to my previous setup. Looking forward to trying peppers and basil this coming winter.

I've had to rearrange the seedlings by height so I can evenly keep the lamp as close to them as possible.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but you can fight the height problems by pruning them back. In fact, even if I have plenty of room I cut back basil in particular as frequently as I can just to keep it in check. Also, it grows a lot bushier if you do.

Besides harvesting, I cut my basil back in the garden to get it to get the shoots to multiply... curious though - how soon can you start cutting back to force multiple shoots? I've been eye balling my starters and wondering this. I read three sets of leaves.

I'm in the early stages (wandering around HD, pricing things) of my first DIY grow light for my peppers. I could go either way, CFL or T8s, it's the shroud I'm curious about. I was thinking of making it purely out of sheet metal / ducting but I like the coroplast+peg board idea as it seems easier / lighter.

I pretty much failed arts and crafts, any tips on creation of the shroud?

Thanks for the inspiration.

Measure three times and cut once. :-) As long as you have a metal reflector, you should be good with whatever direction you go to build yours.

somegeek

Metal reflector... check. I'm even leaning towards the easier / cheaper / less professional draping of reflective material from the fixture or using white foam-core around the entire seed table, creating one big "light box".

We'll see how it turns out...

This looks great! Kudos to you! You are quite handy. Me, not so much....my stuff is basic and looks weird....luckily - the plants are taking over so their verdure is hiding the ugly...

I made one similar, I guess you saw my video. That was 4 years ago and people are still using the vents. I'd say the vent industry owes me, lol. Anyway I have more info now that it's 4 years later.

Here is a link that might be useful: Build CFL Grow Light Info Link