# DIY Mod for Perfecto 10 gal Light



## hoppycalif

I have a 10 gallon tank I plan to experiment with, first with a non-CO2 approach. But, the light is a single tube 17 watt fluorescent bulb. This could be enough, but it might not be, and the bulb is buried in a narrow white plastic slot - no reflector to speak of. So, as a fun project I am modifying it to use two spiral CFL bulbs, first two 15 watt bulbs, 6500 K. And, I am putting in a DIY reflector. First, the Perfecto Hood:








and its removable light fixture:

















Notice that the light uses a starter and a magnetic ballast.

I removed the light parts, which involves unscrewing 4 screws and cutting the wires:









Then to the hardware store for parts: the sockets, ceramic ones to best resist any heat, a package of threaded nipples and matching nuts, and the bulbs:

















A lot of studying of the housing, how it was shaped and how the bulbs would fit inside, and a lot of sketches, and I decided I needed a 6 inch by 14 inch piece of aluminum sheet, so I went back to the hardware store for that, then marked it for cutting and used tin snips to cut it:

















The first photo shows the surface of the aluminum sheet before I started trying to make a mirror finish on it. The second, the opposite side, shows it after using 220 grit sandpaper, followed by fine grit coated cleaning pads, followed by #0000 steel wool equivalent polishing pads, rubbing with toothpaste, and using commercial metal polish on it. Still not close to being a mirror.


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## hoppycalif

A trip to Home Depot's tool department led me to buy a cheap hand drill model polishing pad set, with polishing compounds.








After using that to polish the flat metal surfaces as best I could, I bent the mirrors to a crude "parabolic" shape, re-polished the surfaces again, washed it with dish soap and water, and sprayed it with clear spray can lacquer.









The lacquer is now drying, so I started assembling the light.









And, this is where I stand with the project for now. After another couple of hours for the lacquer to dry well I will continue the assembly and continue the reporting.


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## hoppycalif

Here is the reflector installed, with the bulbs installed to check how much added area of the bulbs can get light into the tank.


















You can see from the reflections of the bulbs that considerable more light can be collected this way, but the reflections are far from perfect - maybe a third of the light actually gets reflected. So, the question I need an answer for is: should I use it this way, or add aluminized mylar to the surfaces, and why? I was able to get some very good quality mylar from nokturnalkid and jazzlvr123 that I can use, nice thick stuff, but I'm concerned that so many seem to have found that mylar isn't able to survive well in this application for over a year. So, what should I do?


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## SimplyOrange

when you replaced the pin sockets from the fluorescent did you just connect the two new bulb sockets to the power and ground? with the one starter ballast?


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## hoppycalif

Those are the energy saver bulbs that go into standard incandescent bulb sockets, with no starter or ballast needed. Both are in the bases of the bulbs. So far I haven't done the electrical connecting, and I don't think I have an wirenuts, so I won't do that until tomorrow. But, first I need to decide about the mylar.


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## SimplyOrange

ok so you took out the starter and ballast all together and just left the a/c plug for the new sockets to connect to.


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## Left C

Instead of the mylar, would you want to use a regular PC reflector?

AHSupply has the Part 36117 - MIRO 4 Reflector for one 36 watt compact
17.25"L x 4"W x 2"H 
Price: $15.99 
http://ahsupply.com/mcart/index.cgi?code=3&cat=9

Marine Depot sells a PFO reflector that's similar to the one used with AHSupply's 55w kits. It's 23" long; so it will need to be trimmed. It's $1 cheaper and the shipping may be less too since they are in Anaheim, CA.
Description 
23 inch Polished Aluminum Reflector for a single 55 or 65 Watt Bulb 
23" L x 3.7" W x 1.4" H 
Mirrored Finish
Our Price: $14.99
http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_ViewItem~idProduct~PF7131.html


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## hoppycalif

The light fixture housing has moulded in "towers" where the screws held the original guts in place. Those have to either be used to hold the reflector, or cut off leaving a problem trying to hold the reflector in place. I left them there and bent a zig zag into the reflector to get the reflecting part as far from the bulb centerline as I could. I couldn't easily do that with those pre-made MIRO reflectors. And, my goal was minimum cost or I would just have purchased a 2 X 13 watt AH Supply kit. Besides it is more fun this way.


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## Left C

hoppycalif said:


> The light fixture housing has molded in "towers" where the screws held the original guts in place. Those have to either be used to hold the reflector, or cut off leaving a problem trying to hold the reflector in place. I left them there and bent a zig zag into the reflector to get the reflecting part as far from the bulb centerline as I could. I couldn't easily do that with those pre-made MIRO reflectors. And, my goal was minimum cost or I would just have purchased a 2 X 13 watt AH Supply kit. Besides it is more fun this way.


I know that tinkering with things is really right much fun and you really like to do it.

By the way, here's some info. Kim at AHSupply told Fishy_girl at PlantGeek.net that he is not going to be carrying the 1x13w or 2x13w kits any longer. She may of bought one of the last ones that he had in stock. There just isn't enough demand for them, he said. But, he will still be carrying parts for them though. I sent Fishy_girl an unused 2x13w reflector that I've had for a few years. Kim hasn't carried these in a while.


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## Left C

Dublicate post.


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## hoppycalif

So, after thinking about this for a day, and thinking about those beautiful mylar reflector sheets, I went ahead and installed the mylar. I used 3M Super 77 spray adhesive, sprayed on the aluminum reflector surfaces, then just pressed on the mylar. The easiest part of this modification. Here is what it looks like now with the lights on. (Note that one bulb is defective.)









Looking at the light from the ends, to see how much gets reflected back to the ends of the tank:









And looking to see how much gets reflected towards the area in between the bulbs.









If this holds up well, and if I can get a bulb that isn't defective for the second socket, this seems like a real winner for increasing the light intensity for a 10 gallon tank. The parts cost about $15, not counting the bulbs, which cost $12.


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## hoppycalif

To see the finished hood, lighting up the tank, go to: http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...osand-diamond-black-substrate.html#post337735


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## hoppycalif

This light does a good job covering the entire substrate with light, probably high light intensity. Because the water is cloudy from dust in the substrate you can see the light pattern looking from the end of the tank:


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## SimplyOrange

very nice.
im in the process of adding 2-4 more 24" t8's to a hood w/1 t8.
do you think 60w over a 30g is good enough or a 80-100 is perfect?
i'll see how easy ripping out and installing the t8's are from a commercial light fixture.
it's about $15 cheaper for two t8's than going with something from an LFS.

where did you get the mylar?
i know TapsPlastic has some.


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## hoppycalif

PM sent.

I think 60 watts of T8 on a 30 gallon tank, if you put a reflector behind each bulb shaped to capture most of the light from the back of the bulb and direct it into the tank, will be close to high light intensity. And, 80 would definitely be.


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## SimplyOrange

thanks

i'll checkout what homedepot has in stock for the lights.


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## dekstr

Wow I had a lighting canopy that was exactly the same, except in a 20 high version.
Man... if only I had learned about what you did before I did wrecked mine.

Good job! Really helpful and informative. Now I know what should be done the next time.


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## voiceofid

the perfecto i picked up at petsmart now uses pc lights with reflectors, 2 13watts to be precise.. strange


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## hoppycalif

voiceofid said:


> the perfecto i picked up at petsmart now uses pc lights with reflectors, 2 13watts to be precise.. strange


If the reflectors are good ones, that lighting should be adequate for most plants. Apparently there are several versions of the Perfecto hood. The one I have was brand new, but I bought it through Craigslist from a lady who had not set up the tank, and decided to get rid of it instead. She may have had it for months if not years.


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## schaadrak

Try jeweler's rouge. That's what I use for polishing CD's.

Also, don't you have a rotary tool? I've found that those polish much faster than the drill buffers. Even on larger surfaces.


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## grim

what type of switch did you use and how did you wire your lights


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## hoppycalif

grim said:


> what type of switch did you use and how did you wire your lights


That Perfecto hood had a switch on the back, so I just used it. The wiring is very simple, since the ballasts are in the bulbs. You just connect one white wire and a black wire to each socket, then connect the white wires to the power line white wire, and the black wire to the power line black wire. The power line green wire is the ground, which goes to all metal pieces, from one to another.


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## grim

now heres the kicker do you think that switch could hold four lights cause in the car world it will over load almost all switches then you got meled plastic everywere lol


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## hoppycalif

I'm not at all sure what the current rating is for that switch. My guess is that it would handle 10 amps, which is about the lowest amperage a 110 volt switch is made for. That would be about 1000 watts, or 4-250 watt bulbs. Even 4-25 watt bulbs would only draw about one amp, so it is very likely that the switch will work fine.


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## grim

were did you get your bulbs from cause the biggest k rating i could find was 5500k from walmart lowes and home depot


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## hoppycalif

GE makes 6500K CFL bulbs, which I got at my local Ace Hardware store. I haven't seen those bulbs anywhere else. I now have 20 watt bulbs in that fixture, with the glass insert in the hood removed, so I get more light down to the water, and much less heat trapped.


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## grim

thank you i will have to check out ace on monday lol


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## hoppycalif

Today I started measuring light intensity from this modified fixture, using a PAR meter borrowed from Tom Barr. It is a very revealing test!

First, I wanted to resolve my doubts bout the effectiveness of the simple reflectors I used. To do this I moved the fixture off the tank and put it on a simple stand so I could measure PAR at various locations and distances from the bulbs. The set up is:
















I measured PAR at 11 different locations over the tank footprint area, for 8 different distances from the bulbs. Then I removed the reflectors and measured the PAR at the same locations at 2 different distances from the bulbs. I plotted that data for the location right under the center of the fixture and that looks like:









You can see that I get about twice the light intensity with the reflectors as I do without the reflectors. To me this proves that simple, mylar covered reflectors like this can be extremely effective, especially for those of us with a limited budget for lighting.


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## HockiumGuru

how are the plants holding up under these lights?

I'm considering modifying my light fixture (for 10gal, holds one 14W/11k tube), but I don't want to take the step to do so if live plants won't survive.


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## orion2001

That looks great Hoppy! Any chance you can shove some aluminum foil behind the bulb and see how that goes? I've always wondered how much worse they are as reflectors. There is also the lack of consensus on how good diffuse white reflectors are. I can't wait to see the rest of your data with the PAR meter.


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## hoppycalif

HockiumGuru said:


> how are the plants holding up under these lights?
> 
> I'm considering modifying my light fixture (for 10gal, holds one 14W/11k tube), but I don't want to take the step to do so if live plants won't survive.


My plants are not doing well. The actual light intensity at the substrate level seems to be too low, but I'm still experimenting to try to figure out if that is the reason. The tank now has glosso and rotalas in it, plus a small crypt.

If I had that bulb over my tank I would try to figure out how to get a mylar covered aluminum reflector in there to try to get more out of the bulb. I suspect that a tubular light like you have may suffer less drop in intensity with depth than I get with the CFL bulbs, so your 14 watts may give more intensity than my two 20 watt bulbs, down at the substrate.


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## hoppycalif

orion2001 said:


> That looks great Hoppy! Any chance you can shove some aluminum foil behind the bulb and see how that goes? I've always wondered how much worse they are as reflectors. There is also the lack of consensus on how good diffuse white reflectors are. I can't wait to see the rest of your data with the PAR meter.


If I can think of an easy way to get a white reflector in there without ruining what I now have I will make some measurements with it also. I doubt that I will try the aluminum foil though. I can probably keep the PAR meter for a week or so.


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## jazzlvr123

i diddn't read the whole thread so it might be stated already but did the mylar not workout?


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## hoppycalif

jazzlvr123 said:


> i diddn't read the whole thread so it might be stated already but did the mylar not workout?


Under the lighting forum I am reporting my results using Tom's PAR meter. One of my "discoveries" is that mylar looks like the perfect reflector material, but it isn't. Aluminum foil is much better. Glossy white paint is even better than mylar. This jolting discovery is easily explained: the mylar makes a good mirror in that it accurately reflects what light strikes it, but it doesn't reflect as much of that light as aluminum foil reflects. Aluminum foil is useless as a mirror, because it doesn't accurately reflect what light strikes it, but it does reflect much more of that light than does the mylar. Glossy white paint (and maybe matte white) is a good reflector in that it reflects a very high percentage of the incident light, which is what makes it white, but it diffuses all of that reflected light so the reflection isn't at all accurate. I hope that isn't confusing.


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## newbie314

Would doubling the layer of mylar help increase the efficiency


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## hoppycalif

newbie314 said:


> Would doubling the layer of mylar help increase the efficiency


I don't think doubling it would change a thing. It is the metal surface that does all of the reflecting. Light that penetrates that surface is lost, even if reflected with a second layer. The reflected light from that layer would then be reflected again by the back side of the first layer, so very little would make it through to augment the first layer reflection. Aluminum foil is cheap, easy to buy, and works best. Or, just a sprayed on coat of glossy white paint is even easier to apply. I think I will stick with aluminum foil.


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## newbie314

My hood originally had the white plastic. Wonder if I should go back to that.

Unless the mylar that's shiney on one side and white on the other is better than plan white.

I thought my tank had more light after mylar.
Was real cool with the LED moonlight.


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## hoppycalif

I'm not sure white plastic is as good a reflector as white paint. I know in bright sunlight a house painted in pure white paint can make your eyes hurt from the reflection. I doubt that white plastic would do that.


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## newbie314

Yeah your right, never thought of that.


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## hoppycalif

Today I looked at this fixture and hood more closely. The original Perfecto hood and fixture has glass between the light and the water, mounted on a lip in the hood. The lip is about .38 inch wide all around the opening for the light to go through. The opening is 3 inches by 18.25 inches, so the lip reduces that opening by about 30% in area. That is acting as an aperture to reduce the light entering the tank. So, I trimmed the lip out with a utility knife.








I did some measuring of the light from the fixtue, using a PAR meter, and charted the results:








The red dashed line is what I should get if I replace the mylar reflector material with plain aluminum foil. And, that would, in total, represent a major improvement in the amount of light this fixture provides at the substrate level.


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## Tex Gal

Hoppy this is so interesting. I was under the impression that aluminum foil was NOT good, which is why everyone was looking for mylar. 

I have a 10g hood that is similar to yours except that the light opening is much larger. It had two small dull aluminum reflector with black plastic surround. Just 2 nights ago I used the spray adhesive and glued 3ml mylar into the hood. I overran the mylar to most of the black plastic around the light area. Visually there seem to be a lot more light in the tank. My plants had been doing well since I switched to the spiral fluorescent bulbs. I am anxious to see if they do better with the mylar.


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## hoppycalif

I know I was certain that the mylar was far superior to aluminum foil. I spent a lot of time trying to get some back when I was making a light fixture for a 29 gallon tank, about 5 years ago, and again when I did this 10 gallon fixture modification. It is embarrassing to be so wrong!


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## aquaphish

hoppycalif said:


> Today I looked at this fixture and hood more closely. The original Perfecto hood and fixture has glass between the light and the water, mounted on a lip in the hood. The lip is about .38 inch wide all around the opening for the light to go through. The opening is 3 inches by 18.25 inches, so the lip reduces that opening by about 30% in area. That is acting as an aperture to reduce the light entering the tank. So, I trimmed the lip out with a utility knife.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I did some measuring of the light from the fixtue, using a PAR meter, and charted the results:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The red dashed line is what I should get if I replace the mylar reflector material with plain aluminum foil. And, that would, in total, represent a major improvement in the amount of light this fixture provides at the substrate level.


What is the actual PAR reading after the Mylar was replaced with aluminum foil?? Just curious.

Reading from the begining and seeing your setup, reflectors would seem to not be effecient enough to really improve your lighting.

By making a reflector the full lenght of the hood will be better. This will give you full reflection of all available light in the hood. Just placing a reflector behind the light and no other place you are not really reflecting all the light that the bulb is displacing.

Also having a rounded reflector also impeds the reflection of available light. The light will bounce back into the light instead of reflecting into the water column. What needs to be done is to have angles that will better reflect light into the water.

I really think the bulB is also too close to the reflector cutting down the reflected light. What is happenig is when the reflector is too close to the light and you have such a large light the relfected light is being blocked by the bulb.

My final suggestion is to, if you can, move the light further way from the reflector and also make a sheet metal forming fixture with beveled angles to form angles on the reflector. This will give you the ability of reflecting the light away from the bulb and into the water.

The forming tool will be used by placing the sheet metal on the fixture and holding it down with a clamp. Then go at it with a hard rubber mallet forming the sheet metal around the wood forming tool and making sure you have good sharp corners at the angles.

Enough I think I can write a book here on this subject.

Also one last thing, you did the light testing out of the water. What are the results when you test with the probe submersed, if you can submerse it. This is the real test that should be done. Light is reflected out of the water at the surface of the water unless it is at a certain angle,where the light penetrates the water, which I don't remember right now.

THE END!!!​


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## hoppycalif

Not quite "the end"! Look at http://www.ps.missouri.edu/rickspage/refract/refraction.html, and play with the graphic calculator there. You will see that most light hitting the surface of the water is refracted into the water, not reflected. There is, of course, more to it than that simple calculator shows - some of the light is reflected at almost all angles, but as I recall, it isn't a lot. For example, I can't remember seeing a sun reflection off the water that was anywhere near as bright as the sun.

About the reflector size, location and shape: The location is limited to what can be fitted into the fixture, and I placed mine as far away from the bulbs as I could. If I were to build a fixture I would certainly allow more room. The size of the reflectors has to be such that the reflected light enters the tank - it does no good to reflect light into the ends of the fixture. If I were to do this with white painted reflectors I would use a full length reflector, because some of the diffuse reflection, even at a distance from the bulb, would still make it into the aquarium. The shape of a reflector for a complex shaped bulb like the screw-in spiral bulbs is almost irrelevant. There can't be a perfect shape for such a shape and size source of light. I tested my reflectors by just looking at the reflections from the angles of interest to me. They do reflect a full image of the bulb at those angles, so the shape is about as good as I could get. But, again, with white painted reflectors a different shape would have been better, and even with aluminum foil, with crinkles, would do better with a different shape, I think. Working with screw-in CFL bulbs is like getting blood out of a turnip - there just isn't that much to get.

I tried to use the PAR meter sensor in the tank, but it was futile. There just isn't room to reach down into the water under the fixture, hold the fixture in a specific location, pointed in the right direction. I gave that up when I found I could get just about any reading I wanted to see just by slightly twitching my fingers, and I never could be sure exactly where the sensor was located under the light. Doing that part right would require much more elaborate fixtures than I wanted to try to make. What I did convince myself of was that the readings were in the same ballpark under water. From then on I concentrated on comparisons with a known good light - my AHS fixture, in the air.


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## HockiumGuru

alot of great information here.

any conclusions as of yet?
Is the white plastic reflectors better, or aluminum foil? 
Also, You must have had some huge lips on the canopy of your tank to be limiting 30% of possible light. I haven't looked to closely at mine since reading that, however I don't believe the lip on my 10g is that large


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## hoppycalif

The lip that was blocking light was only .38 inch wide, but if you take the 3 inch by 18.25 inch opening - 54.75 square inches, and increase it by .38 inch all around, it becomes 3.75 inch by 19 inch - 71.25 square inches. 54.75 divided by 71.25 is .77, so I actually had 23% blockage of the light. (not 30%) By cutting out that lip I increased the area by 30%. 

I don't know if white plastic is as good as white paint, but it isn't likely that it is. A lot of things look white, but are really a light gray, and I think white plastic is one of those things. Good bright white paint is a very good reflector, which is what makes it look so white. But, it appears that aluminum foil is slightly better than white paint for light at the substrate level. The difference isn't big, but it is measurable. If I were to replace the little reflectors with a full length one, painted white, I suspect that would give at least as high an intensity at the substrate as the aluminum foil does.

Incidentally, I have covered the reflectors in that 10 gallon tank fixture with aluminum foil now, and the improvement is about as I predicted at the small distance from the bulbs, but not as good as I predicted at the substrate level.


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## ghengis

OK, I've now read this Thread about 17 times and decided to rip the guts outta my 11w "light". I'm dead keen to give this mod a go (sourced globes sockets at the local hardware), but I'm a little nervous with wiring this up. Can someone provide a wiring diagram to go from one cable to a split into two? How do I ground it? How do I know whether I need a ballast?? I'm not unfamiliar with DIY, and I'm actually pretty handy when it comes to tools and fixing or building things...just not alot of experience with electrical fittings.


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## hoppycalif

Here is a simple diagram of how this should be wired: Remember, these powersaver CFL bulbs have their own built-in ballasts in the base of the bulbs, so no ballast is needed.


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## mulita

hoppycalif said:


> ..
> Incidentally, I have covered the reflectors in that 10 gallon tank fixture with aluminum foil now, and the improvement is about as I predicted at the small distance from the bulbs, but not as good as I predicted at the substrate level.


hoppy:
By aluminum foil, you mean the regular household aluminum foil used in the kitchen or what is it? I just read the whole thread as I will be working in reflectors for my project using CFL Bulbs and I was thinking to use White Pre painted Aluminum sheets as reflectors, I have access to a brake press so I was thinking to do similar angles as AH has in their reflectors, but now reading about the aluminum foil just light up curiosity on me about if that could be a better choise instead.


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## hoppycalif

Regular household aluminum foil is all that I used. It is a high quality material, even if it is cheap. I'm still not sure if aluminum foil or very good white paint is the best reflector for most lights. A lot more testing would be needed to determine that to my satisfaction, and I haven't had the time to do that.


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## ghengis

Nice diagram, hoppy. Cheers. The lead on my fitting is a two-pin/two-wire arangement, so I guess I'll just ignore the green wire in the diagram. Also, the housing is only plastic, so no problems with metal shorting out there. Just need to get imaginative with mounting the sockets, and Bob's yer Aunty's live in lover...


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## mulita

hoppycalif said:


> Regular household aluminum foil is all that I used. It is a high quality material, even if it is cheap. I'm still not sure if aluminum foil or very good white paint is the best reflector for most lights. A lot more testing would be needed to determine that to my satisfaction, and I haven't had the time to do that.


OK. So I guess if I am going to do the pre painted Alumimum will be worth to try it like that first and checkout, unfortunately a meter is needed to be sure.


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## hoppycalif

mulita said:


> OK. So I guess if I am going to do the pre painted Alumimum will be worth to try it like that first and checkout, unfortunately a meter is needed to be sure.


Not a bad approach, but remember, not all white paint is really white. Pure white painted materials are almost painful to look at, they are so bright. I think paints called "ultra white" or something like that are likely to be the purest white you can get.

I doubt that anything you purchase that is already white is really very white. I could be wrong about that though.


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## grim

Sherwin Williams can mix there own paint home depot and Lowe's should be able to but i never use them i have found that even the whitest paint on the market if you have them add two ounces of white it makes it more pure since paint is 98 percent water


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## mulita

I just built the reflector I was getting advise from Hoppy here. I show up this in another post but here are the picture to share.

Reflector


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## Aquaticz

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
no pics
makes this one a bit useless


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## ashaf22789

Well keep in mind it has been almost 3 years since the last post.


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## k zeller

The original pics dont work anymore.


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