VHO over T5's

im asking because i dont know the answer. an icecap t-5 puts out about 85w's and a VHO puts out 110w. so why wouldnt you chose VHO verses t-5 every time.

 

Watts don't mean much, VHO's are very wasteful as far as energy usage, versus light output.

The main reason t5s are much better than VHO's is due to the ability to use high quality individual parabolic reflectors. VHO's don't lend themselves very well to having a reflector made to harness the watts used.

Plus, if a 54w bulb can double the pAr of a 110w bulb, why wouldn't you use the more efficient bulb?

 

i found the numbers of lumens per watts, lumens arent as good a number as par but par can change with bulb, par is what we really want but lumens is something to base a decision on


vho lumens per watt is 66.
t5 lumens per watt is 92(with a tek system high end system)

so vho is roughly 2/3 as efficent as t5.
your wrong about the output of a 4 foot t5 ho its 54 watts, as i believe the t5 watts you found are over driven to be vho t5's.
so its 1/2 the watts of a vho.
so lets say a vho has the lumen out put of a t5 and a half so 1.5 t5s

so 4 vho = 6 t5's
but it also has extra 110 watts.

t5 ho bulbs last 2 years i think, vho is around a year.
so vho wins the lumen output but loses price wise since they last half as long and use more energy


if you go with your overdriven t5 assuming the lpw is the same as t5ho, one t5 is roughly equivalent vho in lumen output.
overdriven t5s should be replace every year like vhos.
overdriven t5 win vs vho because they use less energy(a bout a 100 watts less).


so in either case your better off with t5


edit: i hope you enjoy my work as that almost gave me a headache playing with those numbers

 

Lumens don't really matter either.

The last time I saw a par test of a 4x54w t5ho retro, versus a 4x110 w vho setup, it was not even funny how much less PAR the vho's had on the same tank, despite over 2x the watts.

fwiw, an overdriven t5 ho bulb in a 4 footer runs right around 80 watts.

The only reason to run VHO nowadays is if you have a few new vho bulbs, and even then it will still cost more $$ on electricity.

 

like i said tho par wont really tell you the difference in the technologies unless you have the highest possible par bulbs on each fixture, or take the par reading of every bulb on the fixture and take the average.

i see alot of people compare a high quality system with great bulbs and reflectors, to a sub standard one of a different technology in attempt to prove how much better theres is and it skews the results

 

see thats why i asked. i love this site. i learn so much. i never knew that so now i will for sure use t-5's on my new set up. thanks so much everyone.