I’m also mostly limited by height. The SIL chips make the most sense for my use case right now. I’m kind of dog fooding an ultra low budget low intimidation grow guide.
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If you have limited height, strips run without heatsinks at nominal & dimmable make the most sense. In that scenario, you don’t have the extra headroom for the body and the fixture depth of 4-6" required of screw in bulbs, and you get much greater efficiency and lifespan and output and spectrum than SIL for very little up front cost. You can build a tiny little system in a box for $30 that uses 20 or 30 watts and have plants all the way up to 1/8" from the strips without burning or bleaching.
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I’m a big fan of strips!
I’m just doing back of the napkin math comparisons and haven’t even priced out an equivalent strip build.
The whole thing came up from a design question haha. Just wanted to make sure my back of the napkin math device wouldn’t kill someone.
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Nothing is idiot proof; depends on the person. We can all chime in on the human factor, but you can’t trust some people.
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@Mr.Sparkle, I am not doubting that any power source can technically be dangerous. We could go on for years on the little bits and pieces of the discussion but there is a reason why the terminals on a car battery are exposed. They would not be if they were dangerous to any real world degree to the public. You know how the laws treat us. They do not leave it to chance for us to kill ourselves. I cant believe that this discussion is still going down the route where everyone is trying to get the upper hand on the specifics and details. My point is (and I have made it clear from the start) is that people are giving advice on dangerous things to inexperienced people that are not 100% savvy with it. We should all be more careful when advising inexperienced users. That’s all. I was not looking to get into technical specifics which is why i gave broad examples using basics.
I think this thread is great. It has helped a lot of people and the users such as yourself are being completely selfless with your efforts to help others.
I have brought up this concern before though about advising inexperienced users on dangerous things because i value life above all else. I will not bring it up again as people seem to think i want to argue what is or is not dangerous or what is the most dangerous when all I want to say is high voltage is dangerous.
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oh i get it with inexperienced people and all that, safety is always number one, and yeah some laws dictated you can’t run certain things in certain countries legally mind you same goes for our hobby in most cases as well which is slowly changing but if you noticed due to your concerns and say uk laws and such i have be mentioning the higher amperage lower voltage drivers as alternatives and in build situations where say a strip fails knocking out a chain they are alot more resilient that way with being able to take the extra current build wise series are a little easier but thats it and its is all up to the person to decided that.
oh and fyi they aren’t on new cars, heck my new work van is double caped with a big full cover for the positive side and a secondary cap for the terminal with a space protected insulated jumper point that would make in near impossible to short with any standard type object on its own “wrench, screwdriver, jumper cables, ect”
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@Mr.Sparkle, yes for sure, you are a very cautious being. That is why having this thread largly driven by you is a great thing. However I sometimes see people giving scary advice without the expected “be damn careful when doing this because …” disclaimer after it.
Yes for sure about new cars covering them, I am aware as my current cars also do this. However, i can slide a cover across on my car to expose it so i can jump start another car with it. It is still accessible. Id like to see a 110V house point have that feature 
How many people would die if they did 
Thankfully we get more and more precious about life as time goes on which is a good thing. It is hard to be too precious about something so valuable.
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I remember the mini cooper back in the 80’s had the battery mounted under the back seat, if you got a couple of heavy people in the back, the seat springs would short the batter out and set the seat on fire underneath lol.
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@BudSy lol your gonna regret that admission , wonder how many pm’s lol, But really thanks for speaking up, i was trapped in a fire the door was electric and the electric is what caught fire, The fire was caused by the previous owner thinking he understood electricity.
All I can say is be safe, a couple of months in a burn unit isnt much fun, then theres the baggage that come with that…
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Anyone else taken a high power zap through the butthole from the distributor mounted MSD coil on a chevy? No ? Just me… shit
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And by " A zap" I mean 4 or 5… involuntary muscle contractions a bitch
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Hey man whatever floats your boat, no judgement here!
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Did sparks fly out of your ASS? Lol had to go there it was wide open!
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Lol technically the butthole was the grounding point… through my arm and out my butt… cleanest cut cookies ever for 2 weeks after lmao
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Involuntary pucker factor of 9… 
Cheers
G
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At first when you said butthole I thought you meant figuratively 
oh boy! That would be uncomfortable to say the least.
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For sure, burns are no fun. My poor primary school teacher badly burnt his arms and part of his body at school during an experiment with mentholated spirits. It really gave him a lot of pain the following years poor fellow.
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Hahaga definetly not figuratively… i was static timing an engine on a jacked up truck before start up… awkward positions were necessary, one zap caused the next, caused the next etc lol.
But, enough butt zapping, let’s get back to grow lights
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True, the key is prep, bad prep equals poor results.
Just picked up a 36x35x72 tent on prime day.
Now to make some lights!
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