[Q&A] Grow It Like the Dutch!

DLI fixtures aren’t just for Dutch greenhouses! The people from Dutch Lighting Innovations have released a pioneering new fixture. One that’s space saving, efficient and prevents hot spots in your grow room. CEO, Pepijn Looijaard, has joined us to tell us all about his exciting new JOULE-Series.

Q:

What’s the story behind your lights?

After studying applied physics, I joined Philips Lighting. It wasn’t until they stopped making fixtures that Ton ten Haaf and I started DLI. We still work very closely Philips today.

Interesting. Well, we’re all excited about your new JOULE-Series. How does it differ from other ranges?

This one is perfect for the home and hobby market (whilst still being amazing in greenhouses).

It was important to us that people would be able to get really professional results at home! People just don’t have the kind of space in their homes as you get in greenhouses.

For this reason, we made our fixtures compact so they can sit highly in tents. But actually, with the open reflector, you can go as low as 3ft from plants in pursuit of optimum hanging heights and not suffer from any hot spots!

The inbuilt spirit level helps you hang fixtures evenly so you always get a uniform canopy.

Q:

Good stuff! Tell us more about your reflector…

No problem. It’s made from electrochemically brightened aluminium that’s been given an adonised coat to make it abrasion resistant. On top of this, it has a vacuum coated layer of pure aluminium that’s 99.99% reflective.

The reflector has a uniform 180cm x 120cm light projection, but you can take small parts of the reflector out to match the beam angle of your tent. You can also buy panel inserts to slot into your reflector.

This'll be really handy in multi light set ups...

Exactly! It all depends on where you position your lights.

If lights sit close to the edge of your tent, you don't want to project light into your walls. Instead, you can modify your beam angle and direct more light to plants.

Nice. It’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into temperature management, too!

Definitely! We’ve made sure the lamp and electronics don’t overheat and have a long lifespan. An example is the way we’ve fixed the circuitry to the top of the ballast so that it won’t get hot. A heat sink keeps drivers performing efficiently, too.

There’s also the reflector. Over time, dirt burns into lots of reflectors. Our reflector’s open design acts a bit like a chimney. Hot, dirty air is vented away from the unit, so you only really get surface dirt. A quick clean down with our BrightShine reflector wipes will get rid of this!

(BrightShine Reflector Wipes coming soon!)

You work closely with Philips. Why is it you chose not to use a Philips lamp in JOULE-Series lights?

Philips lamps are excellent, especially in greenhouses with lots of daylight wavelengths. But for our JOULE-Series lights, we designed a specific spectrum for indoor grow rooms and decided to have them specifically made for us by a large German manufacturer.

You get 2.1μmol per Watt, and the spectrum is just what we needed!

It has a really great life span too.

Sounds good! Can you tell us a bit more about your controller?

One controller will control over 1,000 different lights in up to 4 different zones. You can have up to 4 completely different rooms or 4 different areas within the same room. Each zone can run on its own lighting cycle and has its own temperature sensor! If you have different rooms for different stages of growth, this is great.

It’s very easy to connect lights. You just daisy chain them together with a cable-set.

What's really handy, is that you can connect the temperature probe wherever you want in each zone.

Loving it. Have you got anything exciting in the pipeline?

We have a full climate control system that’ll be ready to launch very soon! It’ll take care of the CO2, temperature and humidity in people’s grow rooms. CDM and LED lights that are compatible with the DLM controller are also on the horizon. We’re all very excited.

Instead of dimming lights down, you recommend switching lights off in a chequered pattern. Why is this?

It's better to run lights at 100% than to dim the lights. Our reflector creates such a good uniform lightspread that even when running 50% of the lights, there is still uniform growth throughout the room.

Awesome. Well that's everything from us! Thanks for answering our questions. Everyone at GroWell's very excited to be selling your JOULE-Series. Just a quick hint for our readers - 4 x 1000W JOULE-Series fixtures sit nicely in a BAY6 HC 3.6m x 2.4m Grow Tent.