Transcription of Pro Tube cooltube reflector videotutorial:
I’m going to show you how to install an air-cooled reflector like the ProTube from Highpro.
We open the box and turn it around, with your permission, to carefully remove the reflector without damaging it. Inside we can see that it has a Plug & Play cable that will connect it to the ballast and the reflective wings. Now lets see how we assemble it…
The first thing we’ll do is mount the wings to the reflector. To do that we’ll need a spanner to undo these bolts, on all four sides, to loosen them a little. Then they’ll come off easily by hand.
Now we can fit the wings, always keeping the blue plastic facing towards the interior of the reflector. Remember to remove the plastic, for two reasons: Firstly, the reflector won’t work to its full reflective capacity through the plastic, and secondly because with the elevated temperatures, the plastic can melt and burn, damaging the reflective wings.
We’ve got one side mounted already, let’s do the same with the other side. Perfect. Once we’ve bolted the wings, we’ll wire up the reflector. We need to remove these 4 screws, pass the cable through the hole and then make the necessary connections. Let’s get on with it!
We’ve removed the lid that covered the connections and now we’re going to take the Plug & Play, and we’re going to insert the stripped part through the hole. There we can find the terminal strip, which is where we’re going to connect the cables.
Taking the cables, we need to identify which is which, one is Live, one is Neutral and the other is the Earth cable. Live and Neutral are interchangeable in Alternating Current systems, so they can be connected to the 1st or 3rd terminal, as we wish, if you look you’ll see that the cable in the middle is green/yellow and here is where we connect the Earth cable.
It’s important that there are no crossed wires, or short-circuits in the reflector, so let’s get to it! We use the screwdriver to tighten firmly. We connect the other Live wire and tighten fully, and the same with the cable on the other side. Once the connections are made, all that’s left is to pull the cable out a little bit, put the box and the terminal strip inside the connection box, tighten the gland valve to hold the cable firmly and replace the screws.
Now we’ve closed the box that holds the connection strip, we’ve got the ProTube ready to work. All that’s missing is the bulb, the ballast and if we want ventilation and extraction we can also fit the Aluducts.
Ok then, first: the bulb. We remove it with care, without touching the glass with our fingers, and we screw it into the reflector. Carefully but firmly, to ensure it’s well-fitted, we don’t want it to stop working halfway through the grow, of course.
Once we’ve fitted the bulb, we can connect the Plug & Play that we’ve fitted to the female Plug & Play on the ballast and then we connect the ballast to the mains electricity supply. It’ll take less than 10 seconds to warm up and you’ll see that the bulb, in this case HPS, or a Metal Halide, will light up as expected.
If we want to reduce the temperature, in extreme conditions, for example in summer or when cultivating in a hot area, we can simply attach an intake fan to this side using a tube like this, the fan pushes air into the reflector and an extractor removes it. In this way we can circulate the air heated by the bulb and expel it from the the grow tent with the extractor.
There you have it, we’ve assembled the ProTube, it’s working and it’s very easy to use.
