Not for the faint hearted, installing a DIY hanging rail...

[Technorch]

So I've been worried about the drywall ceiling letting go of my MH reflectors and I decided to have them hang from a rail hanging from pipes similar to this below:

Since I was alone when I was doing this I need help leveling the rail holding from each side so I had to improvise. I started from this where you can see I already had the pipes installed:

Then the leveling help on each side, lots of movie and videogames cases and behold:

Then making sure it was leveled:

 

[Technorch]

And then, the final result:

I had planned on using the yo-yo grow kit to bring up and down my MH's but they were way too weak for this. Now I'm looking for something like the yo-yo mechanism with steel cables instead to be able to hold all this weight. For now I'm just using some steel cables tied up from the rail to the pipes.

I have to say though, after showing this to my girlfriend when she got home, she wanted to KILL me...

 

[jenreef]

i would have been realy scared of dropping one and braking something, even worse dropping one into the tank and frying all my livestock

 

[cps68500]

i would have been realy scared of dropping one and braking something, even worse dropping one into the tank and frying all my livestock

I *hope* they would have been unplugged and the bulbs out for this effort... just for that reason. It may be able to survive a water bath if dried out for a few weeks, I've had electronics get wet and with a fair amount of time come back to life.... though I'm not sure how the capacitors would have liked to be soaked with salt water...

 

[newenglandreef]

i would have been realy scared of dropping one and braking something, even worse dropping one into the tank and frying all my livestock

I actually did drop one of those 10 Gallon light canopies in my tank once (while it was on and contained an actinic buld)--I waited for the fish to start floating, but nothing seemed effected. I was pretty shocked (no pun intended).