J
JohnyT
Guest
We all need a practical way of hanging our lights, as our plants grow we need to raise the hoods accordingly. So here’s a review of a couple of hanging solutions on the market.
Easy Rolls (left) Rope Ratchets (Right)
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What you see in the pictures is what you get in the box neither include S-hooks or anything like that.The Easy Rolls are designed for more light weight hoods and filters and can hold 5kg individually (10kg combined). The Rope Ratchets are a more heavy duty and can hold 34KG each. I don’t have any hoods that weigh any way near that so note this is a test of their practicality.
They both cost under £10 at my local hydro so won’t break the bank. (Easy rolls £7.99 - Rope Ratchets £9.99) So which is the better of the two? Well let’s start with the quality.
I was a bit disappointed that the strings of the Easy Rolls were quite badly frayed at the ends by a few inches in fact. I had to tie a knot and snip off the excess to keep it tidy. The Rope Ratchet's strings had aglets at each end and were in perfect condition. The main body of each product are mainly plastic but look tough and hard wearing.
So how do they work? Well the Easy Rolls have a retractable action much like a tape measure. The idea is to set the resistance of this action using the wing nuts on the side. The trick is to set it so it can support the weight of your hood without it falling and still be able to lower it with a bit of force if you need to. In practice this is a little tricky as you have to match this resistance on both sides. Once in place it is fairly easy to raise your hood by simply lifting it and letting the Easy Rolls take in the slack. Unfortunately if you have raised your hood too high or unevenly the action of lowering it again is very jerky and a bit of a pain. It is possible use the wing nuts to release the tension but you risk it falling completely if you’re not careful.
One other thing I would like to note is the material the strings are made from does not hold much friction. I had to tie the knot quite a bit as it looked like it may slip apart.
View attachment 101435
The Rope Ratchets work like er em a ratchet. There is a pulley like action to raise your hood and works very well as long as you hang them the right way up (a lesson I learned first-hand). Each click you hear as you raise your hood represents ⅛ of an inch and gives you an easy point of reference for raising your hood evenly. You do have to raise each ratchet individually unlike the Easy Rolls so if you need to increase the height quite a bit then you'll have to raise each side a bit at a time. The ratchets have a quick release lever on the side should you need to lower the hood again but you will need to hold on the string or it will just fall on you. One nice touch with the ratchets is that it comes with carabiner clips to make fitting very easy, I was able to fix up my hood in less than a minute. The carabiner clips also make it a lot easier to swap out hoods when it’s time to change from Veg’ing CLFs to Flowering HPS for example. One bad point though not much of an issue is you get a lot of excess string as you raise the hood, the Easy Rolls don’t suffer as all the excess is rolled up tidy and out of sight.
View attachment 101436
So after all that which do I consider the best? Well having used both now in my grow tents with both my CFL and HPS Hoods I gotta say the Rope Ratchets. With all the reaching over, raising, lowering and changing of the hoods that I have to do they really are the most practical. So for just £2 more they are worth the extra. The Easy Rolls are a nice idea but just a bit too fidgety for me.
Easy Rolls (left) Rope Ratchets (Right)
View attachment 101429 View attachment 101430
What you see in the pictures is what you get in the box neither include S-hooks or anything like that.The Easy Rolls are designed for more light weight hoods and filters and can hold 5kg individually (10kg combined). The Rope Ratchets are a more heavy duty and can hold 34KG each. I don’t have any hoods that weigh any way near that so note this is a test of their practicality.
They both cost under £10 at my local hydro so won’t break the bank. (Easy rolls £7.99 - Rope Ratchets £9.99) So which is the better of the two? Well let’s start with the quality.
I was a bit disappointed that the strings of the Easy Rolls were quite badly frayed at the ends by a few inches in fact. I had to tie a knot and snip off the excess to keep it tidy. The Rope Ratchet's strings had aglets at each end and were in perfect condition. The main body of each product are mainly plastic but look tough and hard wearing.
So how do they work? Well the Easy Rolls have a retractable action much like a tape measure. The idea is to set the resistance of this action using the wing nuts on the side. The trick is to set it so it can support the weight of your hood without it falling and still be able to lower it with a bit of force if you need to. In practice this is a little tricky as you have to match this resistance on both sides. Once in place it is fairly easy to raise your hood by simply lifting it and letting the Easy Rolls take in the slack. Unfortunately if you have raised your hood too high or unevenly the action of lowering it again is very jerky and a bit of a pain. It is possible use the wing nuts to release the tension but you risk it falling completely if you’re not careful.
One other thing I would like to note is the material the strings are made from does not hold much friction. I had to tie the knot quite a bit as it looked like it may slip apart.
View attachment 101435
The Rope Ratchets work like er em a ratchet. There is a pulley like action to raise your hood and works very well as long as you hang them the right way up (a lesson I learned first-hand). Each click you hear as you raise your hood represents ⅛ of an inch and gives you an easy point of reference for raising your hood evenly. You do have to raise each ratchet individually unlike the Easy Rolls so if you need to increase the height quite a bit then you'll have to raise each side a bit at a time. The ratchets have a quick release lever on the side should you need to lower the hood again but you will need to hold on the string or it will just fall on you. One nice touch with the ratchets is that it comes with carabiner clips to make fitting very easy, I was able to fix up my hood in less than a minute. The carabiner clips also make it a lot easier to swap out hoods when it’s time to change from Veg’ing CLFs to Flowering HPS for example. One bad point though not much of an issue is you get a lot of excess string as you raise the hood, the Easy Rolls don’t suffer as all the excess is rolled up tidy and out of sight.
View attachment 101436
So after all that which do I consider the best? Well having used both now in my grow tents with both my CFL and HPS Hoods I gotta say the Rope Ratchets. With all the reaching over, raising, lowering and changing of the hoods that I have to do they really are the most practical. So for just £2 more they are worth the extra. The Easy Rolls are a nice idea but just a bit too fidgety for me.
