250W MH reflectors mounted to a 2x4?

[Scoot]

Is this safe?

I tried mounting 250W's in my home-made reflectors tonight, which are currently mounted directly onto the bottom of the canopy, which are covered in melanine - standard cabinet interior stuff.

The wood got pretty hot - hot enough I'm not comfortable leaving it that way.

So I proceeded with the long - term plan - I have four PFO 15" reflectors mounted to a 2x4 (2 for 250's, 2 for 175's) - and am planning on hanging that for easy maintenance (as opposed to mounting directly to the canopy interior, which is real hard to drill through and tends to chip.

Anyway, going to hang that, down maybe an inch or two from the top of the canopy (it's 18" tall inside).

The canopy has two compartments. One open one over the tank, then a shelf above. Right now, I have a fan blowing into the top shelf, then a 2nd blowing into the tank space.

I'm going to add two more fans - blowing out of the tank space, and out of the top shelf, but I'm still worried about the bulbs heating up the 2x4 to the point of combustion...

Anyone ever had any problems with 250W MH reflectors mounted to a 2x4? These are the 15" batwing PFO reflectors...

[Ziggy953]

When I built my canopy I used a 4' reflector to accomidate the VHOs and the MH, I haven't had any trouble with too much heat on the wood that they are mounted to. I think that the reflectors will "reflect" a lot of the heat as well as the light. I just put my hand on top of my canopy and it is warm, but not hot at all. The additional fans blowing out will help keep the heat from building up. I have that on my setup as well, 2 fans blowing down into the canopy and one large fan blowing out. It really helps.