Grow light recommendations

Luminous efficiency is great for cost comparisons on fixtures to be used in an office building but much like lumens themselves of no use to a grower.
 
 
 
BML provides a good breakdown here. Easy to understand in laymans terms, though I would encourage anyone interested to branch out to more academic sources of information. Anything by Bugbee is gold. For forum lurkers, BetaTestTeam on ICmag posts excellent information that is relevant regardless of the crop grown.
 
Hey everybody, I've decided to go with building my own led grow light. I like the idea of really being able to custonmize everything. I really appreciate all of your help and opinions. I do have one more question. I have a white fatalii plant filled with peppers. And I believe it is root bound, as it is becoming difficult to water. So my question is, will I lose my peppers if I transplant it into a bigger pot?
 
shadowwolf1984 said:
Hey everybody, I've decided to go with building my own led grow light. I like the idea of really being able to custonmize everything. I really appreciate all of your help and opinions. I do have one more question. I have a white fatalii plant filled with peppers. And I believe it is root bound, as it is becoming difficult to water. So my question is, will I lose my peppers if I transplant it into a bigger pot?
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awesome choice-check out my build thread and let me know if u need more help
 
 
transplanting shoudl be fine fyi
 
shadowwolf1984 said:
Hey everybody, I've decided to go with building my own led grow light. I like the idea of really being able to custonmize everything. I really appreciate all of your help and opinions. I do have one more question. I have a white fatalii plant filled with peppers. And I believe it is root bound, as it is becoming difficult to water. So my question is, will I lose my peppers if I transplant it into a bigger pot?
Click to expand...
 
might be better to harvest as many peppers as you can before trying to transplant in case it goes into shock.  If there are unripe pods and you disturb the rhizome and it gets shock then you just lost all/most of your berries.
 
Thanks, I checked out your thread. And I think I'm going to go for the big daddy build. About the power cord, do you have any recommendations or preferences? And have you heard of mouser.com? If so, do you prefer digikey.com for led supplies? I just want to make sure I'm getting the best parts for the money. Lastly, I am wondering if you have suggestions, on what to hang the light with.
 
shadowwolf1984 said:
Thanks, I checked out your thread. And I think I'm going to go for the big daddy build. About the power cord, do you have any recommendations or preferences? And have you heard of mouser.com? If so, do you prefer digikey.com for led supplies? I just want to make sure I'm getting the best parts for the money. Lastly, I am wondering if you have suggestions, on what to hang the light with.
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yeah i have used mouser before-they r good for shipping to the EU because they cover taxes and stuff too but digikey has better prices
 
you could build the big daddy but because of the size of your garden you will prob need a bit more(although u do have the window so a good booster is all u need
 
perhaps try the big daddy with 1 extra module 
so like an extra driver 5 extra chips and connectors and an extra heatsink etc
 
if u use the heatsink with a fan will cost you 250
 
shadowwolf1984 said:
Ok, I think I can do that. I am still wondering what you recommend, for a power cord and for hanging the light.
Thanks,
Will
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power cord just use any u find at the hardware store-u can wire all the drivers to 1 plug(parallel) if u wanna go that way or each on a separate cord if u want
 
the total watts would be like 200 so its fine on 1 connected to a regular timer
 
for hanging I like using chains as its easy to adjust hight and screw in hooks 
 
but you can get dedicated hangers( yo yo hangers) 
 
in ur space it could be better to use less bigger chips on pc coolers i think
 
for example the vero29 at the same effciciency will cost about $1 per par watt vs 1.50 for the vero13s(suitable for builds costing over $200)
 
if u are interested i can put together a kit in the thread for your space however seen as you do have the window which obviously has enough light to grow plants u prob just need a boost to fruit them
 
ofcourse if u really want a good deal you can get the cxa3070 AB bins for 22 bucks now thats what id do in ur shoes
 
I am currently growing with a couple LED's from a company called Aceple. I found them on Amazon. I have 2 of there lights one has 80 2 watt LED's pulling 70 watts form the wall. The other has 160 2W led's pulling 140 watts from the wall. The smaller version is putting out 116 PPFD and the other is putting out 311 PPFD. And combined it only cost me 180.00. They both have remote controllers with built in timers and for setting the brightness to any percentage I want. The remote can also set the lights to auto growth modes for seedling, growth and fruition. In seedling mode the light starts out at 30% Intensity increasing to 100% then cycling down to 30% every two hours. Growth mode is 100%. And fruition mode is 60% increasing to 100% and back down to 60%. All I have to do is point and click! I have the light on my Indian Carbon which is actively fruiting. As well as my Butch T and my Bhut Caramel. All are pumping out pods as if they where outside in the sun except it's 47* out today and hailing. If you bought a couple of the bigger lights you would be out a whole 218.00 and your plants would be thriving. Just thought I would share my 2 cents and what I am doing for my current indoor grow.
 
Hopefully I'm not hijacking the thread here but wondering whether anyone tried these lights? They seem to be dirt cheap on aliexpress: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2014-New-Arrival-Hot-Sales-E27-138LED-7W-Plant-Grow-Light-Bulb-Garden-Hydroponic-Lamp-Freeshipping/1709452740.html
 
It says they're 560LM per bulb so thats 80LM per watt
 
If I have 1 of these bulbs above each plant (will have 12 DWC pots in the greenhouse) - would that be enough? The area of my greenhouse is 6'x8' so thats 140LM per square foot. Or should I be looking at increasing the number of bulbs?
 

EDIT:
Having done some further reading through N8thaniel's and other's posts it seems that I'm way off.
 
If the recommended amount of light is 3000LM per square foot I'm after 6 bulbs per square foot. Unless I got something wrong here? Or does this mean that those bulbs are really shit and I should just stick to the rest of the recommended lights in this thread?
 
Big Kahuna said:
Those bulbs are garbage. The one you linked requires 240v too, not sure if that's what you have in NZ?
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Yup we're on 240v here.
 
I've now found a bunch more which are 24W, i'm trying to work out whether its more cost effective to run LEDs than my 400W HPS light, getting some conflicted information from different sources. It seems logical that the LEDs will be more efficient but they seem to produce nowhere near as much light (in lumens) compare to the HPS light. I think i just gotta keep reading.
 
SentencedToBurn said:
 
Yup we're on 240v here.
 
I've now found a bunch more which are 24W, i'm trying to work out whether its more cost effective to run LEDs than my 400W HPS light, getting some conflicted information from different sources. It seems logical that the LEDs will be more efficient but they seem to produce nowhere near as much light (in lumens) compare to the HPS light. I think i just gotta keep reading.
Click to expand...
 
 
if u take a closer look at the oother thread u will see they will produce a lot more lumens per watt
 
the interesting thing to look at is par watts though
 
for a ppfd of 300 or higher we need about 5-6 par watts per sq ft(30x30cm)
 
with hps being around 20% efficient that means around 25 electrical lwatts per sq ft
 
good leds are 40-(65)% efficient so we need around 12 electrical watts per sq ft )= should be 150 or more lumens per sq ft or 0.4 par watts per electrical watt
 
you have a 400w bulb plus add the ballest around 450w
 
 lumen output devided by 450w will give u the L per watt to compare eg 50000/450= 111 L per electrical watt or slightly less than 0.2 par watt per electrical watt
 
not to mention loss of photons to the reflector bouncing them back down at the canopy 
 
N8thaniel said:
 
 
if u take a closer look at the oother thread u will see they will produce a lot more lumens per watt
 
the interesting thing to look at is par watts though
 
for a ppfd of 300 or higher we need about 5-6 par watts per sq ft(30x30cm)
 
with hps being around 20% efficient that means around 25 electrical lwatts per sq ft
 
good leds are 40-(65)% efficient so we need around 12 electrical watts per sq ft )= should be 150 or more lumens per sq ft or 0.4 par watts per electrical watt
 
you have a 400w bulb plus add the ballest around 450w
 
 lumen output devided by 450w will give u the L per watt to compare eg 50000/450= 111 L per electrical watt or 0.2 par watt per electrical watt
Click to expand...
 
Sir you are a gentleman and a scholar. This has really cleared it all up for me. Thanks very much!
 
SentencedToBurn said:
Hopefully I'm not hijacking the thread here but wondering whether anyone tried these lights? They seem to be dirt cheap on aliexpress: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2014-New-Arrival-Hot-Sales-E27-138LED-7W-Plant-Grow-Light-Bulb-Garden-Hydroponic-Lamp-Freeshipping/1709452740.html
 
It says they're 560LM per bulb so thats 80LM per watt
 
If I have 1 of these bulbs above each plant (will have 12 DWC pots in the greenhouse) - would that be enough? The area of my greenhouse is 6'x8' so thats 140LM per square foot. Or should I be looking at increasing the number of bulbs?
 
EDIT:
Having done some further reading through N8thaniel's and other's posts it seems that I'm way off.
 
If the recommended amount of light is 3000LM per square foot I'm after 6 bulbs per square foot. Unless I got something wrong here? Or does this mean that those bulbs are really shit and I should just stick to the rest of the recommended lights in this thread?
Click to expand...
  Those lights are crappy. Cheap blue and red diodes mixed together to make a pink light. You might get around 5 ppfd if your 5 inches or less away.
SentencedToBurn said:
 
Yup we're on 240v here.
 
I've now found a bunch more which are 24W, i'm trying to work out whether its more cost effective to run LEDs than my 400W HPS light, getting some conflicted information from different sources. It seems logical that the LEDs will be more efficient but they seem to produce nowhere near as much light (in lumens) compare to the HPS light. I think i just gotta keep reading.
Click to expand...
LED'S actually out grow HPS. When you buy high quality light's and most importantly place them at the right distance from the plant. HPS needs to be placed so far away from the plant due to heat. So when you place an LED at around 24 inches you will get a higher PPFD than almost any HPS. lumens mean zero to a plant. Watts mean zero to a plant. PPFD means everything to a plant.
 
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