Are COBs worth the money?

Tyleb173rd

Tyleb173rd

Well-Known Member
I'm considering a DIY COB light. I have a few questions...

1. Does it significantly lower your electric bill?
2. Is light penetration the same, worse or better than HPS?
3. Has anyone grown with COB LED and gone back to HPS and if so why?
4. If a COB is 600w at the wall then would that come close to equaling a yield from a 1000w HPS?

Thanks.....
 
Tyleb173rd said:
I'm considering a DIY COB light. I have a few questions...

1. Does it significantly lower your electric bill?
2. Is light penetration the same, worse or better than HPS?
3. Has anyone grown with COB LED and gone back to HPS and if so why?
4. If a COB is 600w at the wall then would that come close to equaling a yield from a 1000w HPS?

Thanks.....
Click to expand...


You would probably get more info and feedback if this were posted in the LED section of the forums. To briefly answer your Q's....
1.Yes, if you were going for equivelant lighting then 600W of COB LED would give about the same light intensity as a 1K HPS but with less cooling required and at a fraction of the wattage used -hence lower utility bills.
2. In my experience with my diy 400W cob led build I experienced less bottom bush larf and had good solid nugs on bottom bush. Penetration of light didn't seem to be an issue for me with this light.
3. I built my light to see if I could use it in the summer since I normally don't grow in the summer due to heat issues that come with 1000W HID's.
I will go back to my HPS for my cooler/winter grows since I rely on the heat produced from the lights to keep my grow room warm. Other than that I will still continue to use the LED's as well as the HPS depending on the season I'm growing. (I too am in MI)
4.Relatively close...yes. Kinda depends on what you use as well too. If you go with 600W of Cree 3070's or 3590's then you will be in very close relation to lumens of a *new* 1000W HPS bulb.
There is a lot more that to be said regarding this topic so I kept if very brief in my answers. I'd suggest you check out some threads in the LED section as there is a plethora of reading of valuable knowledge in those threads. Growmau5, Greengenes707, Rahz and and a handfull of others just to name a few on RIU have a lot of time invested into providing info on these lights.
 
Thanks HydroRed and NN. Is there a certain preferred purveyor? I have seen that Cutter and Timber offer kits.
 
Does the 50w per sq/ft still apply with COB LEDs? If so I would need 4 of the 200W DIY kits for a 4x4 flowering space. That's $1600....oh boy. And I'm going to have two 4x4 spots!!!!! Fudge nuggets.....
 
There are several places selling the 3590 kits and last I checked they were all around $100 per COB so look at shipping costs. If you buy parts PLC has them too. If you buy COBs from Cutter they have a discount code and last I checked USA had the added benefit of the Dollars exchange rate between Australia and the USA,drivers and heatsinks might be cheaper in the USA because of shipping,pinfin heatsinks are the way to go.
 
What I have a hard time figuring out is do they all plug into the wall separately or is there a way to plug them in together so it's not so messy?
 
I run 8 cobs ; 3590's , in a 42"42" great results. B4 thes I ran a single 600 hps with 4" inline fan and carbon scrubber, If I remember , that room pulled 6.9 to 7.1 amps. With the cobs and scrubber i'm running at 3.9 to 4.2 amps, so there is an energy savings. i thing i spent around 900.00 for cobs, (cutters) 'pin heatsinks' and aluminum rails, and another 30 for my junction box and dimmer, (from northern lights). I did spend endless hours in the led subforum , in indoor grow section
 
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