Adding vertical light

[Prawn Connery]

The original idea behind vertical growing was to surround the bulb with plants so that no (or very little) light escaped. The fact is, when you mount a HID bulb horizontally in a hood, only about 90 degrees of the light shines directly on the plant below, with the other 270 degrees reflected off the reflector. The extra distance travelled by the light as it bounces off the reflector down to the plants - and the fact there is no such thing as a 100% reflector - means you lose close to 25% or more of your available light output.

So that's HIDs.

With LEDs, the light is still emitted away from the source at an angle - it could be 120 degrees for a typical 3030 LED panel or 90 degrees with a lens or COB or maybe even as little as 70 degrees. These are much better angles for directing most light down to a plant than a 360-degree bulb.

But invariably there are still light losses from the the splay of light that hits the walls of the tent or falls outside the plant footprint in an open-sided grow.

Now what if you hung your LEDs vertically and surrounded them with plants, just like a HID vertical grow?

Here's the SunCloak system, and you can see how much light escapes - that's why I'm not entirely convinced it is much more efficient than a horizontal LED grow, because it's really just a horizontal LED grow turned on its side and not a true vertical system where plants surround the entire light source - a lot of light still escapes from the sides.

But if you were to mount strips on a hexagonal or octagonal tube hanging down - indeed, I've even seen the idea touted for using a large diameter plumbing or water pipe with LED tape mounted on the sides for water cooling (perhaps a bit OTT) - and then surround that tube with plants, very little light would escape. All the strips would emit their light at 120 degrees, and each strip would be mounted at a 60 degree angle to the next (on a hexagonal tube), meaning overlapping light while all the plants (six to eight) would surround the entire light source.

A hexagonal tube could be created as simply as placing six lengths of aluminium flatbar next to each other and securing them with hinges. You wold fold the hinges into each other to form a hexagonal tube shape. The LED strips would be mounted to the flat bar. In my mind, I know exactly how the system would be built and work, with a floor fan blowing up from the bottom to cool the LEDs and duct heat from the aluminium. It would basically be a 4' hexagonal tube with strip LEDs mounted to each side.

How much more efficient than an horizontal grow it would be, I don't know. There wouldn't be the same efficiencies gained over a vertical to horizontal HPS grow, but there would be some. Vertical lighting also allows you to grow tall plants with limited footprint as log as you have a bit of head height. Much better for growing sativas, if that's your thing.

 

[In.Home.Rhizome]

Was playing with the same thought as that the other day! Water cooled hexagonal bars hung vertically!
Got me thinking of a stadium grow with water cooled aluminium box sections hung horizontally one above the other with cobs or f strips either side n just keep turning em on as the plants get taller..... Feel like it would be a good way to grow some big plants while making gd use of the light ur using. I'd imagine the water cooling wld be overkill but so many heat issues over time.....get a bit high n water cooling is where the mind goes lol!

 

[hybridway2]

The original idea behind vertical growing was to surround the bulb with plants so that no (or very little) light escaped. The fact is, when you mount a HID bulb horizontally in a hood, only about 90 degrees of the light shines directly on the plant below, with the other 270 degrees reflected off the reflector. The extra distance travelled by the light as it bounces off the reflector down to the plants - and the fact there is no such thing as a 100% reflector - means you lose close to 25% or more of your available light output.

So that's HIDs.

With LEDs, the light is still emitted away from the source at an angle - it could be 120 degrees for a typical 3030 LED panel or 90 degrees with a lens or COB or maybe even as little as 70 degrees. These are much better angles for directing most light down to a plant than a 360-degree bulb.

But invariably there are still light losses from the the splay of light that hits the walls of the tent or falls outside the plant footprint in an open-sided grow.

Now what if you hung your LEDs vertically and surrounded them with plants, just like a HID vertical grow?

Here's the SunCloak system, and you can see how much light escapes - that's why I'm not entirely convinced it is much more efficient than a horizontal LED grow, because it's really just a horizontal LED grow turned on its side and not a true vertical system where plants surround the entire light source - a lot of light still escapes from the sides.

But if you were to mount strips on a hexagonal or octagonal tube hanging down - indeed, I've even seen the idea touted for using a large diameter plumbing or water pipe with LED tape mounted on the sides for water cooling (perhaps a bit OTT) - and then surround that tube with plants, very little light would escape. All the strips would emit their light at 120 degrees, and each strip would be mounted at a 60 degree angle to the next (on a hexagonal tube), meaning overlapping light while all the plants (six to eight) would surround the entire light source.

A hexagonal tube could be created as simply as placing six lengths of aluminium flatbar next to each other and securing them with hinges. You wold fold the hinges into each other to form a hexagonal tube shape. The LED strips would be mounted to the flat bar. In my mind, I know exactly how the system would be built and work, with a floor fan blowing up from the bottom to cool the LEDs and duct heat from the aluminium. It would basically be a 4' hexagonal tube with strip LEDs mounted to each side.

How much more efficient than an horizontal grow it would be, I don't know. There wouldn't be the same efficiencies gained over a vertical to horizontal HPS grow, but there would be some. Vertical lighting also allows you to grow tall plants with limited footprint as log as you have a bit of head height. Much better for growing sativas, if that's your thing.

I agree with ur idea on the hex tube as I did before but I've got tons of pics showing the SC not wasting light. It's all in how u use it. Takes a lil getting used to. Plus each strip on the blades are angled towards the plants & have a slight reflector. I get what ur saying though. Instead of 3 plants per bay it's much better used with 2 half # plants.

 

[Prawn Connery]

Well the caveat is I don't have any experience with the SunCloak, so of course I'm not in a position to judge it as well as you. I'm only gauging it on what it looks like, so I probably don't have the full picture. If you're getting good results, then I guess they speak for themself!

EDIT: Is yours an actual SunCloak system or do you just have strips mounted on the side? For some reason, I thought you were running strips.

 

[Rocket Soul]

The original idea behind vertical growing was to surround the bulb with plants so that no (or very little) light escaped. The fact is, when you mount a HID bulb horizontally in a hood, only about 90 degrees of the light shines directly on the plant below, with the other 270 degrees reflected off the reflector. The extra distance travelled by the light as it bounces off the reflector down to the plants - and the fact there is no such thing as a 100% reflector - means you lose close to 25% or more of your available light output.

So that's HIDs.

With LEDs, the light is still emitted away from the source at an angle - it could be 120 degrees for a typical 3030 LED panel or 90 degrees with a lens or COB or maybe even as little as 70 degrees. These are much better angles for directing most light down to a plant than a 360-degree bulb.

But invariably there are still light losses from the the splay of light that hits the walls of the tent or falls outside the plant footprint in an open-sided grow.

Now what if you hung your LEDs vertically and surrounded them with plants, just like a HID vertical grow?

Here's the SunCloak system, and you can see how much light escapes - that's why I'm not entirely convinced it is much more efficient than a horizontal LED grow, because it's really just a horizontal LED grow turned on its side and not a true vertical system where plants surround the entire light source - a lot of light still escapes from the sides.

But if you were to mount strips on a hexagonal or octagonal tube hanging down - indeed, I've even seen the idea touted for using a large diameter plumbing or water pipe with LED tape mounted on the sides for water cooling (perhaps a bit OTT) - and then surround that tube with plants, very little light would escape. All the strips would emit their light at 120 degrees, and each strip would be mounted at a 60 degree angle to the next (on a hexagonal tube), meaning overlapping light while all the plants (six to eight) would surround the entire light source.

A hexagonal tube could be created as simply as placing six lengths of aluminium flatbar next to each other and securing them with hinges. You wold fold the hinges into each other to form a hexagonal tube shape. The LED strips would be mounted to the flat bar. In my mind, I know exactly how the system would be built and work, with a floor fan blowing up from the bottom to cool the LEDs and duct heat from the aluminium. It would basically be a 4' hexagonal tube with strip LEDs mounted to each side.

How much more efficient than an horizontal grow it would be, I don't know. There wouldn't be the same efficiencies gained over a vertical to horizontal HPS grow, but there would be some. Vertical lighting also allows you to grow tall plants with limited footprint as log as you have a bit of head height. Much better for growing sativas, if that's your thing.

IMO
You can think of this in 2 ways:
How much light am i losing thru my setup?
How much cannopy am i missing thru my setup? As in if i did things differently would i have a larger cannopy flowering? Suncloak seems to maximize your cannopy as it is fully 3 dimensional. But yeah, you would maybe lose some light. But again, the game is to grow grams, not grams per light/watt

 

[Prawn Connery]

Yes, we're growing grams, but gpw is still the measure of how well we're doing it

I don't think there's anything wrong in striving for efficiency, but it also comes down to time and effort, and of course a bit of common sense. For me, quality is even more important than quantity, so growing big healthy plants is also about getting the most out of them. But I also like a bit of variety - which is why I grow different strains - and so I'm never going to extract the same yields as monocropping with a perfect canopy that allows you to precisely tailor your light spread/distance and nutrient ratios.

Vertical growing is a very good way of improving yields and efficiency while still being able to grow varied height plants (a mix of indica and sativa dominant hybrids) to their full potential - which is primarily one of the main reasons I started doing it. The more efficiently I can do it with my time, space, energy and financial constraints, the better.

 

[Rocket Soul]

Yes, we're growing grams, but gpw is still the measure of how well we're doing it

Guess what im saying is that for a lot of us its its g per square foot/m2 that is important.

 

[Prawn Connery]

Even better. I built a 4'x4'x6' box that housed 1200W of HPS and got excellent yields for the 16sqft footprint - averaging around 3.5lb (as high as 60oz in one case). There's another thread on here questioning 4lb from a 4x4, and I was very close to that figure for more than a decade. That was in coco, too, as DWC would have yielded more than that, as would a decent NFT or aeroponic set-up.

 

[OneHitDone]

I would have to be in your tent on this one.
G/W is only good for monitoring your own grow in a repeatable fashion to judge how you are doing grow to grow.
There is no correction for veg time, plant size, variety, etc.
It just so happens that the varieties that are low on the g/w scale are the ones in highest demand in my area. It is the whole quality over quantity concept as things legalize. If you shit ain't dank it's gonna be sitting on your shelf for a long while.
We have to keep g/sq ft at the top of the list. I have not done much research into into but surely real estate is more expensive than the "power savings" many of the so called "efficient" lighting sources are offering

 

[hybridway2]

OMG! Just came to mind n had to share immediately. Lol!
Thinking vert, what do you see here? Mind you it comes apart on sets of 2 & they swivel.
@Prawn Connery
@OneHitDone
So want to make a circle of these bars around a monster. Imagine that shit!

My Poor purple stem plant being nursed by the Horizon. To Fnn bad. It's was a beast.

 

[JohnDee]

Even better. I built a 4'x4'x6' box that housed 1200W of HPS and got excellent yields for the 16sqft footprint - averaging around 3.5lb (as high as 60oz in one case). There's another thread on here questioning 4lb from a 4x4, and I was very close to that figure for more than a decade. That was in coco, too, as DWC would have yielded more than that, as would a decent NFT or aeroponic set-up.

Hi Prawn,
Nice grow. Hope the flouro does what you desire. I joined Planet Ganja shortly after Overgrow crashed. You had a well established vertical coco grow method by then...as noted above. You had a Swiss Bliss pheno you were running, as I recall. Learned lots from reading your threads.
Cheers,
JD

 

[Prawn Connery]

Hey JD - great memory! Good to see you again! I'm not sure if you're aware, but the old site is still going in "ghost form" these days at myplanetganja.com - it's not my site, but kudos to smokebreaks and roller24 who set it up after Gad took the planetganja.com server offline and left us all destitute (once more). I still pop in there every now and then, but I've sort of adopted this place as my grow site of choice. I was fascinated by LEDs, and have found this forum to be the best source - I've learned an awful lot in the past couple of years.

The Swiss Bliss is also still going in another form. I made some crosses of my Swiss Bliss mother with a Schnazzleberry #2 (Blue Domino x Blueberry) male and grew some out earlier this year (below). I've kept one pheno from three females, and while it's s bit fluffy, the high, taste and smell are very close to the original Swiss Bliss.



After Luc at Paradise Seeds lost the original Swiss Bliss mother, I sent him my clones, but unfortunately those were lost as well. However, I did make a few F2s using three different females and two males, which I also sent to Luc, so maybe one day there will be a "Swiss Bliss Resurrection". It deserves it, as it has one of the best highs out there.

The main drawback was it had very weak stems that could not support the weight of the buds and was a bit prone to mold. It's also a leafy strain (as you can see above) and a PIA to trim, but I always kept it around to smoke. The Swiss Bliss jar was pretty much the one I always reached for at any time of day - and I always had a lot of strains to choose from.

When I have a bit more time and space, I'll grow my remaining F2s to see if I can find my old mother.

 

[Prawn Connery]

OMG! Just came to mind n had to share immediately. Lol!
Thinking vert, what do you see here? Mind you it comes apart on sets of 2 & they swivel.
@Prawn Connery
@OneHitDone
So want to make a circle of these bars around a monster. Imagine that shit!
View attachment 4247604
My Poor purple stem plant being nursed by the Horizon. To Fnn bad. It's was a beast.

 

[JohnDee]

Mornin' Prawn,
I heard about the Myplanetganja site and was even a member for a short while...but mostly it was new people. That's around when I joined here...and have been here off and on ever since.

I was growing a sativa leaning White Widow pheno on an E&F table back then. My circumstances changed and I had to move. Didn't have a male so I crossed my prized WW female with the only male I had handy. Strain called Black Pearl (HGS)...so I salvaged half the genetics.

Back to growing after a significant layoff. I still have the seeds but am trying out different "old seed" methods till I get good at it. Then I'll pop those. Any hints on old seeds? Using scarification and a GA3 soak but lost most. I noticed yesterday a 15 yo skunk seed has germinated and above ground. Best success so far.

Anyway...glad you are still at it and nice to reminisce a bit.
Cheers,
JD

 

[Prawn Connery]

I popped some old seeds a little while back - original Atomical Haze test seeds that I must have got around 2005 or so (pictured in my first post of this thread). Only two out of four germinated, but with older seeds I'll soak them in half a glass of water with a few of drops of H2O2 to sterilise the husks, then wait until the seeds have sunk to the bottom before transferring them to folded paper towel in a saucer. I'll soak the paper towel again with water and a couple of drops of H2O2 (not too strong - you don't want to bleach the emerging root), and then place another lid or saucer on top and leave them in a warm place to germinate. If/when the seeds germinate, I leave them in the paper towel until they have decent tails on them, 1/2"-1" long, before planting them in coco.

I've seen germination methods using a little sugar dissolved in the water to germ old seeds as well - the theory being that when an old seed germinates and the plant emerges, it has lost some of its stored starches over the years and the sugar water is a ready source of energy for the tap root to feed on as soon as it emerges. Never tried it myself, but there you go. It kinda makes sense, because of the four old seeds I soaked, the two that didn't make it still cracked open, but didn't emerge very far, so I might try it myself next time. I would add the sugar water to the paper towel and not the initial pre-soak.

Indeed, I just found this, which describes my method pretty much exactly (I guess the H2O2 method has been around a long time): https://www.dinafem.org/en/blog/rescue-cannabis-seeds/

Of the two seeds that did make it, one germed quickly and thrived right from the get-go. The other took almost two weeks of being in the moist towel to germinate, and then emerged very slowly. I transferred it to coco and nursed it to health, and after a couple of weeks it started growing really well. I took clones of both seedlings, and now each clone is just as vigorous as the other, so even seeds that have a slow start can still grow into healthy plants.

 

[Humple]

... so even seeds that have a slow start can still grow into healthy plants.

I'm counting on that myself. A perfect storm of shitty environmental conditions have transpired to fuck with the seeds I recently popped. Poor little buggers are so damn stunted, and have barely grown at all over the last week or so. It's been a mad scramble to compensate for the wretched temp/humidity levels, and I've just managed to get things dialed in to an acceptable point. Fuck growing in an unfinished basement. Ah well, someday I'll have the wherewithal to build a proper room, complete with full environmental controls. In the meantime, it's all about staying one step ahead of disaster.

 

[hybridway2]

I'm counting on that myself. A perfect storm of shitty environmental conditions have transpired to fuck with the seeds I recently popped. Poor little buggers are so damn stunted, and have barely grown at all over the last week or so. It's been a mad scramble to compensate for the wretched temp/humidity levels, and I've just managed to get things dialed in to an acceptable point. Fuck growing in an unfinished basement. Ah well, someday I'll have the wherewithal to build a proper room, complete with full environmental controls. In the meantime, it's all about staying one step ahead of disaster.

Panda wrap yourself a room. Get a zipwall system. Control the room.
Sounds good right. Haha.

 

[Humple]

Panda wrap yourself a room. Get a zipwall system. Control the room.
Sounds good right. Haha.

I already have the garden area enclosed in four layers of plastic drop-cloth; it helps, but it isn't nearly good enough. The basement is unheated, and averages in the mid-to-upper 40's (F) in the winter. Add to that the fact that my humidifier took a shit after the beans cracked.

 

[JohnDee]

Prawn,
Thanks for the useful link and your tips. I've gotten lots of tips...many of which I'm incorporating into my method. Success with old seeds might be 25% but I'm nowhere close yet.

Totally agreed that patience is key...the older seeds and seedlings need more time. I found a few shriveled up little seedling carcasses...long after I abandoned them. So now I exhibit the patience of Job.

I really like the sugar idea. It does seem that some seeds will pop and the tap emerges...and then it stalls. I've had several stall before separating cotyledons. Perhaps just a little more oomph from the sugar may have made a difference.

I'm totally going the paper towel route after I drowned about a dozen seeds. They cracked, taproot barely emerged and I failed to rescue them...so they died. Every single one had popped. Live and learn. I'm running out of sacrificial old seeds.

@Humple I'm in a new room too. It's an enclosed deck with good wall insulation but cold floors. I measured floor level temps last night. 71 in the room...but 62 at floor level. My plants are sitting on 3x3 trays so I'm putting 3" foam underneath. Hopefully with warmer roots they'll grow faster.
Later guys,
JD

 

[Prawn Connery]

So I've pulled the sativas and this one turned out to be monster. The other three have been dried and weighed and came in as follows:

S1: 4oz
S3: 5.5oz
SH1: 4.5oz

The one below is S2 and I reckon will weigh in well over 6oz - possible close to the half-pound mark (fingers crossed). The smoke is really nice. SH1 was the most indica, but was very trippy as it krept up on you. The plant below is the most like it's mother that has a very intense haze high. Maybe not quite as soaring as the original mother clone, but close.

The photo doesn't do it justice. I had to take it a little early, as the buds were starting to break branches. This one is actually missing a big branch that was taken earlier after it snapped. I need better support next time. It flowered for close to 11 weeks.