New DISCOVERY! Vertical SoG most efficient way to grow weed with latest LEDS !??

[Sir420]

Sir420 here live & in full effect .. I have been doing deep digging just like the rest of the LED community & have came to the conclusion based off of the data I collected, that Vertical SoG with the latest LED gear is the most efficient (more grams > less wattage)
Growing method for perpetualgrowers looking to maximize efficiency & time instead of quality & quantity! Most clearance for indoor growing is 8-10 ft which can allow 3-5 rows of canopy vertically and the key to me saying using the "latest LED" is because you can dim them to lower wattage while maintaining same ppfd evenly acrosscanopy.. while thinking of my perfect DiY vertical SoG rack system my focus was efficiency over budget over quality over quantity .. because efficiency is those things all in one sort of.. if anyone can correct me LM301b is still the most efficient led strip on the market today in stock lol & how come I don't see any vertical rack journals if it's suppose to be the most efficient way???
Would loveee feedback & constructive criticism I am looking to build a 5x10 system and my ceiling height is 9 feet, how many LED strips would I need to buy along with matching drivers?? Remember pls REMEMBER I want to keep them less than 10 inchs from canopy to minimize wattage &maximize ppfd efficiency so I understand it will be a little more costly... I think I could do 3 stacks high 5x10x9.. 2-3 plants per sqft (separate mother tent to get clones from) anywhere from 6 to 10" away from canopy.. I can't estimate the wattage but I do know whatever I use I can expect a gpw of at least 1.5 due to distance from canopy and "latest LED" tech along with perfect environment & feeding conditions.. how many watts would I need if I am certain to pull on a bad day 1.5 gpw & I'm trying to achieve at least 4-5lb/month?? Plz tag any knowledgeable ppl who would be happy to chat and discuss HOW MUCH WATTAGEDOES MY SPACE NEED TO PULL 4-5LB IN A 3 RACK (MAYBE 4) VERTICAL SOG RACK SYSTEM COCO 5x10x9 ???

 

[Sir420]

There are a few guys that I personally will reach out to due to there abundance of information & mainly the fact that they don't mind sharing knowledge, knowing something may come out of it like @Randomblame or preferably if you know anyone who could contribute to to topic of discussion feel free to comment names and tag a friend!

 

[Thundercat]

I'm curious what exactly you have in mind. I'm trying to envision it from your description and the dimensions you stated. Any pictures, drawings or examples of what your trying to build?

The rack grows I've seen weren't vertical and they had a lot more then 9 foot ceilings.

 

[Sir420]

@Thundercat thanks for the reply I love this community! Can't wait to be more mainstream and in tune with the community later down the line.. I saw this company I'll tag their website which sparked a DiY idea that I KNOW 100% could be the new standard of growing efficiently.. I think all each rack needs is like 10" at most for distance between light & canopy .. & maybe 6" (not sure here any guess?) for growing medium height in flood trays so maybe 12-24" of top quality bud per tier so u really need like 2 - 3ft vertical height per rack which means u can have 3-4 racks in most indoor settings.. ok now the lights.. if I have my plants close enough I can maintain high ppfd while minimizing wattage. Only thing im thinking could go wrong is if I don't add up the # of LED strips I need to make it more efficient..

 

[Sir420]

@Thundercat https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&ei=JRGNXOSJHoLr5gLV_anIDg&q=vertical+sea+of+green+smart+grow&oq=vertical+sea+of+green+smart+grow&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.3..33i160.67468.70852..71214...0.0..0.165.1627.0j11......0....1.........0i71j0i22i30j33i299j33i22i29i30.NY_u-X20hUg

This is where the idea came from but of course I will have to DiY a similar system more geared towards indoor home not Warehouse facility

 

[Sir420]

I think with the help of the community coming together we could ultimately build a system that is Soo good someone might put it on the market lol geared towards home growers instead of everyone only making commercial systems

 

[Thundercat]

Yep that's what I thought you were talking about. I think it's a great system that if you tailored your grow to it would work great. You could get great yield and no reason you can't grow great quality if you try.

One thing I will say is I don't see you fitting 3 stacks in a 9 foot room. Once you equate in the dimensions of the metals frames it would get very very tight. I would want 36 inches between the racks, and even that will mean you have to make sure your clones go in small to make them fit.

Having enough head room to do this right is probably one of the main reasons more people don't. I run flood and drain and unless I put my res in the floor I couldn't use this technique. I could switch to drain to waste I suppose but that has always seemed wasteful.

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

part of the appeal of vertical growing is the scrog aspect that spreads the plant open and makes the best use of everything its producing. that takes time, and fills a net pretty full if you take full advantage of it.
what you're proposing would take that advantage away, making it no more productive than a typical horizontal grow. the back side of every plant wouldn't receive adequate lighting, and would waste effort trying to curl those branches around to get any light at all. the only way i can see to get around that is to either light from both sides, or use turntables....both of which are very inefficient and are just more things to break, more power to burn....
not trying to discourage you...tell me how you plan to overcome those problems...good luck, really...

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

Yep that's what I thought you were talking about. I think it's a great system that if you tailored your grow to it would work great. You could get great yield and no reason you can't grow great quality if you try.

One thing I will say is I don't see you fitting 3 stacks in a 9 foot room. Once you equate in the dimensions of the metals frames it would get very very tight. I would want 36 inches between the racks, and even that will mean you have to make sure your clones go in small to make them fit.

Having enough head room to do this right is probably one of the main reasons more people don't. I run flood and drain and unless I put my res in the floor I couldn't use this technique. I could switch to drain to waste I suppose but that has always seemed wasteful.

i don't think he intended to use a net? he didn't say scrog, he said sog...no net in a sog....

 

[Sir420]

@Thundercat if we use the 36" .. ok cool check out my weird math that's actually more just numbers rather than logical math lol .. my light may take 1".. max distance away from canopy will be 10".. with low wattage & high ppfd I don't think penetration will go lower than 18" for top quality bud.. those flood trays I think are 6" high.. spacing between tiers I guess 1" 1.5" max... Your right that does equal to about 36" per tier and one thing about maximizing space is it's never pretty lol It will mathematically fit but yes it will be tight. 0% vertical overhead is left which means 100% maximizing right?

 

[Sir420]

@Roger A. Shrubber thanks for joining! This is very cool to me still obviously lol.. I don't see why scrog & SoG can't be combined... Actually, this wouldnt work as efficient without nets

 

[Sir420]

I think at least 2 for me 3 nets is mandatory to help tuck and bend and hold up stems towards or away from the light.. ultimate control right?

 

[Sir420]

Within that 18" range every 6" you will have the ability to either push the branch to grow horizontal more or hold the branch straight up or really at any angle to keep the sweet spot distance while THICKENING the canopy

 

[Sir420]

Made a mistake with calculating the nets lol that's a part of the process haha maybe 3 nets is actually overkill but you get the point I'm making and my reasons behind it. But yeah it's definitely possible Ill build it and do a journal once I have all specs worked out
@Thundercat @Roger A. Shrubber

 

[OneHitDone]

One issue with your "efficiency" is this - where are all those clones going to come from?

Check this out @5:20ish - 750 DE's in vertical racks

 

[Roger A. Shrubber]

so i'm imagining a cross between a stadium grow and a vertical scrog?
something like this with a net spreading all the plants open?

 

[OneHitDone]

so i'm imagining a cross between a stadium grow and a vertical scrog?
something like this with a net spreading all the plants open?
View attachment 4301254

That is how brother @T-Time grows
I thought Op was just talking about vertical racks

 

[Sir420]

@OneHitDone welcome to the thread! Thanks for pulling up a chair to the table to join us lol & as you can see in the video they have more than 10" between canopy due to HID lighting. With LED they can be 6" really no problem if you have your wattage turned down low enough.. so for example if I have 6 light bars at 100w putting out 300 uMol then if I had 12 light bars at 100w, the uMol would be spread 2x more evenly & should allow you to bring lights closer .. allowing you to hit that 300 uMol with less wattage.. see?

 

[Thundercat]

I would really check your measurements before you start building and buying stuff its ALWAYS better to have more room then not enough. Even if each rack is only 1 inch thick, you just lost 3 inches. That's down to maximum 35" between racks. Then 1-1.5 per inches per light, brings you down 3-5 more inches, and then 6 inches for the pot or medium. Your now down to 24 inches, minus the 10 for the light spacing, and your looking at plants that can only grow 14-16 inches tall. The buds won't start at the pot level so your gonna have another 3-5 inches above that of stem before the buds start. Now your looking at a roughly a maximum of 9-10 inchs of bud per plant.

When I said 36 inches between racks I really meant a full 36, not 36 minus lights and rack dimensions and honestly thats like a bare minimum. I would much rather do this project with about 40+ish inches for a little wiggle room.

 

[Randomblame]

PLC strips are a bit better cuz they have already a few deep reds. It's a 2ft strip with LM301b but more of the in a single row and 4 XP-E's. Cost about the same like H-influx L06 but more diodes, higher efficiency and higher maximum PPF.
The needed area depends on yields per sft. Lets say you pull 50-60g/sft which is not bad but good enough you can easily calculate how much area and wattage you need. With a hydro setup I would say 30w/sft. If you plan to maximize light usage by adding up to 1500ppm's you are better adviced using 40w/sft. Rest is simple math...
But I'm pretty sure you can get away with less when we calculate with 800μMol/s/m² as needed intensity level.

I like these PLC strips and hope we will see more strips like this. Diode spacing is not perfect but they are only 2ft so its okay. I would just place my order even when they're out of stock just to make sure to grab a few of them with the next delivery.

Put "pacificlightingconcepts" into your browser, visit the website and look for their specs. Its a 50v strip, 2,78μMol/J @700mA. An HLG-600H-54B has two parallel outlets, you could add 10 strips in parallel on each side. 20 strips mounted on two frames 2 x 5' frames. Both frames would have 4x 5' and would cover a 5' 5' area pretty well. Thats 25sft or 1250-1500g and to get close to 5lbs you would need two fixtures like this. 2 HLG-600H-54B's and 40pcs PLC strips... Around 350$ and ~1120$, with alli frames, wiring, dimmers and other misc parts maybe ~1600 bucks for 1300w of light, efficiency at 600mA probably +2,8μMol/J, system efficiency ~2,6. That's probably the lighting solution with the highest price-performance currently.
If costs doesn't matter you could of course use twice as much strips to run them with around 300mA. Efficiency would reach +2,9μMol/J which is fuckin' crazy btw. and even with driver and wall loss you can pump 2,7μMols per second per wall watt into your area. Lets say you build hydro setup 5' high you need a 10' wide wall.
4 separate alli frames, each two connected together to cover 5x 5' vertical area and driven by one single dimmable driver.
Because the voltage fits inside the constant current area and B series drivers have a fixed voltage the driver would switch in CC mode in order to be able to deliver its maximum current(~12A for a 54v HLG-600}.
You could also use the A version of the driver and use the 48v version instead. The driver has a voltage regulator ±3% which means you can set it to 50v manually. The 48v has a higher max. current and can go as high as 13,5A and even if you don't get all of it because of the higher voltage setting the total output is probably a bit higher. Maybe 675w or more...
But the strips would run in constant voltage mode and with the build in current poti you can only dimm it down to 50%.
B version can be dimmed down to 6-10% and if you dimm further it simply switch off in standby mode. Inspection done, just turn up the dimmer...
With 1300w and 2,9μMol/j efficiency you would create ~3.770μMol/s PPF, distributed over 4,5m² of even canopy that's ~838μMol/s/m² calculated. You will see such results probably with ~10-12" distance but strips allow even less distance which means up to 1000μMol/s on canopy level are possible. Lets say with driver loss they pull 675w maximal out of the wall that's only 26-27w/sft. That's with 80 strips but numbers with 40 and 2,8μMol/J are still above 800 which is still enough.
When gram per watt efficiency is your main target 700-800μMol/s/m² is the way to go. In this area PS run's already with 80-85% and to come close to 100% you would need twice as much light and wattage.
Unrealistic cause even with 1500ppm CO² 1150-1200μMol/s/m² is the limit for the most strains.

These strips need no heatsinks at least not with that low drive current. You need only a frame to have a few mounting points. The vertical orientation would even increase the cooling effect. I would use the plant fans from behind the fixtures to blow the warm air directly on the plants and make use of it. 800μMol/s will not create much heat and especially in winter you need that heat to get the PS running efficiently. 28-30°C at canopy level, roots and reservoir ~20°C even at night that's optimal range with LED's. And keep an eye on the VPD, air tends to dry out under intense light and compared to growing with hps/mh/cmh we need higher ambient temps and higher humidity to keep owr plants happy.
Here is a VPD chart you can use for the whole circuit. You can also get controllers with the ability to set VPD but you need probably a humidifier to get consistent results.

So, bro! Enough blah-blah! You can use more light or a wider area, thats up to you. I can only guarantee you the setpu above works and has to notch efficiency for a DIY build. And the good thing with such a light weight fixture is you can easily add UVB bulbs or more strips because there is enough free space left on the frames and they are still easy to hang up. Two rope ratchets, two rigid enough hooks in the ceiling, voila! 650w hanging infront of a 5x 5' wall of plants.