Walmart is actually the best place to get LED "grow" lights:... For me anyway. I laugh at everyone that spent big bucks on LED fixtures any time any place, haahahah! JK
Just keep walking past the little commercialized LED grow light shelf though. Those 4' hyper toughs would work halfway decent for a microgreen grow rack setup, which I highly recommend you guys all get into growing as well. Don't get me wrong, you could pull over a gram per watt with them still, and show everyone here who's boss. You would have to train the heck out of the plants though, and lollipop/scrog them with a perfectly flat canopy. The bulbs would have to be positioned exactly, and spread evenly. Flat as a pancake.
Walk farther down the same lighting isle, and pickup 4 pack boxes of 14-15.5 watt regular screw in Great Value 100w equivalent LED bulbs for $8-10 per pack, depending on what spectrum. Daylight or Warm white which are a bit less. That's like 60 actual watts for 8-10 bucks. Scale as high as you want to go. Look @ my profile pick to the left.. I buy stacks of them. 2 boxes for $20, now your up to 120 watts. So on and so forth. Wanna build a real actual 1000 watt led fixture and spend $160.. why all the other guys spend 1-2 grand ? Yep, you can do that.
Pull the plastic light diffusing globes off and they put out some serious lumens. If you think about it, COB is nothing more than a 4 pack box of worth of screw in led's little diodes, just all in one bigger single diode chip that cost 3 times more, and doesn't even come with its own ballast or anything else.
If you wanna be under 20-25 cents per watt, you can cheap out a bit, and not buy the electrical base sockets the bulbs screw into, although they make the job way easier.. Not sure I recommend it though unless you can safely wire simple AC lamp circuits up, and insulate the connections good. They can cost anywhere from a .50 or a buck or 2 a piece which really adds up quick for the sockets. As much as the actual LED bulbs unless you find good deals. Still be way under $1 per watt though if you get them. Cheap Chinese ones on ebay aren't too bad, but not UL listed or anything. Perfect for 15 watt bulbs though. 10 packs were $5-6 not too long ago directly from China, but not sure now. You can simply bust the threaded metal screw in terminal part off the bulb housing, pull the 2 small wires out, and solder or crimp them to the free extension cord wires you just pulled from a dumpster (behind the same walmart)..
Spread the bulbs out in a grid pattern (your looking for roughly 30 watts per sq ft in your space, so for example a 4x4' is 16sq ft. 16x30 = 480 watts. 480/15 = 32, so you would need 32 bulbs) and connect them to a sheet of plywood or something like a frame. Maybe even a pallet, from behind walmart next to the same dumpster? I would just cut holes through the sheet, and use high temp RTV silicone around the rim where you pulled the globes off the bulbs to attach them. Probably about 5-6 inches apart from each other. Just a sheet of plywood with 32 holes cut out, a bunch of LED bulbs glued on, and some hangers.
Wire all the bulbs in parallel, or however you want. Even put switches on it to run some rows of bulbs when you need less power. If you used base sockets you can simply unscrew bulbs you don't need to be on.
Here and there a bulb might burn out, so you just replace them cheaply when they do, unlike the guys that spent big bux who have to ship the whole fixture back and lose their crop, if they even honor the warranty for it. Most LED tech is garbage IMO. The diodes start burning out right away, and within a few years you have maybe 50% output on your brand new $1200 light. DIY SIL "screw-in led" fixtures are so cheap you can just replace the bulbs every other year. Meaning, you can maintain almost full output from the diodes even if you replaced the bulbs 3 times in 3-6 years, and still only cost a fraction of a commercial fixture..
I also collect free 1970s Dodge van looking 1 ton dually class C motor homes with 440 big block engines (with less than 80k usually), which you rip off the rotted living quarters (the reason they are free all day long) and turn into a flatbed for maybe a grand.. Meanwhile, 100's of guys are driving down the road in brand new 1 ton plasticky tin can POS pickups that cost them a second mortgage, while I have a fleet of free 1 ton trucks that are built solid. They just wanna be big boss truck men, and the guys shelling out for high tech LEDs wanna be big boss grow light men. I don't judge anyone though, just giving you all crap
FFS, I could wire a 45' semi trailer with like 10,000 watts of LED lighting in a few days for the price of a few commercial fixtures. I am actually, for microgreens. 9 watt LED bulbs from walmart, 12 packs for $10 online!
situation for everyone who tried to help.
