Quality of weed grown with fluorescent lights?
- Thread starter zensnapple
- Start date
Pupu
Well-Known Member
Thank you very much Growone.
I was thinking few months ago that even if you put a lot of light on top of your crop light is still not penetrating deep enough.
Plus the fact that if the light is coming from a point or two you get a lot of shade..
Also.. if you have 2-3 foot plants and you need to hang the lights another feet or two above that.. you need a room to grow..
I've designed this grow box in such manner to fit under a window in a balcony of a communist apartment building (hehehe.. Eastern Europe)
below are two solutions that I've come with for the heating problem.
Plexiglas casings around each slot
My favorite.. AIR!
I think a lot of people don't put enough accent on venting.. If the leafs are moving more light reach below them.
I am Just so curios about what bud can be made like this.. because of the arrangements of the light It should get a ball not a Christmas tree. I think Lollipop method is a great way of tunning this.
I was thinking few months ago that even if you put a lot of light on top of your crop light is still not penetrating deep enough.
Plus the fact that if the light is coming from a point or two you get a lot of shade..
Also.. if you have 2-3 foot plants and you need to hang the lights another feet or two above that.. you need a room to grow..
I've designed this grow box in such manner to fit under a window in a balcony of a communist apartment building (hehehe.. Eastern Europe)
below are two solutions that I've come with for the heating problem.
Plexiglas casings around each slot
My favorite.. AIR!
I think a lot of people don't put enough accent on venting.. If the leafs are moving more light reach below them.
I am Just so curios about what bud can be made like this.. because of the arrangements of the light It should get a ball not a Christmas tree. I think Lollipop method is a great way of tunning this.
10jed
Active Member
the pic of that t8 closet grow that growone posted is in line with what I am thinking. With more power that plant would have been pushing up to the sides of that cabinet I think... T8's are pretty wimpy. Keep in mind you really don't NEED light from the top. To promote side growth it may even be better not too. Plants when healthy will stretch to the light regardless and heavy side branching should be easy to achieve with intense side lighting. I would leave the bulbs vertical, and minimize the size of your tent so you are getting a direct reflection from the backside of the bulbs. Start with the plant raised toward the top to promote side growth/branching and lower as you go. When you get to about 24", drop that sucker so the bottom of the bulbs are in line with the top of the pot, then throw a 42w cfl in a hanging/adjustable reflector over the top and flip her to 12/12 keeping the top bulb a few inches over the top of the plant. That should get you a nice thick bush.
LST techniques may help the system too... I read a tut one time on "4-way LST" and it was a great way to open up the center of the plant so that may be a way for you to maximize your yield. For the first one I would just let the plant do its thing and then make mods to your technique where they are needed.
As for your electric costs, you can log onto you local power company website and see if they have an appliance cost calculator. Mine does, and when I figure 250 w run 12 hrs per day for 30 days it tells me my flower cab is costing me about $13 per month. You can probably calculate this on your power company website too.
Maybe try to limit the rest of your electrical usage in your home to compensate... use the grill instead of the oven sometimes, lower the temp on the water heater, watch leaving the frige door open, switch out your heavily used lights for cfls or led lights, use the sleep timer on the bedroom tv and things like that! It'll be easy to bury much of your grow I would think.
One thing about floros though that people don't usually talk about, is that the electrical used to fire up the bulb is about the same as running the bulb for 6-8 hrs, so for in/out rooms like bathrooms they aren't always the best option. Low wattage incandescents or LEDs are best for rooms like that, with supplemental lighting for when you need it.
Sounds like you are in for a fun grow!
Jed
10jed, been looking at the t5's for a while, they are incredible for their lumens
but i just checked plain, old t8's the other day, 2800 lumens for a 32 watt bulb
that's right around 90 lumens per watt! not quite what t5's do, but to me that pretty intense
a few other growers have remarked that t8's can be touching foliage with no burn
i really woul like to do a vertical grow, but plain cfl's give me the largest crop i'm comfortable with
until NY goes MMJ, soon perhaps
but i just checked plain, old t8's the other day, 2800 lumens for a 32 watt bulb
that's right around 90 lumens per watt! not quite what t5's do, but to me that pretty intense
a few other growers have remarked that t8's can be touching foliage with no burn
i really woul like to do a vertical grow, but plain cfl's give me the largest crop i'm comfortable with
until NY goes MMJ, soon perhaps
10jed
Active Member
Pupu this seems like a pita to me... I can see those bulbs breaking a lot since you will be constantly rotating the plants. I think you are right about the ball shape and the concept is porbably a good one. The heat issue would be a big one as said already but you may try using the clear floro sheilds and conecting them to a system of tubing so that you can cool them independant of the grow space. For ease, you may also just want to go with 2 or 3 sections leaving a good 2x2 for the final chamber. I have thought of doing something similar but with more emphasis on vegging and a single flower space like what we are talking about with smokemore.
If you want to do a sog in a box like this I think top lighting woube be best with the tubes tapering down toward the front. With your rigidly spaced grow areas it will not be very efficient since plants don't grow in symetrical increments. Have a fully open space will allow you to adjust the position of the plant to be at an ideal location in reference to the lights. then with a single plane of bulbs it would be quite easy to seal them all off and vent them independantly.
My $.02
Jed
10jed
Active Member
2800 is more than I would have guessed! Give it a shot if you get the chance and let us know. There is a lot more to flouros than I understand. It really does come down to the light intensity and the colors that the bulb produces. a 2700K bulb doesn't just produce that specific color and a 2700 cfl, vs t8, vs t5, vs hps are likely to be drastically different in the range of colors they produce and their intensity at a given color range! Even though they may all have the same Kalvin rating. Proof is in the pudding as they say, so lets all make some pudding and compare our results. that is a big part of the fun in growing and what makes forums like these so interesting.
Jed
I've got a small grow room I just set up with 2 - 4 ft, 4 bulb fluorescent troffers, hanging vertically and my blue moonshine and hashplant buds are thick, fat and sticky, after only a month of flowering. Keep your bulbs within an inch or 2 of your plants and they'll amaze you if ya feed'em and treat'em right. My girls are freakin me out they're buddin up so nice and purdy.Attachments
stonesour
Well-Known Member
take a look at my grow box, im sure it will provide some insight. It solves the problem of adding light when needed and not all the time. I just went with what i thought would work and built it. The link to my journal is my signature. If anything it will give you ideas. So far its working great.
Cheechburner
Active Member
shit load of fireflys in a jar work better than a hps imo.
10jed
Active Member
Didn't mean to poo poo on your idea friend... I am going to be setting a friend up soon who has a whole basement I can play with. He wants a smallish cabinet for personal production. What we are talking about is a multi cab vertical using PL-L's and t-5HOs. 1 independant veg chamber about 2x2x3H and 1 flower chamber 2x2x5H. Then a smaller cab for a few bonzai moms and his clones.
Basically the difference in what your design shows is that he would only move the plants once. 4 weeks in the veg cabinet and then 8 weeks in the flower cab. The Pl-L lamps are about 22" long for a 36w or 55w bulb. Using a fulham workhorse 8 he can run 4 @ 55w or 6 @ 36w PL-Ls. The veg cabs would be top access similar to your design. Lights would be in the clear floro protectors and routed into piping to be cooled independent of the grow area and allow the plant to touch right up to the bulbs without burning. Flower cabs would have to have a front access because of the height and would require him to rotate the plant every watering since there would only be bulbs on 3 sides of that cabinet. that so far is the only flaw I am seeing, but it should work very well.
Veg chamber will be 2 PL-L bulbs per wall and the flower chamber will be 4 t5's on each of 3 walls. That ends up being about $150 in ballasts and about $200 in tubes so we are also just talking about an hps and calling it a day! he doesn't have to worry about sound as much as I do so a big fan to cool that sucker isn't a big concern. This, IMHO, is the point where you maybe just say fuck the floros and gives me som hps.
Jed
How are u finding halogen for growing? r u veging or flowering.
Sw1sh3r,k33f
Member
so would i be able to set up the grow room with 3 4ft 40w, 1 8ft flos, and 1 150w reptile lamp(sounds ridiculous but just thought about it) hanging facing 9 flowering plants and get great results? or should i just go hps since i have more than just a few??
that sounds like an awkward setup, you might be able to veg for a while but flower probably wouldn't go too well
more bulbs or hps
10jed
Active Member
Halogen doesn't work for growing MJ. TONS of heat and not a very usable spectrum... buy some floros or hps.
Jed
Total Head
Well-Known Member
my two cents on floros for buds: USE SIDE LIGHT. as someone mentioned earlier in the thread even t5ho dont have the penetration for good production on their own if they are just above the plants, even if the plants are fairly short. on my last grow i used a 6 tube t5ho above the plants (self ballasted with reflector) and a few weeks into 12/12 i realized that my light meter all but stopped registering the light about 7 inches below the tubes and the preflowers were baely noticable. the tops of the plants were about 3 inches from the light. I added cfls for side light and noticed almost immidiate improvement from the plants. also the light meter read the cfl light as WAY more intense at identical distances. as far as the density of the bud it was just fine (i used pretty fancy seeds), it was the overall size of the buds that i think suffered. t5s are like the freakin holy grail of veg and cloning but for budding you need a lot of light and to keep the light practically on top of the plants which can be cumbersome when the plants grow inches in a week.
I know u can't use halogen, That's y i wos asking how he wos getting on with supposedly growing with halogen, Did u read earlier in the thread that he wos growing with a 500w halogen.
