CFL question

[jarlaxla]

I know there is a watt/plant ratio (or something like that) you can use to determine how much light you need, but I was wondering...when looking at a CFL package do i go off of the actual wattage of the bulb or what it says it replaces in a conventional bulb?
Seen some 13 watt last night that said they replace a 60 watt, so would I count that as 13 or 60 watts when figuring out how much light i need?

 

[riddleme]

13 is too small

smallest good ones are 23 watts (100 watt eqv)

the watt ratio thing you are talking about is that you need a minimum of 50 watts per sq ft, so if your garden is 3X3 that is 9 sq ft so 9 x 50 = 450 actual watts

hope that helps

 

[jarlaxla]

ah ok, i thought it was so much per plant, not square foot, thank you for clearing that up.
so would the 100 watt eqv be enough for 2 square feet or would i need 100 actual watts, not eqv?

 

[riddleme]

ah ok, i thought it was so much per plant, not square foot, thank you for clearing that up.
so would the 100 watt eqv be enough for 2 square feet or would i need 100 actual watts, not eqv?

100 actual so 4 of those 23 watters and that is minimum wattage reqquired per sq ft so please understand that an actual 100 watts per sq ft is better

 

[wannabe grower]

Never understood the square foot thing. Seems when dealing with plants you're looking at cubic feet as they have width, length, and depth. You need some penetration into the canopy to get better growth. Granted you can chop out the lower stuff for clones and such, but if you can LST and supplement with side lighting you can get more yield. NO? Of course if you're stictly using CFL's you're probably not going for a huge yield anyhow just something to tide you over. Am I right?

 

[riddleme]

Never understood the square foot thing. Seems when dealing with plants you're looking at cubic feet as they have width, length, and depth. You need some penetration into the canopy to get better growth. Granted you can chop out the lower stuff for clones and such, but if you can LST and supplement with side lighting you can get more yield. NO? Of course if you're stictly using CFL's you're probably not going for a huge yield anyhow just something to tide you over. Am I right?

you can get incredible yields from cfl's and flouros if you use them right

check my calling all noob growers thread, there are pics of amazing cfl grows there