Info on LED lights, please help a brotha out

Ray Lewis

Member
Hey there, I would like to grow in two rooms, each 11 feet by 11 feet, and want to use LED lights. Anyone have any feedback? Do they really work well? What kind/how many lights would i need in total to cover that area? i was thinking three 300-watt sunshine systems gropanel pros in each room, but i'm not sure if that's a good brand and a good choice. what brands/models work best? what is a good price? Any info would be much appreciated.
-- Ray
 

mauricelm

Member
You will need more lights than one for a room because 300 watt covers max 3 feet. For a room that big your going to need 1000 watts each. If I were you I would get two 600 watt Stealth Grow SG602 each one covers 5x4 and is $1600.
 

jdizzle22

Well-Known Member
Those are 2 huge growing areas and its is going to cost you TONS of money to cover each area entirely with LED lighting. I think you either need to go with 1 room and/or get some light movers for the LED Lights.

You could probably get away with 3 light movers with 2 lights on each mover. I'm getting www.growledhydro.com Spectra LED lights myself (probably just a 395w for my 2.5ft x 2.5ft tent), but I would suggest you get maybe six of the 240w units. You could get a bulk discount and probably get them for $500 or less each.

The website is a bit out of date for that brand but here is a link with the new specs and pics of the 2011 line http://www.420magazine.com/forums/journals-progress/132192-irish-boys-480w-720w-grow-led-hydro-land-clovers-49.html
 

crunkyeah

Well-Known Member
Wow, you're seriously lucky to have that kinda space to grow ganja in! I wouldn't even PARTLY consider going LED in that kinda space. For example, let's say you get a 600w hps, not sure about costs for these things since I'm a LED junky. Let's just say $500 for the whole setup, cooltube, ballast, everything. With 2 of those beasts you could run a vertical setup, like heath's for example. You may also get more than 1g/w. If you have say, 100 clones, and each yields the same, at 1g/w, you're looking at 1200g. With vertical setups more than 2g/w have been reported, so this is just a ballpark guess.

Total power would be: 1200w of hps, whatever of fans, and whatever a/c, going with a ballpark of 1750w. Also assuming soil, and no electric wasted on water or air pumps. Costs would be(assuming $500 for 1 600w hps) $1,000 on lights, about 250 for fans, scrubber, etc, and another 100 for a/c. Let's round it off with $1,500.

Now let's compare LED: You purchase 2 of these 600w panels(not going to go into brands here). Let's say you get them at good price for $2,500. So you're looking at 1,200w of light, same as hps. With LEDs right now it can be a struggle to achieve 1g/w. So let's say you get .75g/w. 1200w/.75=800g.

You're looking at nearly a pound more with the hps system, and 2500 in lights vs 1500 for everything you need. Granted, LEDs won't require massive fans and an air conditioner, so you will save a little on costs there. Where LEDs pay off is you can use them for like 20 harvests whereas a hps bulb normally is only good for 1 maybe 2 harvests. If you want to experiment with LEDs, and you have the room to. Why not go with hps for a couple years to get some funds going for LED experiments? The LEDs will eventually outweigh the hps because you don't have bulb replacements to deal with.

It baffles me how many people have such large spaces and wish to use LEDs, they're simply just not there as far as large scale grows go. If you look at 90% of the LED grows going on right now, you'll see NONE of them are in a 5x5 area, let alone 11x11. If you find one that doesn't have HID included, let me know.

Stick to the hps, and run an air conditioner and you can then venture into the LED world, once your system is dialed in you can pull in thousands of dollars per month selling a good indica. That would give you plenty of cash to fork out for the insanely expensive LED panels.

Of course, this is just my opinion, so do what you will.

Good luck with whatever ya decide!
 

jdizzle22

Well-Known Member
It baffles me how many people have such large spaces and wish to use LEDs, they're simply just not there as far as large scale grows go. If you look at 90% of the LED grows going on right now, you'll see NONE of them are in a 5x5 area, let alone 11x11. If you find one that doesn't have HID included, let me know.
Yeah I mean for rooms that size hed have to be pretty damn rich to fill it with LEDs. Those rooms are so big I think he should get light movers no matter what he goes with. But I bet he could cover that floorspace pretty well with as few as 6 LED lights on 3 light movers and the plus side to LED is that is all he would need.

I think going all HID or LED would be best, shouldn't need more than 6 lights in each room. Hey Ray Lewis if you don't already have a fair amount of HID equipment I think you should go all LED but be certain you know you are getting a good brand (I can vouch for the Spectras I've seen them do great stuff)

PS: I see most LED lights are rated at 50,000 hours so you should get well more than 20 harvest before they start to break down
PSS: OMG I would love to be able to grow a bunch in a big room with LEDs on light movers and stuff! *drooling at the thought*
 

bajafox

Well-Known Member
IMHO....go with 4 600w hps systems, DO NOT use cool tubes, use Magnum XXLs (they cover a larger area) (each room)

Then add maybe 3 LED panels as supplemental lighting. (each room)

Good luck, that's a lot of room. I'm looking into running a 4x4 area with LEDs soon and I'm guessing it's going to cost me close to a grand to get enough LED lighting in there just to get by...

:leaf:
 

jdizzle22

Well-Known Member
IMHO....go with 4 600w hps systems, DO NOT use cool tubes, use Magnum XXLs (they cover a larger area) (each room)

Then add maybe 3 LED panels as supplemental lighting. (each room)

Good luck, that's a lot of room. I'm looking into running a 4x4 area with LEDs soon and I'm guessing it's going to cost me close to a grand to get enough LED lighting in there just to get by...

:leaf:
I think you would be fine with only 2 LED lights, but yeah good ones will probably run you up to $1200. If my tent had been 4x4 instead of 2.5x2.5 I would have gotten two 240w Spectras instead of a single 395w (two 240w spectras is $1200 with no discount and free shipping and a 395w Spectra is $1100). You could probably get away with 2-3 magenta/purple Kessels and save some money, however I personally haven't seen any Kessel only completed journals (but most of the good LED journals I've seen were Spectra)
 

Ray Lewis

Member
Hi, guys, I really appreciate all the good input. I currently have 15 ladies under a pair of 400 HPS in a closet, but I'm thinking of stepping up my game considerably. I was thinking of getting the Sunshine Systems 300watt Growpanel Pro, which says it covers 50 square feet. I figured if I put three of those in each of the rooms, which are each 121 square feet each, I'd be all set. My concerns are that the company might be exagerating the coverage area, the product might not be as good as other brands, and I might be making a mistake. I love the idea of LEDs because of the lower energy costs and very little heat, so I don't want to expand into more HPS. Do you guys think my proposed setup would work? Each light costs $1,000, and if six would work, I could do it. Thoughts? I really appreciate it.
Ray
 

bajafox

Well-Known Member
If you want quality LEDs and money is no object check out irisboy's grow journal. He uses Spectra's and he has shown what these things can produce, but they are not cheap by any means...

You're probably better off going with a combination HID + LED supplemental, IMO. Good luck man, hell of a fuckin grow that's gonna turn out to be
 

jdizzle22

Well-Known Member
Hi, guys, I really appreciate all the good input. I currently have 15 ladies under a pair of 400 HPS in a closet, but I'm thinking of stepping up my game considerably. I was thinking of getting the Sunshine Systems 300watt Growpanel Pro, which says it covers 50 square feet. I figured if I put three of those in each of the rooms, which are each 121 square feet each, I'd be all set. My concerns are that the company might be exagerating the coverage area, the product might not be as good as other brands, and I might be making a mistake. I love the idea of LEDs because of the lower energy costs and very little heat, so I don't want to expand into more HPS. Do you guys think my proposed setup would work? Each light costs $1,000, and if six would work, I could do it. Thoughts? I really appreciate it.
Ray
There is no way in hell a 300w LED will cover a 7ft x 7ft space, I'd say 4ft x 4ft at best (which is only 16 sq ft). That is why it would be best to make use of light movers.
 

Detroit J420

Well-Known Member
LEDS are the rolls royce of veg. stage people use em for flower i think they suck for flower got a couple of diff. Spec. UFOs myself but do what u want
 

jdizzle22

Well-Known Member
LEDS are the rolls royce of veg. stage people use em for flower i think they suck for flower got a couple of diff. Spec. UFOs myself but do what u want
Most LED units suck for flower because they are just rolling the wrong LED tech (low watt, wrong lens angle, imprecise nm/wavelength/spectrum, etc). look up Irishboy and SettingSun for starters they've all done great flowering jobs with LED. Irishboy even won the first plant of the month for a pure LED grow over at 420mag.com (although I think he got banned for talking about his bad experiences with certain LED sponsors or something). Here are some pics of my plants which were flowered under a 395w LED panel (first week of 12/12 was under 400w HPS, they only had 7 weeks of 12/12 under LED by these pics). I'm really happy with how well they flowered under the LED because I was worried that I underfed them (first time using organic nutes, didn't realize NPK ratings were much lower) and wouldn't even get half of what I was hoping for (luckily it was a bit more). Curing buds definitely at least twice as trichome dense and WAY more resinous compared to my 400w HID flowered stuff).

UFOs are for micro grows, if you want to start doing normal grows you need a proper LED panel (square/rectangular instead of circular), 3w chips, 60-90 degree lens angles, 12 spectrums/wavelengths/nm (no one seems to do more yet, most are aiming for 12 now)
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