30x18x36" flower tent - help with VERO 29 lighting? (DIY COB LED)

Hey y'all.

New to indoors, new to coco, starting to get comfortable with microgrowing, and have finally graduated from my all-in-one PC case (12/12 from seed perpetual), to an enormous 30x18x36" grow tent. (75x45x90cm)



This is typically meant for cloning in, but I love the micro world, don't have much space, don't have a ton of freedom to grow, and I want to push the limits on what the cannabis enthusiast can do in a micro area... so let's get to it!

Tent's in the mail. PC's raging with two popped seeds, just shy of 2 weeks old (pics to come). They'll be getting their first 1/4 strength feed in the next day or two.

Lighting will be COB LED's. I'm brand new to LED's, and have spent hours upon hours on the uptake of the learning curve, tearing through growmau5 vids, reading about space buckets, and generally digging into the DIY LED scene. I'm comfortable playing around with numbers, matching drivers, reading datasheets, etc. but I do have some underlying questions before I take the plunge.

1. At 3.75 sq. ft I'm looking for 75 PAR watts, which I believe lands me somewhere in the range of 150 watts at the system level, meaning 3 x Vero 29's should do the trick - how am I doing so far?
2. Assuming 3 Vero's will do it... I'm unsure of how to space those lights. I'm assuming the best layout is something along the following lines:
   
   
   
   
   

I trust you're all doing well - I look forward to chatting with everyone more as things progress, and seeing as the ladies will get their first nutes within 36 hours I'm guessing it won't be long until those mama's are getting cloned out

I've been running three first gen Vero 29's @ 1.9A in a 35 x 18 x 30 for the last three years and am planning to upgrade soon, maybe after the next gen is released. However, this time I'm going for six emitters @ 0.5A. Each puts out less but overall output is like 50% more with slightly less power consumption. Three worked fine but the tops tend to grow up around the emitters and block the light from the rest of the plants. Leaves get photosynthetically saturated and light gets wasted, spread the love!

Hey Observe & Report, thanks for checking in. That's great info.

I couldn't find the datasheet for your lights, but assuming they're somewhat similar to the latest, you're running 3 x 1.8A (~93W), around 280W for the chamber... and roughly 140 PAR watts? Is that not high?

How many PAR watts (or PPFD) will you be getting at 6 x 0.5A? I'm looking at the datasheet which only has numbers as low as 900mA.

What are you using to calculate, if you dont mind me asking?

What do you consider optimal par watts for that area?

What you really want to consider, rather than PAR watts, is PPFD at canopy level. That being said, 3 Veros with the spacing you mentioned should be an excellent setup! I've been running about 200w of COBs and monos in almost the exact same space with great results. Welcome to the "big" leagues.

3x Vero29 Cs will over power that space at 70W. 1050 mA

Sounds like a good plan to me, I like headroom.

You should see about 1000 PPFD or more, I'm not running specific numbers right now.

I'm running two of them right now to see what they do.