are these LED lights good?

shaggy batman

New Member
actually, i must of not shopped around LED lights to much and just was thrown away from the idea by seeing those really expensive LED's... seen some inexpensive ones, but what are yall take on them?
 
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Althos

Member
You should really be ssking this in the indoor growing section under led lighting. As far as 5x5 grow room I run 4 area 51 sgs 190 and I have no experience with California light works. Also look for grow journals on the lights your looking at. What I found when deciding on lights was that there where more unfinish jurnals or failures with the cheaper lights. Good luck and cya in the led forums
 

az2000

Well-Known Member
should i get an LED light for my first 5x5 grow tent, or should i just stick with a 600w HPS/MH?
Why are you considering LED? If it's to reduce electricity costs and/or reduce heat in the summer, LED is a good choice but you'll pay $3 per watt. It will take awhile to pay for themselves.

Inexpensive LEDs like MarsHydro don't use efficient diodes. You'll use about as much electricity (generate about as much heat) as HID.

Also, not all LEDs priced at $3 per watt are efficient. There a few brands that charge high prices but don't disclose the brand of LEDs they use. They're quite big on hyping their lights, so the silence on the quality of diodes they use can only mean they're using something that can't be hyped. Presumably the same stuff MarsHydro uses for 30% of the price. (Be careful. Lots of predatory products.).

If you want to get into LED, why not start with supplementing what you have using Cree PAR38 (18w) spots or floods as sidelighting? They're about $1.20 per watt and use fairly efficient Cree LEDs (about 90-100 luments/watt). If you only have 600w in a 5x5 tent, that's 24w/sq ft. That's way low for HPS. You could stand 300w of efficient LED to get you up to 36w/sq ft of HID.

You could attach 5 PAR38 spots to a 5' length of PVC pipe or 1x4" wood. You could illuminate one side of your area. Would cost $120 for the bulbs, $40 for sockets, nipples and pipe or wood for 90w actual. 10 year warranty on the bulbs. See how it works for a relatively low price. If you like it. Build another or buy an efficient fixture like Area51. If you made one for each side (all around your perimeter), that would be 360w, bring you to 38w/sq ft which is probably about right for a mix of HPS and efficient LED.

I wrote something about this here, and built a PAR38 fixture here.
 

shaggy batman

New Member
Why are you considering LED? If it's to reduce electricity costs and/or reduce heat in the summer, LED is a good choice but you'll pay $3 per watt. It will take awhile to pay for themselves.
thanks for the info, ill check into it. i was thinking i may go 4x4 tent with a 600w HID to get more watt per sq/f.

the reason i was considering LED, wasnt really because of reduced electricity costs. but more about the heat, not in the sense of temperate control for the room, but rather because i would be paranoid that my place would burn down while im either sleeping or away lol. and the other reason is so i dont have to use a ballast, im worried about RF interference and bothering the neighbors cable or wi-fi (or my own), and having a random cable company come by knocking on my door because of all the interference. i been arrested more then once, twice, and three time (and more then that lol) soooo its more about having better security and peace of mind then the electricity bill. but the electricity bill cost is only an added bonus.. but sadly as the way LED prices stand right now thats just to darn much!! if they end up going down within one year to double the cost of a HIP-set (for good brand) ill get them.

do you have any recommendations for good ballast that wont heat up to much and not give off any Radio Frequency Interference?


EDIT:
You should really be ssking this in the indoor growing section under led lighting............. Good luck and cya in the led forums
and i do apologies for this being in the wrong forum section, didnt check out indoor growing, thought a setup about picking lights was more towards the grow room section at first glance :/ now i know , thanks for letting me see that

EDIT x2: also just a headsup (maybe a forum admin needs to know this), but when you hover your mouse over the forum topics, specifically "indoor growing", it says "growing under HID". even though this isnt the case.
 
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