Hi peeps, Just came across this thread and thought i'd put my opinion in, I have owned a LED module light from a UK based company for the about 9 months now, I too come from a traditional growers background and have grown various strains using ballasts and bulbs etc.. (mainly old school strains, cheese, pyschosis, kila Watt, etc.. as i gave it up 3 years ago due to costs, me at work all day etc..).
When LED's came out we were all interested but knew through personal and friends experiences with them that they werent powerful enough, noisy, hot, when one led blew the whole lot went, didnt have sufficent cooling in them, even the LED's themselves were just glued onto a huge PCB board and soldered across it, voltage problems overclocking the LED's themselves resulting in life expectancy issues, all sorts.
One suprising thing though is that plants did grow under them, no way near the results a conventional bulb setup would get but at least they did something which gave us hope enough to follow the development of better LEd lights over the next few years.
That was rougly 3 years ago, now here we are and the LED market has gone wild, all i can say is there are an awful lot of older LED technology out there still and china has millions of them.
Cree, BridgeLux and Epistar seem to be the Leaders in the correct LED spectrums and Designs but watch closely and you'll see other companies designing their own LED's soon and not having to rely on oversea importing of parts. WHICH probably is the biggest put off for anyone who wants to purchase a light in the UK,
first, there is the wait, 3-5 weeks just to get it, then the nightmare of returning it if it goes faulty and in the older panel design like i said before if just one LED blew the whole panel would stop working as it was soldered on a 'dasiy chain' system, one led connected to another led and so forth all the way back to the Driver/Power Supply. Break the circuit anywhere and POP the whole lot goes.
So if your light broke, then its another 3-5 weeks to send it, another 3-5 weeks to recieve it, max 10 weeks turnaround? End of Grow, dead ladies. Shame.
Now amercia can offer a quicker turnaround BUT still not quick enough especially if you havnt got a back up plan to keep your plants alive and as far as i can tell america does offer some really good products, many websites devoted to selling them, also NASA have been investing into them for the Mars mission for lighting and horticultural reasons mainly. Then there is the Medical side in california, loads of licensed growers are now using them and the results are getting better as is the technology,
ok for them over there tho but us? still got the turnaround problem, so, getting back to the beginning,
There are now UK based suppliers and i am very happy indeed with the one i have gone with, for customer service, technology and of course overall results.
Firstly the lights i use are the GN Ms0006 series, these are Modular, has 6 circular clusters of LED's with a optical lense on top, so if one pops, the others carry on. Each cluster is 45 Watts, 15 x 3W LEDs, all the correct spectrums including IR. now i could go on and on about the specs but thats not my job, thats the owner job. All i will say is that they work and i mean they really do work.
Have tried mine for the last 9 months now on 2 Auto Grows and now im nearing the end of a Regular grow.
The area i have mine in is 2.5 foot wide by 1.5 foot deep by 6 foot high, basically a stealth cabinet, diamond point mylar, normal extraction fans (kitchen ones wired into a plug) Not very teccy at all but good enuff to do the job and completely covert, you wouldnt know it was there, another interest of mine is building stealth cabinets, anyway....
I germinated 4 Barneys Farms Pineapple Punch Autos under the LED's with them being about 18 inches away from the small seeding pots.
They came through in about 4 days, seeds in my polytunnel in the height of summer still took 7 days! so germination was good, good strong seeds.
As these were Autos i had the lights on a fixed 20 on and 4 off schedule to really put the lights to test and give the seeds as much light as i could. (my philosophy is they do need sleep so 24/0 for me is not good but hey? not one to argue, whatever works best for you stick with it is what i say)
After germination i put them into 4 normal 10L Square pots and squeezed them all into that small area on a lifted grill above the intake of fresh air from the extraction fan.
Heat from these lights isnt really a issue at all but your grow area will still get hot from the exhaust heat from these lights, no where near as hot as conventional bulbs tho, I was hitting good temps with one intake fan and one clip on fan. But this cabinet was a prototype so i improved it as one thing i did notice it was better to put in two fresh air intakes inside, mine are on the right side, one at bottom one at top, the reason i think this is better as it feeds the bottom of the cabinet and also feeds the top of the LED light unit as the cooling fans are sucking in from the top.
My extraction hole is on the top left of the back of the cab. No fan, and 3 inches wide, principle being that hot air is more lighter then colder air (less condensed to be technical) and if the hole is smaller then the hot air will be forced out by the pressure of the cold air coming in. A theory i have tested and it works, even if you put your hand over the back you can feel hot air gushing out. Just put on a simple filter and your done.
Anyway back to the Autos, after 10 weeks (2 weeks on top of what the seedbank advertised) they were ready, I had no problems whatsoever with these lights throughout, all four plants were healthy and trichome development was excellent, cut em all on day 75 and got about 60g off each plant, Dry. Quite suprised as the breeder said i would be lucky to get 27g per plant. Lovely smoke IF you are patient enough for the curing process, me? i bag dryed most of it just to smoke and test it lol. Still tasted good but not as good if it was cured for longer.
Then i tried Afghan Kush Ryder Auto. same technique, keeping about the same distance between the lights and LED. about 12-18 inches, I got even stronger growth from these. After 11 weeks, cut em. Got about 75g from each! Dry. Both of my grows had phenos in them but were overall near enough the same size, yield, etc.. Very tasty stuff indeed, we call it the 'meaty chunder' smoke, let the amber trichomes go a bit more on this one, wanted couchlock and couchlock is what i got lol
Next was Regular, Berry Bomb, Two Tangerine Dreams and Big Bang, All in same area.
Vegged all until 12 inches tall, 4 weeks Veg. All got 100 cm tall apart from one Tangerine Dream which has more sativa in it and is about 2 inches away from the LED, lol. Oh incidently, if you put your lights too close, they rarely burn but can bleach the tops of the buds pure white! i had one on the afghan kush go white, it cured and smoked beatifully and i fooled my mates saying it was a new strain i had invented called 'snowman' lolol. Got em for a bit.
Anyway Berry Bomb was chopped on its 11 week of flowering, got 90g from her dry and she wasnt the biggest buds ive seen as my area is really small lol. But outstanding! for area and wattage and the trichomes were so developed she looked like she had been sprinkled with icing suger, curing her after a 7 day bag/hang dry, now in my jars as i type.
Next was one of the Tangerine Dreams, she got the same height as the berry bomb, a bit smaller on the yield as she was a fluffy pheno but still good, about 75g. Had a sample smoke after a quick 4 days in the bag, nice and fruity, slightly spicy. Good creeping high that gets stronger. Excellent levels of CBD that stay consistant throughout the plants flowering, THC is good aswell but levels diminish quickly, good tho for lots of CBN if t hats your thing. I took mine when 98 percent of trichs was cloudy or clear, not a lot of amber at all. But you do get amber when the THC degrades on the drying bud, another BIG Topic but hey, i do whats best for me and it works!
So am on week 12 now with my Big Bang and other Sativa'd Tangerine Dream, BB is fattening right up whilst slowly cannabanising her leaves, (going yellow in other words and NO its not a N problem!) The Tangerine is doing really well, reckon she wont be ready till week 14 maybe 15, who knows? Sativas are like women, take ages to get ready and are totally unpredictable! lol
So thats my peronal report, opinion, post, ramble on, whatever you wanna call it,
I'll leave you all now with just one thing, My lights came from a company called GrownNorthern, they have their own website with LIVE chat support and Dan (the brains behind it all) is a absolute LED Genius, He is always willing to speak to you on the phone, never tries to sales pitch but just gives you pure information about his LED's. He offers a 3 year guarantee and will get parts to you the next day if needed. I know as i broke one of my internal cooling fans by dropping a hook into it whilst adjusting my lights, a horrible moment i can tell ya, i had the Fan with me in the next 2 days. Fitted it myself as Dan is always on hand for Any advice.
Im just telling it how it is, proof is in the pudding as my grows show, i will be definately buying more from them in the future as they are releasing modular upgrades soon, even better LED's etc...
Electricity savings are excellent aswell, im running a 270 W unit and it costs me about 6 quid a week to run on 20/4
So no waiting for ages basically, a friendly voice on the other side of the phone who will give you advice at any time on any aspect of your LED, i know as he has been there for me and has never let me down.
All it takes is one phone call people! You will not be disappointed i guarantee you. His LED's work, his product is bang on, his customer service is bang on, his parts are bang on. I'd fill my house up with them if i was allowed, sadly 3 kids, dog and wife now. Oh why werent these about in my youth? lol
So hope that clears up any doubt about how far LED's have come now, all my gro pro bros will be buying them soon thats for sure. LED power is here at last!
Peace.
