Crunky's CFL/LED Scrog!

Title says it all

Plants started just before xmas(didn't really take off until new years)
Started flowering 3/5/10 - Day 13 now

4 42w 2700k
4 26w 6500k
4 13.5w LED panel

I think it's roughly 330w total, too lazy to do the math right now

3 ft x 3 ft x 3 ft PVC Scrog screen cost like 20 bucks to make, screen was lying around the house, free

Good deal on LED panels(which I regret buying by the way $100)

Grow tent = $92 shipped, not the best tent but it works

CFLs = roughly 50 bucks, 42w are 9 a pop here at wally world

The indica dom plant has an artificial lung (air pump with 2 air stones buried in soil) just an experiment I guess lol

The sativa dom I really wish I could plant outdoors, she's soo compact and dense! Does not respond well to topping either, suppose sativa genes do that. Indica dom(fat bush) is taking over the screen! Going crazy with hairs too, can't wait until sativa catches up.

Any questions feel free to ask!
-crunk

Okay how you getting the short and bushy? mine are tall but do flower up pretty good.. I'll take a few pics and post them for yea.

lookin very nice man green, healthy, and the LED pics look frickin sweet haha .... GOOD WORK MAN!!!

4/22 Update - Day #17

A couple of things I didn't mention before that I'd like to mention...these are both bagseed. I guess I got lucky to get one indica and one sativa from the same strain, but it seems very robust and you can stress them a quite a bit and they don't hermie on ya so I'm definitely happy about that!

Another thing I'd like to add, I have only added nutrients through veg and I got an organic mix that I mixed with the soil before I transplanted just before flowering. Otherwise there are pretty much zilch for nutrients. Just been using distilled water and nothing more really. About as simple as it gets.

Temps hover anywhere between 25-30 degrees C, hygrometer is like 40% RH on average, 60 or so after watering, definitely not too moist though, there's lots of fresh air.

3 week update: Time sure does fly when you wait in anticipation!

Not much to report other than lusciousness
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Hey man lookin sweet sub'd. How u likin the led's your settup is so nice. Can't wait to see these at harvest. It feels like mine are so far away. Plus don't know if I can get the heat down enough. Yours are lookin great though plus rep good luck on grow keep us updated.

Thanks chainseeker, glad to have you on board I can't wait for harvest either! They get better and better each time I get to see them. As for the LEDs, I absolutely love them! Next grow will be 100% LED I think so that's saying something there.

Here's an update for ya

Day 23

The color that the LED produce looks so sweet Good luck will this grow

Looks awesome dude.

Thanks guys, everything is looking wonderful right now, sooo eager to see them fatten up. There are already tons of crystals. And lemme tell ya, scrog is way better than seeing a fat main cola. There's just a little canopy of green with white hairs all over, truly a marvel!

Almost 4 week update:

Things are goin' good, see for yourself

were can i pick up some led lights

I got these on ebay, I wouldn't recommend them though, they aren't bright enough by themselves. These retail for 45 a piece now I think, I only payed 100 for 4 so I got a good deal. If you're going to buy your LED light you might as well buy a UFO. Also found on ebay.

Nice grow crunk. Even with LED's you regret buying...LoL...keep up the goodness

Thanks man, yeah I mean I got a good deal on them I suppose. They are pretty bright if you arrange them in the correct matter. In the early stages of the grow I didn't have the cool white CFLs and I noticed these weren't focused enough to give good growth. They seem to be helping my scrog out though for sure so I can't say it was a total waste!

Either way I kinda wish I could get my money back out of them once the grow is over. I think I'm onto something with my new panel

From what my brotha was saying is there is a TON of fruit flies in the top soil right now, and maybe even aphids >.< so I'll have to check up on them today and see what's up.

Definitely a nice looking crop for some bag seeds. What type of LED panel are you using? ( size, number and ratio of colors, ect. ect)I've been looking around a lot about these because of how compact and cool they are and other than forums it is pretty hard to find anything about them that doesn't consist of a sales pitch, so I have to ask questions. Stop me if its bothersome.
The small amount that I do know about these types of lights tells me that if we are only growing a few plants we are better off with the UFOs, because like you said, the panels don't concentrate the light worth a crap. They are better used in a much larger area where you have several of them, each picking up where the last one left off so that all of the light is hitting plants.
Keep up the good work! ill be looking for more pictures of these over the next few weeks

It's so bothersome I don't want to answer another LED question at all for EVER!!! Just messin' with ya hehe.

The panels I'm using are from LEDwholesalers. I purchased them on eBay for $100 for 4 of them. I guess I bought them at a good time, because after going to their site for specs for you, I noticed they bumped up the prices by a few bucks, and they're also sold out. They are advertising $48 for one of them on their site. They run at 13.8w total. Each panel has 225 LEDs, 165 red (650nm) and 60 blue(465nm). They say each panel covers 18" x 18" and I think that's just crap. As you can see, I need 4 for a 3x3 scrog area, and even then they aren't all that intense.

My questions for you Onlyoneman, are what are your grow area specs? I ask because viewing angle has a lot to do with it. I also would advise to research up a little bit on electrical work(amps, volts, watts, ohms law, etc etc). I think the best option is building a custom LED panel tailored to your specific growing area. Even those 90w UFO lights aren't that good. While they do put out a good amount of light, they also cover a lot of area. This is a HUGE potential setback. Think about a flashlight. If you focus the beam so it's really narrow you get a really bright light, and if you 'zoom' out you can cover a whole room, but at the cost of brightness. This is the same deal for the most part. You don't want to have a huge coverage area with your LEDs or you're losing light because it's being spread so far out.

My other question, how many plants? I think typically in most LED scenarios it's more efficient to have only 1 or 2 plants max, that way there isn't a huge mess of leaves blocking out the lower shoots. That's also something the 90w UFOs aren't the best at. They do not penetrate nearly like HPS do, because they're focused so that the light gets spread out. But here's the good part. If you custom make your LED panel you can focus the optics so that they penetrate all the way down to the soil of the plant(or lid if you're using hydro).

Also another thing I would like to point out, nearly all of the UFOs I have seen use the 1w diodes. These simply do not have the power like the 3 and 5w diodes that you can get. Not to mention, when you buy a unit you have to be sure you're getting the correct wavelengths. You will pay more for the better wavelengths, it's just how it works. Now with the LEDs you build yourself, there are tons of different manufacturers with different wavelengths. You can get nearly every wavelength you could need without paying all that much extra. Sure some of the deep blues, UV LEDs, IR, etc are going to be more expensive. That's because of the elements required to make these LEDs.

If you have any more questions I don't mind at all

crunkyeah said:

My questions for you, Onlyoneman, are what are your grow area specs?

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I grow in a very small space in a closet I haven't ever actually put a tape measure to it, but I'm guessing (in feet) 3 x 5 x 8. Somewhere in there. Seems perfect for LED lighting from everything that I have seen and read.

crunkyeah said:

I think the best option is building a custom LED panel tailored to your specific growing area. Even those 90w UFO lights aren't that good.

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Electricity intimidates me, so the thought of building my own never
entered my mind until you mentioned it, as the fact that you mentioned it indicates that it might be pretty simple. I'll have to look in to that because I have been thinking side lighting with these things with a 250w CFL overhead might be interesting. Kind of the way you have set up, but with the LEDs lower.

crunkyeah said:

My other question, how many plants?

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I only grow a couple (tops...usually only one)at a time. I really just love to watch a plant grow, so I keep it small. Just enough to entertain me.

crunkyeah said:

If you have any more questions I don't mind at all

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Thanks, I appreciate that. If you have come across any company selling the parts for building custom LEDs or guides on how to do it I would appreciate links too. I haven't come across any of that so far, and I have done a lot of reading about LEDs.

If you have 3"'L x 5'W x 8'H that is a pretty big grow space!

I was once like you and it is a little intimidating at first. Once you jump into it though it's really not all that hard. All you really need to know is that in series amps do not add, only voltage and watts. In parallel the amps and watts add, but not the volts. LEDs are current driven devices so you need some sort of current regulator. Most of these are resistors but for the high power ones using a driver is a lot more efficient.

I think having the big mogul socket CFL is a good idea, those are pretty cheap for what you can get out of them. I think LEDs make great supplemental lighting with CFLs, as you can tell from this grow. So I would definitely say go for it! Oh and another thing, with those LEDs mounted on the sides of your grow area, you likely won't need any optics for them, which will save you a bit of change depending on how many LEDs you want to get.

Check out ledsupply.com for the DIY stuff and the kits they make. It may be worth it to have them make you a 2-3 LED chain and then study it once you get it to see how it works. Another one you may want to check out is luxeonstar.com. That's the LED site I'll be purchasing from and I learned a lot from their knowledge database. You wanna click on the "Have a question?" button along the left border on their page. It will lead you to that database. I'm sure you'll get lots of good information from those 2 sites alone. I know I did so

Feel free to ask more questions if you have some.

Thanks SO much for the sites! I looked for 2 hours this morning after I read your response, and I found jack shit...eventually gave up.

I do have one other question at the moment. Have you grown anything with HID? And if so how much difference is there in the growth rate?
I'm assuming LED/CFL is considerably slower, but that probably depends on how many you use. I normally use a 400w HPS, but if I can eliminate the ducting I ran to deal with all that heat, I'll have a little more room in that space to move around in (which I would be very happy about). Thanks again, man.