Remember to factor in all the bulbs you will buy over a 5-7 year period. I made the switch to LED and I'm just getting them dialed in on my 3rd run. I started with 2 HLG 260watt kits, but realized that it was cheaper to just buy the quantum boards and heatsinks from HLG and bought the drivers, wiring and hangers myself. I bought the older V1 QBs that were state-of-the-art less than 18 months prior and only 3-5% less efficient and was able to build 2 260s (HLG550 equivalent) that are more adjustable for less than $400. When they decided to clear the inventory they dropped the price to $29 per board, so you could have built a 550 style light for less than $300, maybe $250 if you were super thrifty. They also had 730nm "far red" flower initiator boards for $9 and 660nm strips for $25, so I made my 4 lights into Rspecs for an extra $100. I've got QBs in my veg, one 260 watt and then 4 boards running on just 120watts lighting 2 2'x4' shelves for cuts and seedlings. All of this is running in a 10'x12' room and I only need AC for the 3 summer months, I actually have to add 1 or 2 CMH lights to keep temps warm enough the rest of the year. I don't know about you, but I was running Eye Hortilux bulbs prior and I know I would have spent more just replacing bulbs over 5 years than I spent on this setup, so it pays being a handy, cheapskate like me. I was just trying to improve the environment in my room, as it was definitely affecting my results, I never imagined it wouldn't be warm enough with close to 5000 watts equivalent, here at the verge of summer when it's starting to feel really hot to me in my room it's actually perfect for LED growing and I can see a huge jump in growth when it hits 88 degrees my canopy reaches the perfect 83 degrees and the plants explode. I actually had to change my light schedule in veg to 16/8 after listening to a lot of LED growers, the spectrum of the QBs really taxes the plants and was causing some deficiencies. They mostly cleared up by dropping 2 hours, but I still get the purple petioles that are common under LED. I'm testing tons of strains as I hadn't gotten new genetics in a long time, my head was spinning first time looking for seeds in over 5 years. I've been constantly running new genetics and looking forward to a day when I can do a single strain run at least on one trellis. I might have screwed myself this run with 4 strains on one trellis and 6 on another, plus the 6 are 2 weeks apart. Should be fun trying to extract the first 4 while leaving enough of the trellis for the others.
