LED Grow Plant Lights...

C

CuriousSoul

Well-Known Member
That 45w LED = 200 HPS is a bunch of marketing. I have great hopes for LEDs in the future but at the moment the technology just doesn't cut it. If you insist on using them though, go for the blue ones as apparently they're relatively effective for vegetative growth but the red just doesn't work for flowering. Personally I recommend you go for a MH/HPS instead as they are far, far more effective. If heat is an issue then you should consider CFLs which are cheap and can produce some reasonable results. Your 45w LED thing would probably just about be adequate to veg a single plant but you'd have to invest in some different lighting for flowering. Save your money and your time friend. Happy growing!
 
socom3riot

socom3riot

Well-Known Member
LED's are garbage for ur main light source. Only place I've seen them work well is on the sides of ur plants as SECONDARY lights, dont use em for ur main lighting source, waste of money.
 
Jonus

Jonus

Well-Known Member
Watts are really a secondary issue when it comes to LEDs. The first and most important being that LEDs emit light in a very directional manner, so the first question is what are the dimensions of the light.

According to the site it says:
Dimensions - 12.25 x 12.25 x 1.2 in

And that is about all the area it will light, about a foot sqare. Anything outside of that area will not grow. So to do one plant through to about a foot tall you would probably need about 4 of those LED lamps.

The next issue is light penetration. If you bought 4 of them and positioned them on 4 angles around the top of your plant you could quite easily veg them up to a foot without causing stretch. But if you went with the single LED lamp overhead then that light, because it is so directional, will only penetrate the top 2 levels of leaves and you will see slowed growth in the lower branches.

Then there is the issue of flowering. I have tried once to flower with LEDs using 7 LED lights at 16watts per light. The results were crap....

So I veg with my 112 watt LED lamp and then slowly introduce it to the 400 HPS for flowering. I did a CFL flower once too and the results were excellent although I did not save anything in watts, it was basically watt for watt 390 watts of CFLs in all.

socom3riot: as for side lighting, Ive tried that too and side lighting is actually worse than overhead lighting. The LED light is so directional that unless your leaves are droopy, very light of the light touches the leaves and goes right thru to the stem. Then again, I wasnt budding with the LED when I tried that.

In terms of vegging though the LED is fine, as long as you use a ratio of about 1:3 one watt LED where you would use 3 watts of HPS or mH.

Almost all of the online info regarding LEDs has been written by people selling them so the results are usually tainted by that.

Sometimes not overtly tainted though, just not comparable to growing weed.

Example, LED Testing - HomeGrownLights.com

Their test comparing the 100 watt Procyon to a 400 watt HPS resulted in more weight in lettuce leaves with the LED than with the HPS. I can believe that would be correct....if I or you were growing lettuce, however the height issue is the bit thats missed there.

If they had vegged a plant that grew to say 2 feet under both lamps, the HPS would have won hands down in the end because as mentioned earlier, as the plant extends less light from the LED gets through to the bottom branches than does under the HPS, and I mean, 'a lot less'.
 
A

anotherchance

New Member
i have been watching LED tech for about 15 years and they have been gaining in efficiency by about 12% per year so sooner or later they should work and that may be this year but you have to watch out cause they are not all created equal
 
TheDankness

TheDankness

Well-Known Member
Jonus said:
Watts are really a secondary issue when it comes to LEDs. The first and most important being that LEDs emit light in a very directional manner, so the first question is what are the dimensions of the light.

According to the site it says:
Dimensions - 12.25 x 12.25 x 1.2 in

And that is about all the area it will light, about a foot sqare. Anything outside of that area will not grow. So to do one plant through to about a foot tall you would probably need about 4 of those LED lamps.

The next issue is light penetration. If you bought 4 of them and positioned them on 4 angles around the top of your plant you could quite easily veg them up to a foot without causing stretch. But if you went with the single LED lamp overhead then that light, because it is so directional, will only penetrate the top 2 levels of leaves and you will see slowed growth in the lower branches.

Then there is the issue of flowering. I have tried once to flower with LEDs using 7 LED lights at 16watts per light. The results were crap....

So I veg with my 112 watt LED lamp and then slowly introduce it to the 400 HPS for flowering. I did a CFL flower once too and the results were excellent although I did not save anything in watts, it was basically watt for watt 390 watts of CFLs in all.

socom3riot: as for side lighting, Ive tried that too and side lighting is actually worse than overhead lighting. The LED light is so directional that unless your leaves are droopy, very light of the light touches the leaves and goes right thru to the stem. Then again, I wasnt budding with the LED when I tried that.

In terms of vegging though the LED is fine, as long as you use a ratio of about 1:3 one watt LED where you would use 3 watts of HPS or mH.

Almost all of the online info regarding LEDs has been written by people selling them so the results are usually tainted by that.

Sometimes not overtly tainted though, just not comparable to growing weed.

Example, LED Testing - HomeGrownLights.com

Their test comparing the 100 watt Procyon to a 400 watt HPS resulted in more weight in lettuce leaves with the LED than with the HPS. I can believe that would be correct....if I or you were growing lettuce, however the height issue is the bit thats missed there.

If they had vegged a plant that grew to say 2 feet under both lamps, the HPS would have won hands down in the end because as mentioned earlier, as the plant extends less light from the LED gets through to the bottom branches than does under the HPS, and I mean, 'a lot less'.
Click to expand...
I agree with everything this man just said. If you can't afford HID, go with cfl's, fluorescent lighting will hold its spot at #2 on the list of best lights to grow pot with for a while. Best bang for your buck anyway. HID's, and I use cfl's so you know I'm not biased, will reign supreme at #1 for a long time.
 
Jonus

Jonus

Well-Known Member
anotherchange: I agree, even at the moment with the right configuration, you can quite comfortably veg with LEDs however the lumens per square foot comes into play when it comes to flowering. HPS bulbs put out about 10000+ lumens per square foot whereas the brightest LEDs on the market are about half of that. Which as mentioned is good enough, even more than good enough for vegging but not up there for big bud growth.
 
TheDankness

TheDankness

Well-Known Member
anotherchance said:
there are also tech coming down the shoot that may leapfrog he LEDs just as they are about to do the trick
Click to expand...
I agree, I just watched a video that was posted about this high efficiency, argon gas bulb thingy. Shit let me see if I can find the link, these things are bad ass.
 
Jonus

Jonus

Well-Known Member
6000k is perfect for vegging with. They might be impressed by that kelvin rating but its about normal for grow bulbs.
added: that street lamp theyre testing on there sux. If it were outside my house it wouldnt even light its own shadow. But the plasma llamp is looking good though.
 
TheDankness

TheDankness

Well-Known Member
Dude, they mean 6000 degrees kelvin as a measurement of heat. They're not talking about the kelvin scale of color temperature. If you listen they say it gets as hot as the surface of the sun within the bulb itself. And the light they tested it against was a 400 watt metal halide, commonly used in growing, and plenty bright. I think it just looks dimmer because the camera has to adjust brightness to see the image. The point: that thing is way brighter than a 400 watt metal halide.
 
socom3riot

socom3riot

Well-Known Member
I dont believe that shit.. hot as the surface of the sun? everything in that room would have instantly melted.
I may be being a moron right now , but if thats what ur saying, then, well they would all be dead instantly.
 
TheDankness

TheDankness

Well-Known Member
Only that hot within the bulb itself, its isolated though. Kind of like how welders weld with extremely high temperature burning gas, but they don't melt to death. Just gotta keep it under control.
 
Jonus

Jonus

Well-Known Member
The surface of the Sun is around 11,000 degrees Kelvin. The kelvin temporature hitting the surface of the earth, or what we read as the kelvin temporature reflected from earth is about 6000k kelvin.

So the light emitting from the plasma bulb is about the same as what the sun looks like to us during summer....6-6500 kelvin. Its quite possible that the inner temporature is 6000 kelvin, that again means the light emitting from it, which is the bit we as growers are interested in, is 6000 kelvin, or summer light....great for vegging.
 
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