Mirrors for growing, definitive answer..

No worries I looked up the images you need to see what I'm talking about. I will post when I get home.

One question to think about if you have used a triangle glass does the glass not illuminate?

More to the point when shooting beams of light into this triangle of all the primary colors the glass structure illuminates with each color and changing colors then shoots the beam out the other side in the same color as inserted. Now if it did not hold light inside the glass why would the glass illuminate white when all the primary colors of light as shot into it? physics..

I think mirrors are very beneficial. Especially if you crank up the tunes, turn off the lights, turn on the smoke machine, and break out the laser pointers. Fuck yeah!

Edit to add: I was being rude because I believed you were saying parabolic mirrors will absorb some of the light in the same way a standard mirror would. This isn't always the case with any mirror/material.

I believe the equation is:
n1*sin(incident angle) = n2*sin(refractive angle)

However, if the incident angle is greater than the critical angle defined as sin(n2/n1) then all of the light is reflected, not refracted as in your laser experiment post.

Hypothetically yes the thin outer layer of material would have some n for transmission of light at which the critical angle would have to be exceeded relative to air in order for the light to be reflected instead of refracted. However we're assuming that the material is so thin that it's all reflected in the parabolic mirror.

It makes me wonder, if i could put a huge magnifying glass in front of a 250w hps with a sealed reflector to reduce the grow area and increase lumens per square feet for less plants.

I believe a parabolic reflector greater than 2 focal points will concentrate the extra light.

With a thicker glass such as you're talking about in front of the lens some refraction will come into play as jade mentioned.

In that type of lens the light comes from the source and is refracted toward the focal point on the other side of the lens. You are increasing the distance the light must travel to reach its destination. Plus, you'd have to be far enough away so that after converging on the focal point it continues to diverge enough so that you don't fry your plants like ants. Factor in the inverse square law and I'd assume it's a no go. Switch to LEDs for concentrated more efficient light over a smaller area.

Or add extra parabolic mirrors on the side which I'm assuming that the light source is more than two focal points away and so it will try to focus the light so it must be far enough away from the plants so it doesn't make a hot spot. Not ideal but better than light shining on the floor. Cost effective? You decide.

ok ok home from work and GYM!

Here we go this is a concept of what im talking about, The Absorbed keeps going on forever inside the glass. And you can look at the rest.

He is right about that tho if the mirror is not PERFECTLY flat then it will create hotspots in the area. LED use this to enhance the effected area at which they can cover. Its almost like a micro science of eye glass. 3w LED normal can cover a area, 3w LED threw a eye glass can cover alot more of a area! The sweet spot for LIGHT tho iremember the diagram i said. A-B-C-D measure for sweet spot. If its too far your wasting money.

i was gone for an hour and the thread switched over to a fight over headlights and pink floyd, I guess everyone's bored of talking about mirrors xd

ShirkGoldbrick said:

QUOTE="Indole8, post: 11510965, member: 900736"]
Led only draw about 2/3 their rated power. They're more efficient than hid on a small scale grow. You want 70-80 watts per sqft for max yield if you're using co2 bucket, if not then 50watts is fine but even 30 will work. You could diy some too if you want. They'll put out less heat and the plants can almost touch them.
Did I say perspire? I meant transpire. Read a book about growing plants please.

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First off I'm not sure where you're getting this 2/3 power thing, the cree documentation on the led says nothing about that. Anyways, I was trying to tell you before that LEDs are hard to use in a small grow like mine. I'm running 6 LEDs at 1watt per led right now, the driver and the heatsinks get HOT, very hot. These leds are rated at 5w so technically I could run them like that but my driver will burst in flames I'm sure of that. So I would need to buy 30 LEDs at minimum as you say, or 50 for ok, but since I want the best yeild I would need 80. They run about $3 each per LED, each driver is about $4 and could handle 9 LEDs, so I'm looking at about $300 to test grow one plant. And did I mention they get hot? If I put 30 LEDs in that little box the temp would be around 120F if not more. I would love to hear suggestions, or if you know a better/cheaper LED then cree or how to make them run less hot.

@LiquidJade but again we're not talking about reflectance, but refractance. Yes glass does make light bounce back a little that's why the whole thing is 5% short of 100%, but glass is made to have a refractive index of air, so the rays that do emerge are parallel to each other. You can do a test, take a flashlight and shine it on a light meter directly, then shine it again by bouncing it off the mirror, unless it's an incredibly sensitive meter you won't even see the difference in brightness.

@ShirkGoldbrick I don't think you can use parabolic mirrors at all, we were arguing about how flat you want it to be and all of a sudden you want to bend it? All that bending a mirror does is either magnify or shrink the source, it doesn't really change how much power or the intensity of the light. And here you risk creating hotspots if you focus the light on the plant. The best thing is a flat mirror at correct angle.

I know lol there is a difference and i can see it.. just saying.. Maybe because we use all kind of stuff on the job test things lol
Plus try the test between 12-18in "so called sweet spot" Then DO it again with your light meter at 18+B+C distance to mirror then distance to plant. I think we can ALL agree that anything over 12-18in of light is out of the sweet spot. which is what im trying to say.

LiquidJade said:

I know lol there is a difference and i can see it.. just saying.. Maybe because we use all kind of stuff on the job test things lol
Plus try the test between 12-18in "so called sweet spot" Then DO it again with your light meter at 18+B+C distance to mirror then distance to plant. I think we can ALL agree that anything over 12-18in of light is out of the sweet spot. which is what im trying to say.

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so we're back to the argument that mirror doesn't reflect 95% of the light? My point was that even if the meter will show a difference of a few lumens, it's negligible, at least for the plant, if it missed 5% of the light, you could say it's like having 2 to 4 duplicate bulbs in the same area. Which was my original argument over paint etc.

haha sorry ill drop it i have nothing right now to back up % of light response.
Dont feel like looking right now!

Hey man its science! That shit gets me going! hahah

My PPP Seeds just popped after 2 days germ! im all over that!

LiquidJade said:

haha sorry ill drop it i have nothing right now to back up % of light response.
Dont feel like looking right now!

Hey man its science! That shit gets me going! hahah

My PPP Seeds just popped after 2 days germ! im all over that!

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well if you really do do these tests at work I can take your word for it, that's kind of why I started this thread in the first place, all the references I read and just common experience as far as my eye can tell I don't see a difference and it appears at almost full reflectance, you're saying it's more then 5%? Congrats on the seeds, I still have mine in a paper towel waiting to germinate, just wish it was something usable, instead of a hot pepper :/

Indole8 said:

I'm starting a one plant grow in a wooden box in my apartment, I can't have more then one or two bulbs as I live with my parents and I can't hit the electric bill by anything more then a few dollars.

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lol.

it's not really your apartment then, is it?

got a date for the prom yet?

Given the space your growing in you do not want any veg time , if i were you & had only a 12 inch space to fill with bud i'd use a rooted clone with 2 or 3 nodes & zero side branching , that way you grow 1 big cola & will have made much better use of the light & get more harvest weight .

I grow single cola sea of green with no veg time , straight to 12/12 from rooted clone , my clones all have 6 to 8 nodes when i put them in bud , they finish off from 18 to 24 inches high & yeild 2 to 3 zips per plant , a smaller clone with 2 or 3 tightly grouped nodes would finish off around the 12 inches you have & would yeild a zip if conditions were right .

@UncleBuck great constructive comment, really helpful.
@panhead I'd love to, actually I'd love to start with a fullly vegged plant and go straight to 12/12. Maybe even from a flowered plant, I'll just take care of the drying. Anybody have any extra clones or live plants they're willing to spare over USPS? Sarcasm aside, I really would love that, I know clones are the way to go, but I have to clone something first. If this works out I will take 2 clones and keep a perpetual grow from then on.

LiquidJade said:

haha sorry ill drop it i have nothing right now to back up % of light response.
Dont feel like looking right now!

Hey man its science! That shit gets me going! hahah

My PPP Seeds just popped after 2 days germ! im all over that!

Click to expand...

I followed your logic just fine, but then I've already run this experiment- with my lamp in an adjust-a-wing hanging from a light rotator. Instead of glazed mirrors I used reflective Mylar sheeting and angled it to minimize post reflection distance to leaves. It worked well, but it never achieved the efficiency improvements I was looking for, as it still covered too much floor space.

No, the answer to all this is to do away with the reflector altogether... and THAT'S where the improvements lie.

Indole8 said:

@UncleBuck great constructive comment, really helpful.
@panhead I'd love to, actually I'd love to start with a fullly vegged plant and go straight to 12/12. Maybe even from a flowered plant, I'll just take care of the drying. Anybody have any extra clones or live plants they're willing to spare over USPS? Sarcasm aside, I really would love that, I know clones are the way to go, but I have to clone something first. If this works out I will take 2 clones and keep a perpetual grow from then on.

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Even from seed you are not gonna want any veg time , not even 3 days , keeping a plant at 12 inches or less is not an easy task for a new grower or even a semi experienced grower , do a search on 12/12 from seed & see how large these guys plants are getting , vegging any amount of time is not in your best interest given the extremely limited space you have , you also dont want a mini bush all crammed in the box restricting air flow around & thru the plant , without proper air flow your gonna end up with blight or powdery mildew all over the plant .

Given that you dont have access to clones that are 100% assured to be female , plus the restrictions of needing to hide everything from parents what is your plan to assure the plant you grow is a female ? Feminized seeds are not guaranteed female .

Are you aware of the steps needed to prove a plant female before budding it out ? Not trying to be a dick but you have a tremendous amount of obstacles ahead of you , your gonna need to grow a few plants somewhere , then force flower to sex the plant , once sex s determined then reveg the plant so you can take a cutting that will root .

I cant see going thru all the work of building the grow cab , planting a seed then 5 weeks later see it bust pollen sacks & destroy the cabinet for any future grows .

For all the effort & risk it just dont hardley seem worth doing the grow , how are you going to overcome these obstacles & still keep everything a secret , before you build a cabinet & put a bunch of effort into this you should figure out the how to score a female clone aspect 1st , imo .

panhead said:

Even from seed you are not gonna want any veg time , not even 3 days , keeping a plant at 12 inches or less is not an easy task for a new grower or even a semi experienced grower , do a search on 12/12 from seed & see how large these guys plants are getting , vegging any amount of time is not in your best interest given the extremely limited space you have , you also dont want a mini bush all crammed in the box restricting air flow around & thru the plant , without proper air flow your gonna end up with blight or powdery mildew all over the plant .

Given that you dont have access to clones that are 100% assured to be female , plus the restrictions of needing to hide everything from parents what is your plan to assure the plant you grow is a female ? Feminized seeds are not guaranteed female .

Are you aware of the steps needed to prove a plant female before budding it out ? Not trying to be a dick but you have a tremendous amount of obstacles ahead of you , your gonna need to grow a few plants somewhere , then force flower to sex the plant , once sex s determined then reveg the plant so you can take a cutting that will root .

I cant see going thru all the work of building the grow cab , planting a seed then 5 weeks later see it bust pollen sacks & destroy the cabinet for any future grows .

For all the effort & risk it just dont hardley seem worth doing the grow , how are you going to overcome these obstacles & still keep everything a secret , before you build a cabinet & put a bunch of effort into this you should figure out the how to score a female clone aspect 1st , imo .

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Just looked up 12/12 from seed, that's some amazing stuff. Thank you for that, I never even knew that's possible. I didn't really even think about the airflow either, the plant would restrict it considerably. I'm definitely using this method. Incidentally this also kind of takes care of the whole lighting issue, at only 12 hours a day throughout the whole grow this gives me enough room to hide on the energy bill and I can throw in an extra light.

As for the other part, yeaaaa, I know this is a hit or miss, I did look up a few videos on how to sex, and I'm not even getting a feminized seed. Most likely I'm not even getting a definite seed from a bank. Right now I have two options, dark net seeds or dark net pot ... with seeds. LOL. I really don't have a choice here you have to understand. I live in NYC, there are no possible places within a 300 mile radius that allow growing. I've never looked this up but I might be able to get a plant on dark net, not sure, and that would be risky as they can't even like air zip it or anything. I can't really even get seeds from a legit bank, the prices are astronomical. $120? For a few seeds? That would work if was planning to make any money off of this, but spending about $100 on the box, and $120 on the seeds, then getting 3 grams of weed, for $220. I could get clones from that, or have more seeds for future, but I don't even know if any of this will work and there are plenty of obstacles some of which you mentioned. So again, my last resort is the shadow web, hopefully they have seeds that are ok, if they're expensive there too then I just have to get some bud and hope that it contains seeds. heheh I'm laughing and crying at the same time.

panhead said:

Given the space your growing in you do not want any veg time , if i were you & had only a 12 inch space to fill with bud i'd use a rooted clone with 2 or 3 nodes & zero side branching , that way you grow 1 big cola & will have made much better use of the light & get more harvest weight .

I grow single cola sea of green with no veg time , straight to 12/12 from rooted clone , my clones all have 6 to 8 nodes when i put them in bud , they finish off from 18 to 24 inches high & yeild 2 to 3 zips per plant , a smaller clone with 2 or 3 tightly grouped nodes would finish off around the 12 inches you have & would yeild a zip if conditions were right .

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2-3 off single cola SOG str8 12-12 is a great return how long it take you to master that ??

For all the work, time, and money why don't you just stick to growing peppers and buy the weed? I'm all game for the scientific discussion but I hope your dad beats the stupid out of you for real.

Albeit again... LEDs produce more light with less heat than anything else, you must have some junk equipment. Look at a Cree cob or something. I've never built one but I imagine that the heatsink could be part of the top just siliconed in and that the driver could be outside on top too.

On flat mirrors you're going to have refractance unless the source is far away and the incident angle is greater than the critical angle.

On parabolic mirrors were just going to ignore any small refractance and assume it all exceeds the critical angle. The light has to be between one and two focal points away. Farther and it concentrates, closer and it creates a virtual image I believe which equates to refractance. In the sweet spot it reflects and spreads the light nicely over the canopy.