New to this. Wondering bout my lighting.

WheresmyATF

WheresmyATF

Active Member
Hi guys. Brand new to growing and was looking for some opinions/advice. I have 42w of cfl, 34w of led (200w equivelent) and 40w of t12. Total of 8000 lumens. 1.5x3.5 closet with a high ceiling. Lights are about 4-6 inches from plants. Made walls reflective. I'm just wondering at what point I'll need to upgrade, like how many weeks? Also Ordering a mars grow tent 4x4 and know I'll need more for that but I'm a week into my seedlings and just germinate some seeds. So a time frame for an hps or led light would help. Will be adding 5000-7000 more lumens of cfl before I upgrade to a good set up
 
Lucky Luke

Lucky Luke

Well-Known Member
WheresmyATF said:
Hi guys. Brand new to growing and was looking for some opinions/advice. I have 42w of cfl, 34w of led (200w equivelent) and 40w of t12. Total of 8000 lumens. 1.5x3.5 closet with a high ceiling. Lights are about 4-6 inches from plants. Made walls reflective. I'm just wondering at what point I'll need to upgrade, like how many weeks? Also Ordering a mars grow tent 4x4 and know I'll need more for that but I'm a week into my seedlings and just germinate some seeds. So a time frame for an hps or led light would help. Will be adding 5000-7000 more lumens of cfl before I upgrade to a good set up
Click to expand...
Lights can be confusing when talking LED and for decent stuff fairly expensive. HID is inexpensive and works fine. 600w is about perfect for a 4 x 4 tent. Lighting also causes many debates......many....lol
Welcome to RIU and growing, its a lot of fun,
 
WheresmyATF

WheresmyATF

Active Member
Lucky Luke said:
Lights can be confusing when talking LED and for decent stuff fairly expensive. HID is inexpensive and works fine. 600w is about perfect for a 4 x 4 tent. Lighting also causes many debates......many....lol
Welcome to RIU and growing, its a lot of fun,
Click to expand...
 
WheresmyATF

WheresmyATF

Active Member
I actually seen a deal for a 600w full spectrum led for 70 bucks so I jumped the gun and bought it lol. Was off of wish though so I'm gunna have to test it when it gets here to see if it does what it claims.
 
sunny747

sunny747

Well-Known Member
Welcome.... You will need good lights pretty soon.. 1-2 weeks.
4x4 tent is a good start..

Lighting, as well as extraction is important. It costs about $800 - $1000 to get setup right with tent, pots, soil, ph pen, TDS meter, Nutes, Carbon filter, Vortex Fan, venting, water filter, timers, ballast, bulbs and reflector.

Sorry to say, but there is no good LED for $70. That light is probably pushing around $135 watts..The best you can do for cheap LED is the ViparSpectra from amazon... Still not a great option. You would need several of the 450w units to light a 4x4. (All cheap LED light manufacturers lie or mislead consumers with their claims and advertising.)

HID lighting is cheap and grows great weed. We bought a fan, filter, cool tube, ballast and bulb for $100 off of Craigslist one time. Now that a lot of growers are switching to quality LED's the market should be flooded with good deals on used equipment. You will likely want an air cooled hood or cool tube..

Rigging CFL's and other small lights gets really cumbersome.. Not worth it unless you are just growing 1 plant. Even then it's a pain.

My advice, don't waste money trying to save money.. In the end you will end up shelling out the money for a good light and fan.

To light your 4x4 you will need 600w HPS or 400 watts of quality LED. Check out Timber Grow Lights to see what quality LED is.
 
WheresmyATF

WheresmyATF

Active Member
Yea I feel ya. I'm just too many steps ahead of My self while being to far behind. I have some pics of the product I'll post. I imagine a refund won't be too hard if it's bunk since it's wish. I have a few pals looking for an hps but I live in a fairly rural area. For the rest of it I have figured out mostly. Need a ph test kit. Let me know how it looks plz. If it just looks junk I'll refund it and just save but it looks decent. They range from 300-1000w
 

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sunny747

sunny747

Well-Known Member
What are your goals as a grower? Most of us started out with CFL's and a cabinet that never really closed right and we had decent success.. Then we upgraded components over time once we had "the bug"... 4x4 is a large space.. you could pull a ton of quality bud in that space..

Typically it's best to start slow and grow one or two at a time in soil... Even with cheap lights and a few bumps in the road you can grow decent MJ..
 
jimihendrix1

jimihendrix1

Well-Known Member
2 x 315w CMH.

Or 600w HID. I like Hortilux HPS for both Veg, and flower.

I have now gone to Gavitas, but for $$/simplicity, its hard to beat the 600w HID.
 
WheresmyATF

WheresmyATF

Active Member
I got the that whole closet thing going on. Just kinda put myself in trouble with going to have 5 plants in a 20"x44" space. One being a sativa dom. So gotta upgrade before they get too big. I could cut it to 4 plants but i'd be tossing my test strains out. Plan is keeping my closet for seedlings/clones and tent for veg/flower. So i'll be buying an hps for the tent if my pals cant find one. The light isnt pulling 600w i know that (somewhere between 150w and 200w i think at 265v) just wondering how it looks. As i still plan on an hps, for the tent
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
WheresmyATF said:
I got the that whole closet thing going on. Just kinda put myself in trouble with going to have 5 plants in a 20"x44" space. One being a sativa dom. So gotta upgrade before they get too big. I could cut it to 4 plants but i'd be tossing my test strains out. Plan is keeping my closet for seedlings/clones and tent for veg/flower. So i'll be buying an hps for the tent if my pals cant find one. The light isnt pulling 600w i know that (somewhere between 150w and 200w i think at 265v) just wondering how it looks. As i still plan on an hps, for the tent
Click to expand...
Bluntly speaking, its not good. But will do you ok in veg in a closet.

If your plants get too big just mutilate them back down to small.
 
coreywebster

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
@sako818 Your in early stages, you will notice they lack mid flower to late flower. Your under lit. Off the top of my head those are 135w lights, I would add a 3rd light as soon as possible in a 3x3.
 
Dynamo626

Dynamo626

Well-Known Member
Led manufactures pump there stats much higher than is true. Lumens is a horable way to compare frow lights. Look for par or ppfd readings. Blurple led give 2.4 umole per watt. Hid 1.9 umole per watt.
So a 35w led is pushing abought
84 umole. This means the 35w led (if that is its true draw) does the same job as a 44w hps. Likley if pluged into a kill-a-watt it will read closer to 20w than 35. Buy a cheep led from china ya get what you pay for not what they say it does
 
J

Jren86

Member
sunny747 said:
Welcome.... You will need good lights pretty soon.. 1-2 weeks.
4x4 tent is a good start..

Lighting, as well as extraction is important. It costs about $800 - $1000 to get setup right with tent, pots, soil, ph pen, TDS meter, Nutes, Carbon filter, Vortex Fan, venting, water filter, timers, ballast, bulbs and reflector.

Sorry to say, but there is no good LED for $70. That light is probably pushing around $135 watts..The best you can do for cheap LED is the ViparSpectra from amazon... Still not a great option. You would need several of the 450w units to light a 4x4. (All cheap LED light manufacturers lie or mislead consumers with their claims and advertising.)

HID lighting is cheap and grows great weed. We bought a fan, filter, cool tube, ballast and bulb for $100 off of Craigslist one time. Now that a lot of growers are switching to quality LED's the market should be flooded with good deals on used equipment. You will likely want an air cooled hood or cool tube..

Rigging CFL's and other small lights gets really cumbersome.. Not worth it unless you are just growing 1 plant. Even then it's a pain.

My advice, don't waste money trying to save money.. In the end you will end up shelling out the money for a good light and fan.

To light your 4x4 you will need 600w HPS or 400 watts of quality LED. Check out Timber Grow Lights to see what quality LED is.
Click to expand...
I started off with 2 450w ViparSpectra in a 4x4 they were ok for veg, your right though, probably needs a minimum of 4 (2.5ft by 2.5ft coverage each) to cover the whole area effectively for flowering. I had to chuck in a 400w hps to cover the space.
 
stoned-monkey

stoned-monkey

Well-Known Member
Amazon and a few hundred bucks will get you a hps/mh setup. Apollo digital ballast has lasted just over three years now.
 
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