What's the interest in growing with retail store LED bulbs?

^^ How much heat do those bulbs put out, in comparison to roughly equivalent fluorescent? I've "felt" of several in a local lighting store, they all ran pretty warm imo.

PetFlora said:

Non taken, but really? Here is the same plant drying.

Many/most commercial panels that people spend big bucks for can't do this
Moving on to other threads

View attachment 2668760

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So that was vegging and flowering under only commercial household LED bulbs?

My first LED grow was using household Chinese LEDS (and a couple of floods)

i actually couldnt justify the price of a 'brand' name household bulb.....having said that i never used them so maybe my yields would have been better... (Shrug)

https://www.rollitup.org/led-other-lighting/553315-chronikool-big-bang-circus-light.html

brotherjericho said:

So that was vegging and flowering under only commercial household LED bulbs?

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In a previous post you asked about heat. whether it becomes a factor depends. I keep my flaps partially open and use a cir fan


I vegged 100% using household leds (have a completed thread with details), but this was first grow from a new breeder, so I felt it was important to give them the best I had, so I added a ufo 90 (B/R 8:1). I have her clones under household LEDs now and plan to grow with them only, though I will be adding more watts as needed. Have a thread going

PetFlora said:

In a previous post you asked about heat. whether it becomes a factor depends. I keep my flaps partially open and use a cir fan

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You are likely not familiar with PLLs, but I'm running 144w in my veg space. The heat is much better than my 150w CMH, and time will tell how my growth is with them. I was pleased with PLLs in the past, but I'm using 4x36w whereas before I used 3x55w. The layout of the veg room is different than then so I had to go with shorter tubes.

Anyway, I am running about 78-80F in there now, I'm just wondering how much different it would be with the LEDs

I vegged 100% using household leds (have a completed thread with details), but this was first grow from a new breeder, so I felt it was important to give them the best I had, so I added a ufo 90 (B/R 8:1). I have her clones under household LEDs now and plan to grow with them only, though I will be adding more watts as needed. Have a thread going

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Thanks, I've seen it, looks interesting.

Hey BrotherJ, yeah I wouldn't sell the farm either based upon the little demo I'm runnin in the thread that Bumping was talking about. I veg with CFLs too and like the node space they create also, but when you're paying more for delivery charges than in usage charges like I do, one needs to always be keeping costs down, which does make the CREE bulb interesting to me and this is why I decided to have a little fun before I rip apart my veg cab, and switch it to all LEDs. Personally if your serious about using LED to veg with then LED light bulbs aren't the best choice in LEDs, spotlights/wash lights and panels will give you better footprint, performance and nodal spaces than 98% of all CFL setups IMO and at about half the electricity, and I guess if you get enough quality LED lightbulbs together they should work too. And just so you know I picked the CFLs to win in my demo so I don't have a heavy LED bias, I like what works best for the least. My CFL cab, which was 16x23 watt 6500Ks is/was a bitch to cool in the summer and just replacing 4 of the CFLs with LED spotlights lowered my veg cab temp a wee bit and that was with cheap LED spotlights that run on the hot side so unless you're using grade A CFLs you will probably notice temp reductions with most LEDs, especially with quality diodes like CREE produces. LED lightbullbs seem to be best for the small/micro grower, but they will only get better and cheaper over time. I think they have a bit to go before replacing CFL growing in general, though others may disagree with me on this. Bottom line CFL growing is a dying art. They're just not long for this earth. Maybe not tomorrow, but it's inevitable.

And I wish I was a better photographer, you'd be surprised how much bigger the LED plant is. I really like the LED growth, they do seem to promote some stretch though there really isn't enough light in my cabinet for me to come to any real conclusion. Plus the plants I chose to do the demo with was what was ready. I should of used a sativa since I was vegging on a 12/1 schedule. The BC doesn't respond to 12/1 very well, so I think they started out a bit funny though now they are looking better now I'm on 16/8. The CREES are fascinating for the performance they afford a person and can replace low power CFLs as far as I'm concerned, but you always got to go with what works for you and LED is what works for me and that has as much to do with finance as it does with the growth I'm looking for. Now if they would just lower the fuckin prices....!

FranJan said:

... Now if they would just lower the fuckin prices....!

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Amen to that!

Thanks Fran, good post.

In my head, the idea of LED spotlights are better for my set-up. I like to grow plants with fairly tight nodes, it just suits my present lighting. I use a Pro-Grow180 on one side of my flowering tent and a bank of PLLs on the other, so short and wide is better than tall and narrow. I used to get this with my other PLLs in veg but when I swapped things around last year I went to a 4000k CMH for veg and I really have not been happy with it. Same overall growth as far as I can tell, just taller plants with nodes further apart.

I know I could do more with LST, but I also happen to be a lazy grower. I want to mix up my soil, plant my seeds, water them as they grow. Maybe throw in a few amendments when needed. So the idea of a light source that could give me similar growth behavior in veg as I got with PLLs with less heat and power caught my interest.

OP I agree with your suspicions that household LED bulbs aren't there just yet.

There are a few difficulties using lumens for comparison (color temp and CRI) but it is all we have to go on and it is better than nothing at all. 65 lumens per watt for warm white LED is not worth the price IMO. For comparison, the warm white Cree XTE puts out 107 lm/watt (700mA 50c) and the whole build costs less per watt. That is such a huge difference it might as well be a different technology.

I was at home depot yesterday and saw the LED bulbs demo. I reached up to touch the heatsink and couldn't keep my hand on it for 1 second (60c?). They had frosted diffusers covering the LED but if I recall they are removable. So my question, is the 65 lumens/watt at operating temp with diffuser in place? If not the actual numbers are much worse. When in doubt with LEDs assume the worst.

So for those who want to be adventurous try building a vegging LED. 700mA drivers are all over eBay for dirt cheap along with a huge variety of heatsinks. Fasttech.com has heatsinks LEDs and drivers with free shipping. Cree XML2 and XTE are easily available mounted on stars all over the net. Neutral whites are fine for veggin on their own and you can scale it to any size you need. I use a 2 watter in a cloning box that fits 20 clones.

When it comes to vegging there is no technology comparable to DIY LED. My buddies veg room uses 90 watts of DIY LED and the flowering room is 2400w HPS (1200X2 flip flop perputual). If we increased LED watts the plants would veg too fast for the system. The plants including bucket end up 4 foot bushes when they finish flowering. I highly recommend it

An all LED veg light would interest me. I've got my flower tent covered for now, might look at it again in the future. I want to be able to veg 2-3 plants at any given time (usually just 3) in a space that is almost triangular. It only has 2 sq ft, but its odd shape makes lighting almost all of the space more challenging. The CMH wasn't bad, it just threw off more heat than I care for.

If I go with a DIY, what would be a great combination of colors/wavelengths for growing shorter, bushier plants due to tighter node spacing? Something similar to 6500k fluorescent because I can get that with PLLs, but at more wattage. If I can get it down to 90w or even less since I'm sure my space is smaller than your buddy's veg room, that would be great.

brotherjericho said:

I've seen some partial grows on here using Cree LED bulbs and similar to grow cannabis. However, whenever I go to the local big box stores, I never see prices that would tempt me to try this for myself. I do know that that I can get 12000 lumens for less than a hundred dollars initial investment, while it would well be more than that using the store bought LED bulbs.

Now I know lumens is only one measure. But I don't see any evidence that the PAR rating of this shelf LEDs are any better than CFLs.

So what is the interest? Power savings? Not trying to be contentious, just wondering where the exercise will lead us.

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I got into it, because I was looking all over for a reasonalbly priced led grow lite....couldn't find anything for my price range, and I have heard good things regarding cree led's. I was using cfl's, but the heat was a constant battle, so the fact that they put off aprx 20% less heat was a big factor.
so for me, price and heat were the two reasons. the electric bill is better too....yet, I have yet to see how they grow, (I just put in 8 cree bulbs into my small gro cab, with two plants inside) and I am holding at about 75 degrees. that was my reason.....I will update you on wether or not the heat stayed down, I literally JUST put them in the box./

they make 18 watt 1600 lumen Cree bulbs for 20 bucks at home depot online

BeastGrow said:

they make 18 watt 1600 lumen Cree bulbs for 20 bucks at home depot online

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I saw the cw version in the store as well

But the 9w ww has been reduced to $4 something now which makes it very appealing

PSUAGRO. said:

I saw the cw version in the store as well

But the 9w ww has been reduced to $4 something now which makes it very appealing

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surprising. the superstores around here are selling LEDS for like 15 bucks for the 9 watts still

BeastGrow said:

surprising. the superstores around here are selling LEDS for like 15 bucks for the 9 watts still

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yep @ home depot in PA........their phasing out all 40w/60w incandescent bulbs, only a few boxes left now. Bet all the old timers stocked up.....lol

SupraSPL said:

OP I agree with your suspicions that household LED bulbs aren't there just yet.

There are a few difficulties using lumens for comparison (color temp and CRI) but it is all we have to go on and it is better than nothing at all. 65 lumens per watt for warm white LED is not worth the price IMO. For comparison, the warm white Cree XTE puts out 107 lm/watt (700mA 50c) and the whole build costs less per watt. That is such a huge difference it might as well be a different technology.

I was at home depot yesterday and saw the LED bulbs demo. I reached up to touch the heatsink and couldn't keep my hand on it for 1 second (60c?). They had frosted diffusers covering the LED but if I recall they are removable. So my question, is the 65 lumens/watt at operating temp with diffuser in place? If not the actual numbers are much worse. When in doubt with LEDs assume the worst.

So for those who want to be adventurous try building a vegging LED. 700mA drivers are all over eBay for dirt cheap along with a huge variety of heatsinks. Fasttech.com has heatsinks LEDs and drivers with free shipping. Cree XML2 and XTE are easily available mounted on stars all over the net. Neutral whites are fine for veggin on their own and you can scale it to any size you need. I use a 2 watter in a cloning box that fits 20 clones.

When it comes to vegging there is no technology comparable to DIY LED. My buddies veg room uses 90 watts of DIY LED and the flowering room is 2400w HPS (1200X2 flip flop perputual). If we increased LED watts the plants would veg too fast for the system. The plants including bucket end up 4 foot bushes when they finish flowering. I highly recommend it

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I agree the LEDS are more suitable for Veg at the current time. I disagree that they only put out 65 lumens per watt. You go by the measurement of the high quality LEDS no the shitty ones. Its more like 80-90 lumens per watt for LED and LUX is higher than the CFLS. If you do decide to flower you need to surround the plant with LED bulbs and not just over the top.

PSUAGRO. said:

yep @ home depot in PA........their phasing out all 40w/60w incandescent bulbs, only a few boxes left now. Bet all the old timers stocked up.....lol

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Home depot is ahead of teh game on lighting. Walmart and other superstores will be carrying the shitty LEDS for awhile.

BeastGrow said:

Home depot is ahead of teh game on lighting. Walmart and other superstores will be carrying the shitty LEDS for awhile.

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Yep,best household led selection around IMO

They even started carrying 4-4ft T5HO high bay fixtures for $89 now..........400w philips hps bulbs for less than $28, 5 gallon hd plastic pails for nothing basically.......it's an cheap mj growers paradise

BeastGrow said:

I agree the LEDS are more suitable for Veg at the current time. I disagree that they only put out 65 lumens per watt. You go by the measurement of the high quality LEDS no the shitty ones. Its more like 80-90 lumens per watt for LED and LUX is higher than the CFLS. If you do decide to flower you need to surround the plant with LED bulbs and not just over the top.

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That post is about a year old and times have changed a lot. 80lm/W is only slightly better than CFL but thanks to COBs DIYers can get 150lm/W in 3000K and for a very competitive price.