Grow Light Opinions

[5Chord]

I'm curently growing DWC in two "tents" (one is in a shower in a spare bathroom and the other is a 4' x 5' grow tent) and have been since early in 2015. I started out with CFL but quickly moved to LED (Blurple). I was never disapointed with the LED results, but I was using low-end 300W-2000W lamps and they would start to fail fairly quickly. About a year and half ago, after getting frustrated with the cheap lamps, I switched to 600W HID and never really looked back. The plants seem to love them, the are rock solid reliable and the replacement bulbs are cheap. Recently, I am revisiting the question of grow lights as my electric bill is more than twice that of similar housholds and nearly every grow since switching has had some degree of heat stress. Also, while I've had some great harvests with HID, my best harvest was an LED White Widow which yielded 9oz way back in 2015. But who knows? Strain is everything. Maybe it would have yielded a full pound if I had been growing with HID?

So I've been wondering if I could get similar or better results with some of the newer LED COB lamps or blurple for about 400W of power usage. One thing for sure, they have gotten much cheaper per watt recently! Here are a couple I was looking at:

https://www.amazon.com/MARS-HYDRO-Sp...n%2C149&sr=1-9

https://www.amazon.com/AGLEX-Spectru...n%2C149&sr=1-7

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...language=en_US

Does anybody know how good the customer service is with these companies?

My current grow, AK-47 ready in a few weeks:

https://imgur.com/a/DMrI3Ng

[Eliot Pryor]

Wow that is a fine looking ak-47 !! Is it a photo-period ?

[Eliot Pryor]

Personally I like that 1st one the Mars of the 3. I have only read about them. I think after the hid any of them disappoint you.

[5Chord]

Yes, it's not an autoflower, just one of the 5 "free" feminized AK-47 I got when buying from the seed store

[Spidermite]

While it's hard to beat HID for yields there are better options now especially considering cost of electricity. We have a few here that have done much more research than me on the new lights. I'll que Toker1 here as he has some numbers of cost of lights and their effectiveness.

[Toker1]

For start up cost...nothing beats HID. LED can save on electricity bills, but that initial start up cost typically sets you back too far to make up the losses.
If you are only concerned with efficiency, LED technology will convert electricity into usable light with the least amount of losses (lower electricity costs for same light coverage). With that being said it’s good to note that not all LED’s are created equal. You have to look at the lumens created per watts used. The most efficient lights today will create over 200 lumens per watt. 180 lumens per watt was the most efficient last year or so ago. Standard HPS bulbs are around 150-160 lumens per watt. They now make single ended HPS bulbs that only run off double ended ballasts. They are rated at 190 lumens per watt if memory serves me correctly.
As time moves forward...lighting will become even more efficient.

[5Chord]

Hey Toker1,
Thanks for the feedback! It's difficult to compare LED and HID using Lumens as Lumens only refer to visable light. "Lumens are for Humans, PAR for plants" as they say. As far as saving money goes, if I went with option A (https://www.amazon.com/MARS-HYDRO-Sp...n%2C149&sr=1-9) and it was equivilent to a 600W HID in terms of PAR (910umol@18") but only pulling 300W from the wall, I would be saving more than half the electricity cost (The ballast on the HID draws a few watts). So if the HID Costs me $100 a month to run(2 fixtures) it would save me $600 per year. BUT, is it a true equivilent? And if the thing goes to shit in 6 months will they replace it?

[Toker1]

This is exactly how LED companies attempt to fool consumers. Don’t go by the PAR ratings, they lack the consistency in conversion required to gain any knowledge about the actual light you are studying. If you don’t want to use the lumens per watt ratio you can refer to the umoles per joule (not just umoles which doesn’t tell the complete story). Either way you will soon see that the mars hydro LED 300 watt (actual drawl) is equivalent to a 250w HPS in terms of light out put and yield.
I once did a direct comparison with a Mars 1200 (560 actual watts drawn) to a 600w HID and the HID yielded way more than the LED did.
As in repairs, yes mars will fix the light under warrantee. After the time is up, you have to order the parts and replace them yourself. I have soldered many diodes and rewired many drivers for that mars 1200. All in all, my HPS was cheaper to run and replace the bulbs every year or so.

[D.A.A.S.69]

Check out the QuantumBoards, very efficient, and hardly any heat at all.
GoodLuck

[Toker1]

I like that you only need 30 watts per square foot of coverage on a QB led light (when compared to 50 watts per square foot of coverage required for HID). Less watts consumed = less heat output. Just note that 1 watt of electricity consumed = 3.41 BTU of heat released into the garden. No matter what the source is.

[Obi-Wan]

I grow DWC as well and if you’re willing to diy a fixture I would recommend a Quantum board fixture using the HLG QB132. 8 boards plus drivers and associated hardware will run you about $1 per watt to build and will cover your space. You can run them between 38-60 watts each so it’ll cut your wall draw in half during Veg and won’t exceed what you’re currently drawing during flower. For a bit more you can get to 75 watts per board. I’m currently running 4-QB 132’s in flower at 275 total draw(69-ish each) in a 2x4 tent and the results are blowing my 400 watt HID out of the water.

[5Chord]

I'm not a good do-it yourselfer lol, anybody assembling them and selling?

[5Chord]

Hss anybody heard or used this kind of light? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...language=en_US

[Obi-Wan]

Yes, a watt is a watt, a unit of power. Equal to a joule a unit of energy. All lights use them, all lights create heat. The difference is which fixtures more effectively turn the energy into light vs. heat. Blurples are 25/75 at best, HID are 45/55 at best, COB’s are 60/40 when driven properly, and Quantum Boards are 75/25 when driven properly. I’m not talking about lumens, I’m talking about the majority of light that plants actually use. I’m sorry my friend but HID’s, while extremely effective at growing weed, just aren’t efficient at converting energy into usable light for plants. There is a reason they’re setup cost is so low.

[Toker1]

The idea we have about what spectrum of light plants require changes every year I have studied it.
I remember when LED companies tried convincing the public that red and blue were the only spectrums a plant truly uses. That idea was simply found to be not true.
I’ll wait and reserve my judgement, but will say what we think we know about usable light fits the description you detailed above. I’ll stand by until that changes again.

[Toker1]

Here is a good article to consider. Suggesting that the heat from HID is creating more of an issue with yields than light spectrum actually is.
When looking at light saturation on other plants...we have a fairly good idea. When discussing Cannabis specifically, no saturation benchmarks have been determined that I know of yet.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.00296/full

“A study using 470 and 655 nm LEDs reported that the light saturation points for kale and chard ranged between 884 and 978 μmol m−2 s−1 and at 1238 μmol m−2 s−1 for spinach (Erwin and Gesick, 2017). The light saturation point for cannabis has not yet been determined, but its net photosynthetic rates at different temperatures (25–40°C) and intensities (up to 2,000 μmol m−2 s−1) were reported (Chandra et al., 2008; Chandra et al., 2015). In these studies, no decline in photosynthesis rate was observed at the highest intensity used; however, net photosynthetic rates at 30°C decreased by ~20% from 1,500 to 2,000 μmol m−2 s−1 (Chandra et al., 2008; Chandra et al., 2015).”

[5Chord]

So is the consensus that HID is best yield for the $ ? Also I'm running 7W per bucket with these air pumps. https://www.amazon.com/Danner-Manufa...n%2C149&sr=1-6
Do I need that much? Do i need more?

[Toker1]

Best is subjective. Start up costs and maintenance costs are generally less with most HID equipment. Electrical bill is less when you are using truly efficient LEDs.
Yield on the cheap LED’s (blue-purple) is garbage. Yield on a quality LED light is comparable to HID.
The air pump you selected can easily provide air for 2 of the 5 gallon buckets.