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Home LEDs for supplemental lighting

Locrian99

Locrian99

New member
anyone ever use LEDs like these as supplemental lighting? Wife bought a box of them at Costco not understanding the spectrum, she hates them lol. Figured I could put them to good use. Just not sure if they’d really do much.
 

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They probably would'nt do much. Their efficiency will not be as good as your HID lights you are currently using. Side lighting is not a very effective method to start with as well.
 
I wonder what the actual power consumption is on each 'lamp'.? I'd also suspect like DD said, that they probably aren't that efficient so I don't know if the added photons are going to be worth the extra heat.
 
You can calculate it with photometry values, however this is only as a rough comparison as photometry is a poor metric system for horticulture lighting. Saying that, those bulbs equate to 80 lumens per watt where as sodium discharge get around 200 lumens per watt.
 
They work fine--better than CFLs, actually. Warm-white (2700K) is yellowish light, so more like sodium, I guess. If you cut the top off the bulbs (Dremel cutter wheel works great), you can get make them much more directional. You can grow one plant under about nine of them if you SCROG it to keep it flat and don't let it get too big.

That said, LED light bulbs, like CFLs are a better choice for beginner grows (and really, even beginners would be better off with something else).
But if you've got the bulbs and you have the sockets for them, then just get them within a few inches of the plant and ideally rig some foil reflectors to concentrate the light and they will definitely help. I grew a very nice, very sticky little dwarf under a mix of CFL and 2700K LED bulbs.
 
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The footprint of my led which for this grow I’m using for flower is a little weak on the far edges of my tent. It’s 3x2.5 in a 32”x32” tent just was wondering if these might help a bit there. Should’ve been more specific.
 
Let me put it to you this way, a 600w HPS will roughly provide a PPF value of 900umols. If you use 10 of those LED bulbs you will add an additional 100umols. 1/10th the total energy for roughly 1/3 more power.
 
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CFL is actually pretty comparable to LED residental lights. Although some of the more expensive products have better efficiency. Us electricians still use fluorescents in larger commercial applications because of cost and efficiency. Although we have seen the LED market slowly taking over fluorescents of the last decade.

Just make sure you use proper reflective material, aluminium foil actually is a poor reflector and actually deteriorates the efficacy of the light.
 
> aluminium foil actually is a poor reflector and actually deteriorates the efficacy of the light.
Eh, it's pretty shiny. 88% reflectivity, cheap, readily available, and fireproof. It'll do. ;) I don't see how it's going to decrease the light's efficiency as long as you don't rig it up so it overheats. In any case, I've done it and it works fine. :)
 
> 1/10th the total energy for nearly 3x the power!.
You sure you're not overstating that? The efficiency I see for sodium is 60-200 lumen per watt, and the bulbs are 80 per watt. I calculate a brand new HPS has maybe 2.5X the lumens best case. Your math seems to suggest a loss of efficiency of 30x if I'm reading what you're saying right. That just ain't so.
 
This one is dabatable, however in comparison to other reflective material it is inferior. With roughly 88% reflection (on the shiny side), where as other material such as mylar are 98%. I experimented with this using standard incadescent reflectors, one white, one with aluminium foil. The foil measured worse and was observationally noticable.

This may not sound like a lot, but for a 1000 watt light, thats over 100 watts lost. When dealing with already low levels of light energy, every bit counts.
 
My hps is in the other tent. I’m thinking these won’t be worth the hassle moving etc at this point from the answers received. Thank you. 😀
 
Yes your right, quick error on my part. To correct, using conversion factors based on the weighting values of HPS. Those LEDs would provide roughly 1umol per watt. Compared to HPS of around 1.5umol per watt. So around 1/3, not 200%. ;)
 
Hey abadtrip , here's my veg closet with several different things going on. My grows start on the lower far right of my 65 X 30 closet, the bottom shelf has a heat pad and a couple spiral CFLs for seedlings and clones.

The survivors graduate to the top shelf where they will grow under a 2x4 T5 lamp for 2 weeks. From there they move to the left half of the closet under the flood lamps or a Roleadro 400watt COB light.

The timberline auto in the pictures went under the LED floodlight when it was 2 weeks old. A 2nd flood light was added about 4 weeks later. I hope this helps.
 

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Yeah, it's a lot. Work got really stressful around Christmas time, and I got really depressed, so I started a few too many seeds and more clones survived than I expected.

The Roleadro COB is okay, but I can't give a great response since I haven't done a grow with it, exclusively. But for my last grow, I added it to my flower tent between 2 GalaxyHydro300s. It seemed to add the bulk and density that was missing from my buds grown under GH300s (which I love). With LEDs I was getting rather fluffy buds, very frosty, but not very solid.

This past grow was a little bigger, and definitely more dense. It was very nice to able to unplug the blurple lights and see them under natural looking light.

But just hung an LEC315 a couple weeks ago, and I think I love that more already. My shit is BLOWING UP!
 
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