164w CFL lighting rig

[StonyGeoff]

My original grow closet thread is here:
Welfare Mans Wardrobe Setup
I just wanted to show you guys my lighting rig I built with 8 CFLs that's putting out a total of 790 watts (equivilent) Let me tell you I only finished building this rig this morning, and it gets VERY hot! And my grow box temp remains around 25*C (77*F) when the lamps are switched on.
It's running 4x 75W warm-whites in each corner, 2x 120W warm-whites in the centre (left & right) and 2x 125W cool-whites in the centre (front & back).
















This grow box has been very very cheap to build. And highly effective so far :-) Every 2 weeks I'm able to spend around $30 and buy something new & exciting to add to the box. Next fortnight I'm going to invest in something which'll tell me what the humidity levels are, I don't know what they're called :-P Also possibly a fire-extinguisher, you can never be too careful!

Peace Everyone

[Medical Marijuana]

Great post! +18 reps

[Dr. 215]

im really diggin your setup, very interesting

[StonyGeoff]

Thanks ***** and thank you Dr 215 :-)

[green acres]

glad to see the improvements. + for being devoted

[Racefan]

Originally Posted by StonyGeoff86

My original grow closet thread is here:
Welfare Mans Wardrobe Setup
I just wanted to show you guys my lighting rig I built with 8 CFLs that's putting out a total of 790 watts (equivilent) Let me tell you I only finished building this rig this morning, and it gets VERY hot! And my grow box temp remains around 25*C (77*F) when the lamps are switched on.
It's running 4x 75W warm-whites in each corner, 2x 120W warm-whites in the centre (left & right) and 2x 125W cool-whites in the centre (front & back).
















This grow box has been very very cheap to build. And highly effective so far :-) Every 2 weeks I'm able to spend around $30 and buy something new & exciting to add to the box. Next fortnight I'm going to invest in something which'll tell me what the humidity levels are, I don't know what they're called :-P Also possibly a fire-extinguisher, you can never be too careful!

Peace Everyone

What is the actual wattage of your lights? Not the equivelient.

[StonyGeoff]

Haha I was waiting for someone to ask me that ;-)

2x 23w warm whites (120w equivelient each)
4x 18w warm whites (75w equiv each)
2x 23w cool whites (125w equiv each)

That's 164w actual wattage in total.

[grandma]

The nugs look great, can you get a close up for us bud porn lovers?
I just added a 26 watt 6400k to my Phototron 120w, this fluro thing is so good i'm even thinking of growing some salad veges with it too :)
Cheers,
G-Ma.

[zolar]

nice rig do you have a fan in the cab for circulation and not just intake and exhaust?

[StonyGeoff]

I'll try and get some pics up over the next couple of days or so. I totally agree grandma, loving this fluro thing aswell :-)

Hi zolar. No I don't have any extra fans for circulation, just 2 for intake, 1 for exhaust. The intake fans blow quite a bit of air around in there, the circulation at the moment is blowing the plant around a bit, but an extra separate fan would be a great addition to my set-up next time I go for some upgrades.

[budculture]

Looking good man. I've got a cfl grow myself with 12 bulbs giving me about 22,800 lumens. I've been trying to up the lumens as much as possible, but the heat has been a major factor. I've been trying to keep the room in range, but it's been hard and I've had to keep the door open and run fans while the lights are on. One thing that I think has helped is that I put a small computer fan hanging and blowing across the tops of the plants to keep the surface a little cooler (I'm doing a SCROG...). I've been able to run the lights as close as 1-2 inches withput too much burn. The closer you can get them the more lumens. That's about the main advantage I can find so far w/cfl's. I don't know if they cost any less really than HID when the bulbs that put out the lumens are like $10 each, so I've got about $150 in bulbs w/ the different colors I've bought. I guess you don't need the ballast and such , but the heat is definitely harder to control.
There are lumen calculators out there on the web and it's quite surprising to see how much you gain by close proximity to the plants. The cfl's have been great, but I may relegate my franken fixture to veg duties just because of the heat. I'm going to invest in an 400wHPS next time just so I can control the heat / odor better, but I may have to get it pretty close to match the lumen output.
Boss has some great posts on using cfls. also, so check out his grows if you haven't already. Good luck man and grow on....

[green acres]

you should look into that lumens math i dont think you just add the lumens of each bulb and that is your total lumens. 1 lumen is good for a certain amount of square footage and that dosn`t change. i`m not sure exactly on the math but i believe you would have to divide something by the number of square feet. simple way: the bulb on the left dosn`t light the room on the right, it only lights below and a certain square footage around it. iv`e seen it explained in here before if i come accross it i`ll post it. or mabee i was seeing things.

[budculture]

Yeah GreenAcres, I'm not sure of the math myself. I was always skipping out to burn one during math class so.... the info I got was off the Cannabis Culture forum web site. Just search for a "lumen calculator" and you should find it. You take the stated lumen output of the bulb and do some calculations based on the distance from the plant in inches. Anyway, my figure, based on the stated lumen output of the bulbs, was pretty high, and seemed too good to be true. That being said, I wasn't sure if I could get a tight bud with the cfl's, but I'm a week or two from harvest and they seem to be doing well (except for the heat issue which has caused some stress...). I really won't know until I harvest, but I would stay with my cfl fixture if it weren't a lot easier to vent a HPS cool tube or something like that. I've ended up with a lot of fans ( and wattage, more than 400w!) and it's still marginal for getting the heat out.
Boss has had to deal with the heat as well and he's worked out some good calculations for watts v. heat with the cfls. Sometimes the smaller wattage bulbs are better in that respect.
Peace

[StonyGeoff]

Nice setup budculture, you really got the cfl thing happening :-) I've had a read of boss's poor mans grow and a few others, all valuable info.
I have no idea how many lumens I'm cranking out. I might jump on google and see what I can find out.

[budculture]

Thanks for the kind words Stony. It's been a bit of fun coming up with the "franken fixture". I started out with 6 lights and then figured I'd cram as many in my space as I could. I currently have 5 120w, 5 100w and 2 150w. The 150's have a stated lumen output of 2400 and they DO get hot, but I thought it would be worth the trade off since I need max lumens in min space. If I had more room, I'd probably run just 100w's since they are more efficient w/ heat /watt ratio.I saw the idea for the reflector somewhere on this site and it's made from a mailbox. I used some spray adhesive to stick mylar on the underside and I mylar'd the walls too for max reflectivity. I think I'd have to build a much bigger reflector to close it up and vent, so that's why I'll probably go cool tube HPS 400w next time. If my space were bigger and I didn't have to be discrete, I'd keep using it for sure.
The strain I'm growing is unknown , but probably an outdoor since it's taking so long to finish up, and it's handled the heat fairly well. I have had some bananas and some burn, due to the heat I believe. The scrog kind of holds the heat in the small closet and as the screen fills , air flow is slowed down so as the grow has progressed, the temps have gotten higher and harder to control. I've taken also to cycling the lights off for a few minutes every couple of hours. I had read that it was ok to do, and I don't think it's been a problem, but I'd rather have lights on for max exposure.
Man I'm yaking on... time for a wake up....
Keep the temps in range and you should be golden. I'll be checking your grow and I'll post some photo's after harvest / cure.
Peace brother