Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information.

I

IndyPendant

New Member
(This post is mirrored on reddit.)

First, the setup. I have an 11'x13' shed, divided to make two 11'x6' rooms, that I'm turning into a succession grow room. Half veg, half flower.

Each room has two 4'x3' trays (on casters) that will hold 12 plants each. I (will) have a track to suspend the lights from, motorized so that they can automatically move back and forth over the plants during the day.

Now, onto the question of lights. I'm a "best bang for your buck" kind of guy. While I'm looking at all the 3w LED panels from ProGrow and GrowBlu and Blackstar, part of me thinks I can get knock-offs from eBay or Alibaba and get *more of them* for the same money. I see people go both ways, but I haven't really talked myself into a conclusion. Go with one or two high-quality lights, or more okay-quality lights?

Regardless of the LEDs I go with, I figure both the veg and the flower rooms will have to be supplemented by T5s. How many and what kind? Honestly, I haven't researched that part yet. Opinions welcome, of course, but right now I'm mainly trying to pin down the LEDs.

So, like I said, I think mostly I need conversation. Give me your opinions, let me bang my ignorance against your experience, and then I can feel better about committing to a course of action.
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

wait......3 watt panels? THREE watt? Ummm, you realize that since we use 110 volts, that a 3 watt panel would literally be like 0.03 amps, sounding something you'd power by some AA's instead. Watts=voltage multiplied by amps. Also, from experience in getting things from china, you get what you pay for, as the uber cheap companies often have lax quality control, cheap wiring, cold soldier joints, and LED's that aren't even 1/10th the lumens of what it claims.

Besides, we're talking about your babies. Why do you want to get headaches and struggle to figure it out, when a few dollars more might save you a headache.
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

Srilania said:
wait......3 watt panels? THREE watt?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant 3 watt LEDs, vs the 1 watt LEDs that were so prevalent a few years ago. They provide more penetration power and watt-coverage per square foot. I can't speak for lumens (but, then that gets into a discussion of usable wavelengths vs wasted ones), but I know LEDs typically only draw 0.6 - 0.66 of the "face value" for wattage (eg: a 940w LED panel will only give around 600w true).

What setup would you recommend for such an odd grow space?
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

Oh, you mean those loose LED's where you design and build your own panels? You need to definitely spend to get the better ones. Often, the cheaper end wholesalers will mislabel them, and use lower lumen LED's, insufficient heat sink or no heat sinks, and even just take a white bulb and dip it on a blue or red coating instead of making it the right color.

I'd start with needs. This is a shed. Without insulation, it's going to be a bit of a headache to keep cool in the summer, and warm in the winter. But, it's doable. In summer, heat's going to be a complete headache. So the LED's will be a huge benefit, since they use electricity more efficiently, with less waste heat. In winter, however, all that waste heat will benefit you, since it'll keep your plants warm. Using the larger LED's, like the 5 watt ones, while they have a little more heat, they pump out about 10% more lumens/watt than the 3 watt, though puts out more heat.

If you know how to do electronic circuit design, then you can do your own LED panels pretty easily, and since the 1, 3, 5 and higher loose LED's use 12VDC, you should be able to use anything out there designed to handle car or trolling motors. Also of note, you could add some 12 volt solar panels, on the top of the shed, and if people ask, you state you just are using the shed to make some electricity, since it's easier to clean and remove snow from them from there, VS the house.

When selecting your LED's you'll also need to pay attention to the nM rating. LED colors from most decent LED retailers will have the wavelength, make sure you pick up LED's that follow the light curves in red and blue, maybe with a couple in the UVb range for flavor. If they don't have it listed, try to contact the seller for that information. If they don't know, DO NOT BUY.

Other than that, your real headache is going to be security and temperature. You'll want to disguise the output from the exhaust, not only from sight, but from thermal imaging as well. Police and rippers both use FLIR type cameras, and cruise streets, looking for grows from their heat blooms from that kind of setup. Also, you'll want your venting input/output to be switchable, so you can adjust your air temps and deal with unwanted heat/cold easier, with one vent up top, and one below. Also, I would consider using some of that waste heat in any case above your veg area to do a germination chamber, since for seeds, all you need is some heat, not so much light.

There's more things that the more experienced growers can point out as well, But, that's some things to at least start looking at.
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

With any LED grow lights, you're going to need to have pretty good temperature control. From what I understand, heat can change the wavelength of the light produced and throw off your spectrums. Check out TopLED! They are one of our forum sponsors and make an awesome "bang for your buck" LED panel. I just bought three of them and couldn't be happier.

As for environmental control, I would think some styrofoam or fiberglass insulation and a window A/C unit should do for that space. Maybe a mini split if you live in an area with extreme temps.

:Namaste:
-Monkey
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

Dante, he's talking about using the loose LED's to make his own panel. Yes, LED's change their wavelength slightly over the thermal/voltage curve. Overdriving and changing the temps can cause small changes in the nM of the light sent out. But, because the color of the light is determined by the doped materials inside the LED, this change won't be a radical shift, but that is why LED panels with only 1 wavelength of blue or red isn't a great idea. You'd want to put in a small bit of LED's in the circuit that will more accurately cover the spread. Also, adding a dimmer circuit into it can allow you to slightly adjust the output, which would let you use fewer differen nM's.
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

Srilania said:
Dante, he's talking about using the loose LED's to make his own panel.
Click to expand...

IndyPendant said:
While I'm looking at all the 3w LED panels from ProGrow and GrowBlu and Blackstar, part of me thinks I can get knock-offs from eBay or Alibaba and get *more of them* for the same money.
Click to expand...

Really? I didn't see any mention of building an LED panel in any of his posts. In fact, a quick search of the brands he mentioned and you'll see that they're all preassembled units. He even says, "I'm looking at 3w LED panels..."

All I did was suggest that he look at a forum sponsor's products and give my honest opinion to his questions.

You might want to focus on reading people's posts and try to understand their questions instead of hijacking their threads. Just a suggestion, because you don't seem to be very nice about it.

:Namaste:
-Monkey
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

I do apologize if I seem brusque, but he does state in another post that he did mess up, and meant LED's, not LED panels. The rest of the post was addressing thermal effects on diode wavelength. But, if he did indeed mean full panels, and not loose ones to build his own, than it's my bad. But from what I could understand, he mistakenly said panels.
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

I must suck at communicating. Apologies, Srilanka. I am, by no means, competent enough to assemble my own LED panels. I was trying to state:
I am looking at LED panels that use 3w LEDs, as opposed to 1w LEDs, ...
Click to expand...

Sorry for the mix-up.

Monkey: I've not looked at that vendor before. They seem ... well, to be blunt, ridiculously cheap, and relatively inefficient. Do you know much about them? Most LEDs run at 0.6 - 0.66 of the "face value" wattage. For example, a "400w LED panel" will only really draw around 252w. These are claiming a 0.425 - 0.57 draw. Whats up with that?
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

Ahh, ok, that can happen. Though I'll be honest, wiring LED's isn't rocket science. though there is more info to spin your head around with. Wait, you're head's spinning? Someone call the Potsercist.
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

IndyPendant said:
Monkey: I've not looked at that vendor before. They seem ... well, to be blunt, ridiculously cheap, and relatively inefficient. Do you know much about them? Most LEDs run at 0.6 - 0.66 of the "face value" wattage. For example, a "400w LED panel" will only really draw around 252w. These are claiming a 0.425 - 0.57 draw. Whats up with that?
Click to expand...

I can't speak to the specifics about the inner workings of the panels (although I did open up one of mine out of curiosity). Many members on this forum use TopLEDs and are very happy with them. It was the positive reviews of other members that inspired me to buy three of the 192x3w panels. I can tell you that my 576 watt panels only draw about 390 watts on full power, so that's around the .66 ratio you mention. I have yet to grow anything with them, but you can check out the grow journals to see the positive results others have gotten with them.

I think a lower ratio does indeed make them more efficient as they are drawing less power than they put out. So a .425-.57 draw as opposed to .6-.7 means they are consuming less actual power for the amount of light power they are putting out. I hope that makes sense.

Yes they are cheap. Yes they are made in china. But most of the panels out there that cost 2-3 times the price are also made in china, and probably use the same quality of components. If you want something with the build quality of a German sports saloon car or a fancy apple laptop, then you should budget at least 3 times what you can get TopLEDs for and look at something like California Lightworks.

I myself couldn't afford the top notch, made in the western world LED panels. And figured if I'm going with something made in china, I might as well get the best bang for my buck. For me, its about the quality of the plants, not the tools I use to grow them. Do some research and check out a few of the grow journals using them, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
:Namaste:
-Monkey
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

I think a lower ratio does indeed make them more efficient as they are drawing less power than they put out. So a .425-.57 draw as opposed to .6-.7 means they are consuming less actual power for the amount of light power they are putting out. I hope that makes sense.
Click to expand...

Well, if you're only getting 0.5 draw, then your 500W LED is actually only drawing 250W. You're going to be getting less light. Since energy is directly converted into heat and light, less energy draw means less light. The efficiency is completely unrelated to this ratio. A low-efficacy light, regardless of it's draw, will spend more energy on heat than it will on lumens. I have no idea what the efficacy of these (or, really, any) LEDs is.

I figured these are direct from China. I've been looking at alibaba.com, and they boast similar costs and design schemes. It would be nice if we could get statistics of the efficacy of the panels (how many lumens they put out), but I guess that's not a common metric.

Thanks for the tip, though; I'm going to add Top LED to my list of "maybes" :)
 
Re: Building a first grow room, going with LEDs + CFL. Head swimming with information

IndyPendant said:
Well, if you're only getting 0.5 draw, then your 500W LED is actually only drawing 250W. You're going to be getting less light. Since energy is directly converted into heat and light, less energy draw means less light. The efficiency is completely unrelated to this ratio. A low-efficacy light, regardless of it's draw, will spend more energy on heat than it will on lumens. I have no idea what the efficacy of these (or, really, any) LEDs is.

I figured these are direct from China. I've been looking at alibaba.com, and they boast similar costs and design schemes. It would be nice if we could get statistics of the efficacy of the panels (how many lumens they put out), but I guess that's not a common metric.

Thanks for the tip, though; I'm going to add Top LED to my list of "maybes" :)
Click to expand...

I cannot argue with your logic there. You can also PM user SmokeSara with any questions on the TopLED line. She is a member here and is the go to person for all things TopLED. She was very helpful when I ordered mine.
 

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