CFL gets bigger and bigger

[Twelve12]

I saw this one today at HomeDepot. You can see my hand for scale. That thing is huge. Perfect for those growing with CFL for flowering. It only cost $14.95 +tax.

68w Actual = 300w Equivalent
4,200 Lumens
10,000 hours
120v
2,700K

 

[GAME]

So would 2 of those really work as good as a 600 MH/HPS or 4 work better than a 1,000 watt? Thats an awfully good price too!

 

[Twelve12]

I don't think it will out do HPS since it has much lower lumens vs wattage. The 400w HPS has at least 50,000 lumens. With that comes the heat and require ballast. The CFL will be much cooler to run comes with it's own ballast, and since it only use 68w one can place it in a regular light bulb socket to work.

Right now I'm using one 400w HPS for flowering. I got few more clones and plants to flower in 1 month, might pick up some of these to fill in the vertical space between plants and have the main light be 400w HPS. I also noticed some HomeDepot location carry different types of CFL size and wattage. This one has the biggest 2700K, while the other I've been to don't have it, they got the 6500K highest at 250w (long tubed not ice cream style).

 

[TorturedSoul]

I saw this one today at HomeDepot. You can see my hand for scale. That thing is huge. Perfect for those growing with CFL for flowering. It only cost $14.95 +tax.

68w Actual = 300w Equivalent
4,200 Lumens
10,000 hours
120v
2,700K

Please don't use terminology such as "68w Actual = 300w Equivalent." The only light that the pictured bulb is equivalent to 300 watts of is an old-fashioned incandescent light. Which is (arguably) acceptable when you're discussing it in the context of illuminating your living room, but has NO place in the context of growing cannabis (et cetera). Doing so tends to confuse newbies.

So would 2 of those really work as good as a 600 MH/HPS or 4 work better than a 1,000 watt? Thats an awfully good price too!

You can roughly compare it to HPS if you cut the actual wattage figure of the CFL bulb in half. That's not quite perfect, because there's the penetration issue also.

1200 watts' worth of CFLs might be considered to be comparable to a 600-watt HID. But...

It's not likely to ever truly be considered to be comparable. You'd be purchasing ~17.65 of those bulbs. That's $263.82. And then there's the purchase price of 17(+/-) sockets, the wire to hook them up, male plug-ins, receptacles and/or power-strips... Oh yeah, and the money it generally takes to cool things. 1200 watts' of CFLs produce more heat than one 600-watt HPS. Actually, 600 watts' worth of CFLs produce more heat than one 600-watt HPS. In terms of absolute heat - lighting devices produce two things, light and heat. The more efficient they are at producing light, the less electricity is wasted in the form of heat - and in "practical heat" in the grow room in that one can use a sealed air-cooled hood with a HID and pull cool air in from outside the grow room, move it through the hood, and back out of the grow room without it coming into contact with the grow room itself, while many separate CFL bulbs are rather more difficult to air-cool separately; additionally, since the vast majority of HID grow lights have remote ballasts, the grower can place one of the main sources of heat outside of the grow room. Most people who grow with CFLs do not take the time/trouble to separate the ballast from the bulb.

Because the HID can be cooled separately, the heat can be removed to another area without bringing the smell of growing cannabis with it. That air does not have to be run through a carbon-filter or other device to combat the odor. It just smells like air. But the grower that vents his room/lights as a unit has to deal with hot stinky air. It needs to be run through a carbon-filter or something like the ONA product. And those devices are both less-efficient and do not last as long when the air that they are treating is hot.

That is not to say that they cannot be used to grow cannabis. They're just not very efficient at it. And if you're comparing equal amounts of light, they're not all that cheap, either.

They're good for supplemental lighting. HighDive's idea of using them to fill in around his HPS is a good idea. Seedlings don't need a great deal of light and they can be packed in pretty tight - CFL bulbs work fine for that and there is no sense in using a 400-watt HPS to light up a couple of square feet. Plants in vegetative growth can get by with less light per square foot than those that are flowering. If you only have one HID and wish to flower constantly, you can use a few CFLs to vegetate smaller plants and keep adding plants to your flower room as you harvest. A mother-plant can be kept with CFLs - especially if you're not pulling cuttings off of it but are just keeping it in a semi-stasis holding pattern. If you're growing in a PC case or other micro-environment (and therefore don't plan on getting more than five ounces or so per year) then CFLs are probably your only option. And if it's time for the HID to come on and the bulb blows, wandering around your home to gather up all the CFLs (and lamps/sockets) and temporarily installing them in your grow room can keep the plants in the correct phase while you get a replacement bulb.

You could stick a bunch of them into a 30-gallon aluminum trash can or other mini-grow - but there are 70-watt, 150-watt, and 250-watt HPS.

People do grow good cannabis with them - as anyone can tell by checking out a few CFL grow journals here. But anyone can also see that most of the successful CFL growers who switched to HIDs or LEDs were a lot more successful.

Sure, you can buy CFL lighting piecemeal instead of having to buy it in one (or 2-3) lumps. But I've seen economy 400-watt HPS setups that included bulb, reflector (NOT an air-cooled hood), and magnetic ballast for as little as $119 and at least one sponsor offers an AiO (All in One, the ballast is in the hood) 150-watt HPS with a decent hood for around $69. That's only $10 more than the cost of four of those 68-watt CFLs (that you'd need sockets/etc. for). And you get roughly the same amount of light, better penetration, a reflective hood, and you're not using 272 watts (to be fair, there will be some power wasted by the HPS' ballast so it's going to be using more than 150 watts).

Probably the best and most economic use that a grower can put CFL bulbs to is to use them to replace all of the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs in the rest of their home. In some homes, the energy-savings can run a small HPS.

 

[Roseman]

4200 lumens for $15 is a very good deal to me. I've seen those same wattage-lumen bulbs selling for $29 at a few Grow Websites. For newbs, first time growers, small closet grows for personal use, cabinet growers and growers not wanting to go to the expense of VENTING the HEAT, well, that is who and what CFLs are made for.
But, I've had some 200 watt bulbs that would dwarf that 68 watt bulb.

Here you see one 65 watters, three 105s, one 200 and two 42 watt CFL bulb to compare sizes.

 

[Lemon Paradise]

quite a collection you got there Roseman figured it was only a matter of time before you dropped into this thread..

oh, and TS,,, you are so thorough in your posts and information,, just no sense in trying to post after you,,, hehe,, you cover it all

 

[GAME]

Thanks for the explanation Tortured!!

 

[TorturedSoul]

4200 lumens for $15 is a very good deal to me.

It is - if you've only got $15. And you exclude every bulb type other than CFLs. They're actually a little bit less efficient than 40-watt 4' tubes, watt-for-watt, dollar-for-dollar.

For newbs, first time growers, small closet grows for personal use

Highly debatable. The journal forums are filled with grows done by n00bs/first-time growers who grew in a small closet (or equivalent) for personal use with HIDs. The vast majority of them did just fine.

cabinet growers and growers not wanting to go to the expense of VENTING the HEAT, well, that is who and what CFLs are made for.

Conveniently forgetting to mention that giant vent you've got in your grow - the wide-open closet doors? Close them up for about a week so that you're not VENTING the HEAT. Actually, since your closet doors are louvered, you'd have to cover then with a sheet of plywood or the like to ensure a no-vent situation.

What I'm speaking of, for those who haven't seen it:

I did use two oscilating fans to move them around some but NO VENTING and NO HEAT!

Looks like a vent big enough for two or three people to walk through side-by-side to me.

CFLs produce heat too. Yes, the heat produced by any one (small) CFL is less than that produced by HPS. But since the light that is produced is also (far) less, the grower does not use just one small CFL bulb. They add more, and more. And pretty soon they have a grow room with CFLs that cost (bulbs + sockets + related) more than a HPS setup that produces a like amount of light, uses more electricity, and produces more heat. And then they in affect remove one entire side of said grow room (note the doors - which are vented-louvered - that are standing wide open) and place a fan blowing room-air into the grow room.

Been there, done that (didn't really want to admit it, lol). Looked at the receipts, could have kicked myself. Looked at the temps, didn't understand how those "cool" CFLs could produce so much heat. Bought a Craftsman Professional 1400 Degree InfraRed (Non-Contact) Thermometer. Shot a few bulbs. Realized that they were producing a good bit of heat. Still didn't understand how it got so hot overall because each one of them produced less heat than ONE big HPS. Then common-sense came up & bit me on the ass and reminded me about how when I was growing up and Mom refused to run the big hot oven in the Summer and instead cooked everything on the (comparatively) smaller stove-top burners... That the house still got very hot. Or as a high-school science teacher once put it, "1000 candles really DO produce more heat than one blow-torch."