LED or HPS need help!

[Jimmycricket]

Ok so I swear I am not being lazy I have spent days and days googling and searching forums. But so much info out there is from like 2009 or such and is out dated.

So I need to get some flowering lights for a 4 by 8 or so area. I want good canopy pen so I doubt flouro would work.
I know HPS and LED can get the job done.

But really can LED hold up to HPS in terms of size and quality or are we not there yet?

I like LED for the low heat as it would enable me to not need portable a/c's. But can they get the job done? If so who has the most price efficient but QUALITY LED grow lights?

Any links or quality input is very very very appreciated. thanks guys.

 

[BigIrishDoode]

hps all the way

 

[HeadMed]

LED's have never been cheaper to manufacture, and we are seeing a surge in their popularity. LED's are great at producing large amount of luminescence for the watt. The LED it self tends to be very long lived.

The spectrum of light that comes off the LED is very specific. While u can blend colors to make something in the spectrum our eyes perceive, we have yet to even identify all spectrum's a plant uses.

HID lighting seems to give off more of these unknown use spectrum's than LED.

In short, if you need to know that its gonna work all the way, go with HID, (ask a Chevy guy, there's no replacement for displacement). If you've the time, money and wherewithal to play with it, supplement it, etc until it gets right, then go for it, get the LED, post what you do and the results.

I want to believe....

 

[Jimmycricket]

I am poor and dont have the money or time to buy lights that cost 1400 a piece just to have them not work lol.

 

[Jimmycricket]

ugh as much as I hate to think it. It looks like imma just be buying an portable a/c and getting some cooltube HPS.

Most seem to say that a 600watt is good for a 4x4 and that 1000watt would be overkill. So I will probably just get 2 600 watt HPS for my 4x8 tent.

Sigh I so badly wish that LED would work.

 

[HeadMed]

"Sigh I so badly wish that LED would work. "

Me too bro me too..

"So I will probably just get 2 600 watt HPS for my 4x8 tent."

600 watt hps lumen to watt is the most efficient. I'll tell you though, I started with 125 watt cfl's then went to 400hps then 600hps, and am now at 1000mh (mh ballasts are cheaper and easier to come by in 1kwatt), and wish I had gone straight to 1000 watt. The harvest is just that much bigger. 600 worked better than 400, and did not save enough heat to keep me away from 1000watts.

I now feel the same about carbon dioxide, I wish I had always been using it. Plants are so much healthier and take things like heat and stress so much better when running the Co2.

 

[Jimmycricket]

yeah my original plan was to just veg indoors flower outdoors. But with these 105 degree summers the two tester plants i tossed out there last week had a rough time in full sun.

Granted those guys where like full blown Indica and my sativas could probably handle the heat better. But still, dont really wanna risk putting 3 foot mini trees outside just to have them die or be on life support.


Did you mean 1000watt HPS HeadMed? or are you flowering using those newer MH full spectrum bulbs?

 

[HeadMed]

yeah my original plan was to just veg indoors flower outdoors. But with these 105 degree summers the two tester plants i tossed out there last week had a rough time in full sun.

Granted those guys where like full blown Indica and my sativas could probably handle the heat better. But still, dont really wanna risk putting 3 foot mini trees outside just to have them die or be on life support.


Did you mean 1000watt HPS HeadMed? or are you flowering using those newer MH full spectrum bulbs?

I was running 2 1kmh with 1 600hps on a mover. - have sinced halved the size of the room and am down to 1 1kmh. Have harvested under mh and it works fine. In my opinion the hps trigers bloom faster when switching to 12/12

 

[Buckshot]

Holy Hating LED

First do they work? ... look at my journal

Second the cost. You have to add a lot more than the light to get a true cost ... like bulbs every 6 months, and the additional cost of electricity for not only the light but also whatever duct fan you choose.

look at amps too and check to see your service can handle a 1000 watt light if that is where you are going and remember with a ballast there is a big amp surge at startup (every 12 hours) so make sure you know what that is and figure in to your total amps

Speaking of big hot scary ballasts ... they are big, hot and scary

Good Luck

PS

You can see LEDs working in my journal but there are many other better journals by folks that have done it longer than I

 

[Jimmycricket]

I was running 2 1kmh with 1 600hps on a mover. - have sinced halved the size of the room and am down to 1 1kmh. Have harvested under mh and it works fine. In my opinion the hps trigers bloom faster when switching to 12/12

Yeah I just noticed today that my Chem D is growing a couple pistols out of every node and its in 24/7 veg light with flouros lol. I bet someone could make a bud with a flashlight if they really wanted to. It might not be a very big bud, probably not even a full hit. But a bud none the less it would be .

 

[Buckshot]

Yeah I just noticed today that my Chem D is growing a couple pistols out of every node and its in 24/7 veg light with flouros lol. I bet someone could make a bud with a flashlight if they really wanted to. It might not be a very big bud, probably not even a full hit. But a bud none the less it would be .

This is Super Snowdawg (I think the same family as your Chem D) ... the "popcorn" buds were the size of golf balls all the way down

 

[Jimmycricket]

Looks fairly similar Buck. The Chem d leaves are a biit wider and more Indica looking. But the color is similar as the leaves can get really dark, loaded with nitrogen yet have no tip burn. Also it is a naturally purple stem plant too. So yeah they very well could be cousins or even sisters.

Great looking grow Buck.

 

[Loial Green]

If you haven't bought your lighting yet, I recommend buying the 900 watt LED from dormgrow.com. Its just about $950. Like Buckshot said, if you consider that you don't need to buy a separate ballast or an extra fan / cooling setup, it actually turns out to be around the same start up cost as a nice HPS. Then consider that you don't have to replace a bulb for 13 years and my power bill was $108 last month. LED actually ends up being a lot cheaper in the long run. Check out my grow journal to see how it works. I am using in a 4x8 tent on a light mover and no complaints.

 

[s1ingblade]

I have grown two times now with LED's and was thinking that the poor results were the lights? Wrong, it was a combination of Nute. Lockout and having the lights too close. Next time I will 1/2 strength the food, park my light at the proper height and spend more time dialing in one strain at a time instead of trying to manage 10+ strains.
There are growers here that can prove that you can fully express a plants genetics and make some real medicine with Light Emitting Diodes. Not sure if anyone's already using 5 watt led's mine are all three watter's.
Good luck to you whichever path you go down.

 

[hightimes4evr]

Hi man
I'm going over to LED light now. As a closet grower the heat is the main headache, and I've seen amazing results on this forum and other places using LED.

 

[oldrthandirt]

I do believe LEDs are going to be one of the better tools for indoor growers and there are lots of possiblities using them. A good example is this Search Results - Micro-Mark

I have been using LEDs with other hobbies and they are electrical efficent, getting cheap(which I really like) and anyone can build what they need. I for one want to try building my own lights for growing.