Replacements for CFLs?

[AKgramma]

Now that the lighting industry has quit making CFLs, is there a suitable replacement in bulb form? After my supply of CFL's runs out, I still want to use my utility clip on lights (with socket doublers) as auxiliary lighting and to grow out seedlings.

I shopped the new LED bulbs and got myself thoroughly confused, trying to find comparable specs.

 

[fanleaf]

Now that the lighting industry has quit making CFLs, is there a suitable replacement in bulb form? After my supply of CFL's runs out, I still want to use my utility clip on lights (with socket doublers) as auxiliary lighting and to grow out seedlings.

I shopped the new LED bulbs and got myself thoroughly confused, trying to find comparable specs.

CFL vs LED vs LED light bulbs

I want to get a led set up which is about 80 bucks. Some on here say CFLs are ok. I don't want to wait for a Payday so I'm thinking about using a cfl arrangement. Do they get very warm? Im only starting 2 plants but it will be in a small closet 2x5. What about the led light bulbs that are now...

www.420magazine.com

This dude has it down! Lol

 

[AKgramma]

CFL vs LED vs LED light bulbs

I want to get a led set up which is about 80 bucks. Some on here say CFLs are ok. I don't want to wait for a Payday so I'm thinking about using a cfl arrangement. Do they get very warm? Im only starting 2 plants but it will be in a small closet 2x5. What about the led light bulbs that are now...

www.420magazine.com

This dude has it down! Lol

In order to burn your plants under CFL's you almost have to touch the leaf with the bulb. Just use the hand method, when placing the CFL's. If it feels too hot on the back of your hand, it is too hot for the ladies. However, you have to get closer than 3 inches to get that hot.

I keep my MARS 300 LED's at the top of my grow unit, and raise the plant to within specified heights for each stage of life. The advantage of CFLs is you can clip them onto the pots and get great sideways penetration, if that's what you want.

But I need the equivalent in the new LED bulbs they are putting out. A brand, what wavelength, etc.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Now that the lighting industry has quit making CFLs

I must be behind on the news. I thought it was just GE.

is there a suitable replacement in bulb form? After my supply of CFL's runs out, I still want to use my utility clip on lights (with socket doublers) as auxiliary lighting and to grow out seedlings.

I bought a couple of the "whatever was cheapest that day" brand. I quickly saw that I needed to remove the translucent half-globe end, so I grabbed one of the lights and my utility knife - and almost skinned my thumb . I miss my Dremel tool. I once (*slowly*) cut my car's exhaust with one of those and a few cutoff wheels, lol; one would go through these bulbs in a few seconds. The covers act as diffusers but they must block a noticeable percentage of the gross light output.

I was thinking that - if I could get those end covers off - four of them, aimed downward (base up) towards the plants, would be pretty good at four per square foot. Maybe two per square foot for maintenance/stasis and three for active vegetative growth and/or clone production, IDK. I think they're 14-watt bulbs.

I shopped the new LED bulbs and got myself thoroughly confused, trying to find comparable specs.

One thing I noticed right away was that the little SOBs aren't cheap . I don't think there's going to be a great deal of experimentation because LED components are getting (more or less) affordable. A person will require somewhere between several and lots of those screw-in LED bulbs. Those Samsung "LED strips" can be had for $18.84 each (or $24.89 for more powerful but slightly less efficient ones), and they're approximately 1" x 24" . They require power supplies (drivers), but depending on the choice of power supply, etc. one PS can drive multiple strips. Many of them are easy to adjust (making one's lighting "dimmable"). At reasonable power levels, they don't have any special cooling requirements, just some kind of heat sink (or a smaller one with a little fan, I suppose). Everything is basically "on board" already, so assembling one of these setups is slightly less complicated than knocking together the first electric iron would have been. The initial buy-in is a little higher, but useful lifetime ought to be much longer - and this kind of setup can be added to along the way. I'm not really a fan of side-lighting (unless it's a vertical HID setup), but if you are, a few of these things along the walls would provide a great deal of it.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/samsung-semiconductor-inc/SL-B8V2N80LAWW/1510-2446-ND/8536579

I've seen "direct from China" COBs and copies in the general style of the above, with the power supply being on board along with everything else. They seem to be amazingly cheap. But I've seen a few threads here about them, and they're poor performers / inefficient right out of the gate and tend to quickly fail.

The screw-in bulbs seem... okay, I guess - and, as mentioned, I bought some to experiment with. But I hadn't planned to face self-mutilation just to get the covers off, and when I figure out how to do so I will likely end up with a couple unidirectional LEDs that are reasonably bright for their wattage, but which won't rank well on the photons-per-kilowatt list, which is often to be expected when buying cheap equipment. However, it turns out that they aren't exactly stellar in terms of the initial cost versus the photons they produce, either. I really only gain the ability to buy one or two at a time. But we can buy one LED component at a time and end up with an adjustable multi-purpose light setup of whatever power output we need now, with ample provision for future expansion and even the ability to "turn it down" if desired. Could be useful if growing year round in a location where the grow space is significantly warmer in Summer, or if one wants more power for flowering photoperiodic plants @ 12 hours per day but wants to be able to reduce their output up to 50% when running them at 18 hours per day for vegetative growth (or flowering autoflowering strains @ 18 or more hours per day), et cetera.

I think your reflectors might end up being more useful with screw-in LED bulbs when they're used with only one bulb per reflector. But that's just a guess. Either way, I suggest you try getting the end off one and see how that affects its output.

 

[AKgramma]

Still the question remains: is there an equivalent LED screw-in bulb to a 23W CFL bulb? And do the LEDs come in different wavelengths analogous to Daylight and Warm white? Someday I'm going to run out of 23W CFLS. I need to find a replacement.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Yeah, look for something that lists a color temperature (or CCT) of 6,500K for vegetative growth and ≤3,000K for flowering, same as CFLs. If purchasing one set for both phases, look for 3,500K or prioritize for flowering spectrum. If a number isn't stated, use the same guidelines as CFLs. Wattage... "In theory," lol. They're be more efficient in gross output but these lights are still meant for use by the good old Mark I Eyeball, Human - and the discrete spectral output of the individual LEDs means they can end up with even more of the bulbs' output in those wavelengths which we perceive as being brighter but which are less useful in general to plants than they could with bulbs in which the output is the result of a particular gas mix combined with a certain coating on the inner glass that blocks/inhibits some portions of the spectrum whilst facilitating/enhancing others and the entire output is, in practical terms, just one thing to be modified as a unit. If I'm making sense. Probably not, still trying to get over this Martian Saber-Toothed Bird Flu or whatever it was. This might be the first day in... a while that I spent more than five hours fully conscious, lol. It has been quite a number of days of get up to do the cat chores, make sure I have Kleenax, empty trash can and bladder, wash up, fire up the computer and load a bunch of threads into my web browser... and head back to bed shortly afterward. Must be 50 or 60, lol, should just close them all and start over and hello, I'm TorturedSoul, and I ramble . Apologies!

What I was getting at was that they might be more efficient in absolute terms, but give up much of that advantage (over CFLs) by also being more efficiently specialized for our eyes - in other words, a 14-watt, 9-watt, whatever wattage screw-in LED might appear as bright to us as a 23-watt CFL, it's still only 14-watts, 9-watts, et cetera worth of photons, and people have already figured out that the average LED wattage recommendations are not that much different than the traditional "for best results" HID wattage recommendations. 50 watts per square foot, maybe down to 38 or so watts per square foot if the source is efficient in terms of PAR. Get by with up to 50% less for vegetative growth and when flowering autoflowering strains because you're typically running your lights ≥18 hours per day and, therefore, maintain a proper DLI.

Once these autoflower seeds progress to something beyond seedlings (I'll have a journal up at some point in the next several days, look for the link to appear in my .SIG if you're interested or wait a month or so and give me a poke to remind me), I can set up a small, white, temporary space and see what one, two, or possibly three of the bulbs I bought are capable of. If/when I have something to report, I'll do so and will include brand/model information. Maybe we could get enough people to try a couple/few/many(?) for something or other and then post anything that they were able to observe or measure to end up with a kind of informal database, IDK.

By the way, the primary lighting will be with a pair of our sponsor Mars-Hydro's SP-150 model of LED products. They use the same kind of technology (as far as I know) as the component setup I rambled about earlier. They're rated at approximately 134 watts @ 120VAC (each). I have a Kill A Watt device and will measure their exact power consumption initially, after a few hours, at some point midway through the grow, and at the end. These have no provisions for dimming, they're fixed-output. Their more powerful SP-250s can be dimmed, but cost more. These are selling for $138.99. So not the cheapest thing on the market, but pretty reasonable for decent quality LED technology at just over a dollar per watt. Especially since a discount code can generally be obtained from the sponsor, plus their quantity discounts start at only two units (-4% when purchasing two, -6% when purchasing three, possibly going up (down ) from there, IDK).

Still "a bit much" for someone who is surviving on minimal income and not deriving income from one's gardening, I know. (Believe me, lol, I know...) But, again, the components are cheaper and the assembly isn't... the amount of assembly that can be performed by the average end-user is minimal, lol. Connect power device to light device, attach light device to heatsink and/or fan gizmo, hang above plants, plug in, go eat a sandwich. There are YouTube videos, existing threads, and posting a new thread might get you a guru to walk you through the (very few) steps.

So I am wondering... As you stated, you'll eventually have to replace your CFLs. How much do you expect that to cost, and - realizing that it shouldn't hit you all at once - how much time do you expect to have before you need to replace it (or, if more realistically, before you have to replace one or at most a few bulbs) ? I don't expect the residential LED bulbs to get much cheaper soon, because people will be switching over from CFLs (and the few incandescent holdouts will eventually switch over from those) for a while yet.

The LED technology has... I won't state "plateaued," because I don't know if that's the proper term. But there's efficient and powerful technology that's already mainstream and being manufactured by the proverbial shed load, and it doesn't seem to still carry much or any "earlier adopter" price premium. And, while they might come up with something that's 100 times better tomorrow... they won't. Near-future improvements are going to be incremental instead of exponential, IMHO. That combination makes now a good time to buy into the technology (again, in my opinion). If someone decides to start saving up for and piecing together an inexpensive but efficient and relatively powerful light setup over (a reasonable amount of) time, I don't think they'll need to worry about "getting left behind" during the time it takes them to collect the parts and assemble their light. What they end up with will still be a capable light. And it should last a long time, as long as it is not overpowered in relation to its ability to shed heat, and fed reasonably "clean" electricity. I'd guess easily five or more years, on average.

As my upcoming journal's lighting is of the same general technology as the Samsung surface-mount(?) stuff I rambled about, it might be worth a glance (at some point before you replace all those CFL bulbs with... another bunch of bulbs ) to get an idea about what I was trying to convey. I think the technology is good in terms of indoor grow lighting and what today's market has to offer, whether it's sold fully assembled by a company, sold in "kit form" (Phillip's screwdriver supplied by customer) by a company, or the end-user follows a recipe and sources the few components from whichever supplier(s) is/are the cheapest at the time of purchase(s), be they forum sponsors, .huge electronics supply houses like DigiKey... or the nearest hardware store. These days it really seems to be more a question of price versus convenience rather than price versus skill / ability level. You're welcome to see how mine are performing in their little(+/-) space. The first run with them is going to be all autoflowers, so the lights will be run at 18 hours per day. I have an exhaust fan available that I will be installing in the tent, but don't have any real climate control to speak of (roof doesn't leak <knocks on wood!>, lol). That might help you judge what your heat burden would be if you were using something like them instead of what you're currently using.

I don't know what your total wattage level is, but the pair of these SP-150s are a combined ~268 watts, so not a huge amount. These might be (probably are) a little more efficient that your current setup, but I'm assuming that you'll either want to maintain about the same gross wattage or perhaps maintain the same yields but spend less on electricity each month. So about the same gross wattage or a little less might be a good target if you end up being interested. With so many of the power supply (driver) options having adjustable output, one could build a setup that matched their current power consumption, then adjust it downward from there to suit. If you take a look and do end up being interested, and in both the technology and the products from that sponsor...

Look for their forum representative to introduce another new product either tonight or within the next few days that is supposed to be even cheaper than the SP-150 and looks like it might be the same general type of product from the "spy photo" (lol) that I recently saw of it. She's giving one of them away, actually. If I win it, it'll definitely make some kind of appearance in the grow journal. I've never used a Mars-Hydro LED before, so it would be pretty awesome to be able to do an all M-H lighting grow (especially since it's happening in a M-H grow tent).

It's... ah... currently down to a two-way "runoff" between dr.h00k and myself. But as sometimes happens in life, it's looking like this could end up becoming a three-way . Anyway, if you'd like to vote in the final (by "liking" someone's post), that bit begins here:

Mars Hydro New LED Grow Light Give Away

The winner if you don't like to like everyone, if you trust me, I can help pick one, haha! But I would prefer not to take away your vote rights. :ganjamon: i do think the suggestion of a final poll may be fairest lol i liked one answer only but i know lots have liked multiple, and lots of...

www.420magazine.com

I'm guessing that it'll get shown off via forum thread, and probably used as part of a grow journal regardless of who wins it.

 

[AKgramma]

ummmmmm say WHAT? TMI, TS: TMI.

I'm doing less as I get older. Down to one very slow-growing Auto Fem Jock Horror under 4 CFL's and one Mars 300 LED panel.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Sorry, that was a bit of a wander through the woods.

The last one always seems to finish s l o w l y , lol.

 

[AKgramma]

oooooo! My FAQ got promoted to a topic in Grow Lighting!