Two LED lights in 5x5?

[ratmaster2k]

I will be growing in a 5x5 Secret Jardin Dark Room

Since I can't get the VIPARSPECTRA TC1350 1350W shipped to my location, I was wondering if I should get two VIPARSPECTRA V600 LED lights in my 5x5? Or is there any other solution you recommend? Two lamps but smaller? Two lamps but bigger? I really like the idea of full cycle, lower heat, lower cost LED, so HPS is not what i'm looking for.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Four of them might be roughly comparable to a 1,000-watt HPS, and work well in your 25 square foot tent @ 43 watts per square foot. But then you'd be running 1,076 watts and producing more heat than with the aforementioned HPS - and that's not counting the power supplies.

That's just my opinion - and I haven't used those LED panels, merely read the specifications and looked at the diagrams/graphics from the links you posted. i'm guessing you'd be hanging them (during the flowering phase) at around 16" distance from the canopy, which wouldn't really give you 2.5'x2.5' coverage - but you might get enough benefit from the multiple-light effect to make do with the four. Especially if you plan do grow auto-flowering strains, I suppose (since they don't require ~12 hours of uninterrupted darkness per day).

 

[ratmaster2k]

Thanks for the reply, I'm starting to reconsider HPS, if that is something people recommend more, especially in a 5x5? Can I get good yield with 1 1000w hps? I guess it also depends how many plants I plan on growing, but I don't know how many I should put in a 5x5, are there any recommendation/standars? English is not my main language

 

[TorturedSoul]

Seems like many still use a 1,000-watt HPS in a 5'x5' space. I'd consider an air-cooled reflector to be a necessity. In a perfect world, you'd have that on a separate ventilation run from your tent's main ventilation setup; bringing separate air from outside of the tent, passing it through the HPS reflector, and move it out of the tent with an exhaust fan. That air would be pretty warm - but wouldn't carry the scent of cannabis, therefore, you would not need a carbon filter for it. You would still need one for your tent's ventilation setup, of course, but you'd be moving less - and cooler - air through it, so the carbon filter should both work more efficiently and last longer. You probably wouldn't need such a strong fan for that run as you would if you were trying to ventilate, remove heat, and remove odor all on the same run.

Depending on the brand/model of air-coooled reflector, you might be able to find an "insulated cover" product for it, which would further separate the light's heat from the general tent environment. I'd look for an air-cooled reflector that produced as near to a square footprint as possible while still keeping the bulb in a horizontal orientation. With luck, you can get your light's footprint to match your 5'x5' grow space while the light is hanging at a decent height. If you do, and find that there is a "hot spot" directly underneath the bulb - which is certainly possible with such a strong light source - then there are products that are sometimes referred to as heat/light "spreaders." They are simple metal things that clip onto the socket and hang right under the bulb, blocking (actually, reflecting) a portion of the light that would otherwise come straight down from the bulb.

Locate the ballast outside of the tent, of course, to remove that source of heat from the grow.

You can get good yield with this type of light, for sure. It not only produces a huge amount of gross light, it also does so while having a good penetrative ability - so your (useful) canopy can be somewhat deeper than with lower-powered lights. I am not intending to disparage LED grow light panels, not even the cheaper ones. But it does appear that finding one that is actually capable of matching a 1,000-watt HID setup is... exceedingly rare, lol. Ive seen advertisements that stated a given product "matches a 1,000-watt HPS" - but what they mean, usually, is that it does so right under the panel, often at a height that means a rather small footprint; raise it up enough to even approach the same size footprint that a 1,000-watt HPS naturally produces, and the grower has lost the light intensity.

Another option would be two 600-watt HPS lights, hung somewhat lower, in (again, air-cooled) reflectors that produce rectangular light footprints, with the aim of having the two lights completely cover your 5'x5' space. This... would probably be "pushing it," lol; you would need to remove even more heat - but you should have enough light to produce happy harvests of even 100% sativa photoperiodic (in other words, not auto-flowering plants) strains. Possibly overkill for some.

Or you could go with four pre-built LED grow light panels, ones that produce a more or less square light footprint and consuming in the neighborhood of 250 watts (actual) each.

Another option is some kind of kit, using LED COBs. I've read that people are loving these kind of setups with one COB per square foot, each consuming 50 watts. For your space, that would equate to 25 COBs consuming a total of 1,250 watts. If you had some kind of dimmer for this kind of setup, you could run them at 50 watts per if you were in the middle of a flowering cycle, growing something like an African equatorial sativa (for example) - but still be able to reduce the power / heat / light output when growing strains that did not require as much light, for the vegetative phase, et cetera. This could, arguably, also be considered overkill for some - but a dimmer would make it much less so (and much more versatile). I guess that a person could build a setup such as this in stages as and when finances permit; a person doing so might even end up deciding that he/she could get by with less than 25 COBs and still meet their specific needs.

By the way, most of the above is way too rich for my ways and means, lol. I would have to make do with less. You could, too - you just wouldn't be able to really maximize your space, IMHO.

In case I haven't made clear already, these are only my opinions. I'm hoping that other people will also post their opinions, experiences, and knowledge.

 

[ratmaster2k]

This is helpful, what about this one, maybe two of those? It says it's perfect for 4x4

 

[Mars Hydro]

For 5x5 area, you will also need around 600~800 true wattage LED grow lights as well. Not the advertising ones. So the cost might still not go down if you wanna get good yields.

 

[ratmaster2k]

Okay, so if I need 600-800 true wattage, can I get two 418w LED and that would be 836 wattage?

If that is true, then two VIPARSPECTRA-900W would work right? That has avg. draw power of 418w

 

[Mars Hydro]

Okay, so if I need 600-800 true wattage, can I get two 418w LED and that would be 836 wattage?

If that is true, then two VIPARSPECTRA-900W would work right? That has avg. draw power of 418w

I believe so.

 

[Stunned]

I plan to use 2 X 260 watt QB fixtures in my 5X5 and am hoping this will be enough for 4 plants