Lumen`s Question
- Thread starter bobmaf
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bobmaf
Well-Known Member
ya lost me there they are 5 foot floresant t8 strip lights which are usually found in a kitchen white bulb
ReinventinBudz
Well-Known Member
lumens work like this. add up all the lumens you have, then divide by sq feet. minimum for budding small yields is 3000 lumens per square foot. ideal amount of lumens per sq foot is around 7000-10,000 lumens per square foot for good large yields. i personally have 7,700 lumens per square foot in my veg room. and have 6,877 lumens per square foot in my flower room. my flower room holds twice as many plants with twic the amount of square footage than my veg (i run in cycles of one month).
oh but the trick is this, you can only get as high of lumens as you have from a single bulb. i mean to say yes you have over 9,000 per square foot assuming you did a box of one foot by one foot. now you don't actually get 9,000 lumens, i think the thing is that if you take two bulbs of equal strength that they don't add the lumens together, the lumens now have more lux. so you add your lux (which is kinda like the ability to give out lumens) but your lumens output is still 4600 tops. just now you have more lux, so you have 4600 lumens in more places. a few people on this board have stated that if you get a light meter you will see two bulbs don't make twice the amount of lumens, they make twice the amount of lux.
so the trick is to do the math of the lumens per square foot, then if that number is higher than your highest single bulb then instead of having 9,000 lumens as in the example above, you have 4,600 lumens per square foot. so idealy you want to utilize this in the best way possible, ie give tons of lux twards the lower parts of the plants. since your colas are getting it directly from the light, why make the bottoms of the plants suffer if you can't add up your lumens for bud growth? you see what i am saying?
so in your particular situation i would say to hang the lights verticaly from cieling to floor instead of wall to wall direction. this should adequately distribute your lumens across the entire plant, while still saving space you don't have to divide your lumens by that many square feet. ie box that is 1 ft by 1 ft with two 4 ft bulbs hanging from top to bottom to spread the lumens accross the entire plant. instead of hanging it in a box that is 4 ft by 1 ft with the 4 foot lights hanging horizontal because now you have to divide by 4 square feet instead of 1.
hope this helps
oh but the trick is this, you can only get as high of lumens as you have from a single bulb. i mean to say yes you have over 9,000 per square foot assuming you did a box of one foot by one foot. now you don't actually get 9,000 lumens, i think the thing is that if you take two bulbs of equal strength that they don't add the lumens together, the lumens now have more lux. so you add your lux (which is kinda like the ability to give out lumens) but your lumens output is still 4600 tops. just now you have more lux, so you have 4600 lumens in more places. a few people on this board have stated that if you get a light meter you will see two bulbs don't make twice the amount of lumens, they make twice the amount of lux.
so the trick is to do the math of the lumens per square foot, then if that number is higher than your highest single bulb then instead of having 9,000 lumens as in the example above, you have 4,600 lumens per square foot. so idealy you want to utilize this in the best way possible, ie give tons of lux twards the lower parts of the plants. since your colas are getting it directly from the light, why make the bottoms of the plants suffer if you can't add up your lumens for bud growth? you see what i am saying?
so in your particular situation i would say to hang the lights verticaly from cieling to floor instead of wall to wall direction. this should adequately distribute your lumens across the entire plant, while still saving space you don't have to divide your lumens by that many square feet. ie box that is 1 ft by 1 ft with two 4 ft bulbs hanging from top to bottom to spread the lumens accross the entire plant. instead of hanging it in a box that is 4 ft by 1 ft with the 4 foot lights hanging horizontal because now you have to divide by 4 square feet instead of 1.
hope this helps
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ReinventinBudz
Well-Known Member
yes make sure your around 6500K for veg and 3000k for flowering. k stands for kelvin, and sometimes the street names are cool white for 6500 kelvin and warm white for 3000 kelving get it? cool cuz its blue and warm cuz its red. plants use more reds in the flower and more blues in the veg. this is very important, as stated the plants NEED this.
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Which is why I could not give two shits less about lumens, I never even look at them, its not even a consideration. Watts, spectrum, and PAR(if available) are the only thing I concern myself with.
ReinventinBudz
Well-Known Member
well watts are a little tricky just because there are different bulbs that do different amounts of watts per lumens. lumens are somewhat important. but don't focus too much on them like the dude above me said. make sure you have enough and that's that. of course if you can add then add, more light the better. but you will get ify yields if you don't pay attention to what spectrums the bulbs are at, or what kelvin they are rated at. the plants absorb like 20 times more red in flower and 20 times more blue in veg. so this is VERY IMPORTNANT!
Agreed, to extents. But in my humble opinion Watts are the intensity at which the light source pushes out the spectrum to the plants and its penetrating power. According to my research, lumens where put into place as a point of reference for humans(brightness), which based on the human visual curve of how we see light is based mainly on the 500-650 nanometer range(+/-). But based on the curve at which plants see light, it is alot different and covers a much wider range than what humans perceive. That said, I have problems putting great emphasis on lumens since the scale it is based on is so much smaller than the way a plant perceives light, I feel if you focus on lumens alone, you are missing a very substantial portion of what a plant needs. While lumens can be used as an easy point of reference, I choose not to simply because that just adds another factor to worry about when there are more important factors to consider than lumens alone and can be done without the slightest consideration of a lumen. I personally just remove that part of the equation, since its just a small piece of the equation.
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As long as the kelvin temp is 5000k+ or around < 475nm.
bobmaf
Well-Known Member
ok cheers
so far i have 766 lumens per plant i think lol i aint too good with maths lol
but they would grow better than my last lot 4 plants under 4 100w/21w energy savers bayonet bulbs lol but i am going to buy some more lights this week altho my bro offerd me a ballast bulb which is really really bright
Is it bright as far as your eyes are concerned, or as far as a plant is concerned?
In my box I have eight primary lights. For veg I use 4 - 23watt 5000k and 4 - 40watt 2700k bulbs. For flower I use 2 - 23watt 5000k and 6 - 40watt 2700k. And my yields are acceptable to me. Last harvest was two plants and filled 2.5 mason jars. As far as how many lumens there are, I could not tell you. Never looked to see.
ReinventinBudz
Well-Known Member
10 plants no way, you can get smallish average yields by doing about 4 plants in a 1 foot by 4 foot box with mylar using both those.
and to be honest, not sure what your grow setup is like, you might want to make different rooms or areas for different stages of the plants life. i mean if you grew 4 plants on veeg in a 4x1 you would might want to make more 4x1's for flowering. me personally i broke mine into three segments (i know sog is four but mine is a little different). i do 1 month (instead of sog's 2 weeks) in each cycle but my first month i veg the plant. then move two plants over to my flower room and leave them under a 150w hps with two big ass cfls. then move then in a month (only about a foot over) under a 250w hps with two cfls.
this may be something you want to consider as making smaller areas makes it to where you can save more light. attached is how i am building my grow room right now. hope this helps. see this makes it to where basically i am growing 6 plants at once, but i only have 2 in each segment. oh my setup is a dwc. just fyi
l8r
and to be honest, not sure what your grow setup is like, you might want to make different rooms or areas for different stages of the plants life. i mean if you grew 4 plants on veeg in a 4x1 you would might want to make more 4x1's for flowering. me personally i broke mine into three segments (i know sog is four but mine is a little different). i do 1 month (instead of sog's 2 weeks) in each cycle but my first month i veg the plant. then move two plants over to my flower room and leave them under a 150w hps with two big ass cfls. then move then in a month (only about a foot over) under a 250w hps with two cfls.
this may be something you want to consider as making smaller areas makes it to where you can save more light. attached is how i am building my grow room right now. hope this helps. see this makes it to where basically i am growing 6 plants at once, but i only have 2 in each segment. oh my setup is a dwc. just fyi
l8r
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Ok, do you see my point about lumens? Granted, 2 58watt bulbs would not be enough as it is for 4 plants. You say it blinds you, and obviously it is not very bright to the plant with the yield you get. If you upgrade to at least 12 bulbs 40watt min for the reds and 23watt min for the blues and I will be willing to bet that you will see significant changes.
bobmaf
Well-Known Member
i need 2 grow alot of plants as its that dry in my area for weed thats why i have 10 plants i will be starting another grow in 3 weeks time
i need 2 get some more floras i will go and buy 2 maybe 4 more lights this week