DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
This thread is for Canadians who want to economically set up a small grow that's in compliance with the upcoming (approx. spring of 2018 ) law or for current medical users. We'll cover modern LED lighting options and especially DIY LED grow lights, starting, growing methods and other practical aspects of setting up and maintaining an economical small grow in Canada. Sharing ideas, knowledge and experience is the purpose of this thread. I might have started it and will maintain it, but I don't own it. It's for all Canadians who want to set up a small indoor garden that is economical, energy efficient and effective. There are a few knowledgeable and experienced Canadian growers on this board that know where the best places to buy gear are and have approaches that might be better suited to some on this thread than those I present. I hope they will join in and consider this thread as their's too.
Tens of thousands of new growers will be starting next year, from old timers who grew years ago with gaslight like me (just kidding, I ain't that old) that are starting again to newbies. The wealthy, those with limited means and medical needs, will pay a lot less and have more control over what they consume, if they grow it. In some provinces it might be quite some time before there's available supplies and folks can make their own high quality hash and edibles quite easily and cheaply.
There are a few unique challenges Canadians face, that our American cousins don't, like the difference in the dollar, Canadian shipping and customs duty. The approach to setting up a grow depends on one's circumstances, a wealth person would do things differently than someone of limited means. Many medical patients and older folks are on fixed incomes and many don't have a lot of resources, that's where my primary focus will be.
I usually live on another thread here called Economical multi LED Chip Projects for Growing Click on the link to go there. I'm into low cost DIY lights and dealing with some cost issues that low income Canadians face.
I'll cross post some stuff from that thread here to get things going. So here is a section I wrote recently about my own small economic grow and how I approach things and solve problems. Another section follows on LED drivers and the problems that many Canadian growers face and ways around them.
An Economical Small Grow (currently set up for veg)
As I mentioned I took the summer off and I'm just getting going again with a couple of plants (OG Kush), one clone is an old mother I'm growing out and the other a clone of the same individual filling out the grid. I'm vegging with intense light 24/7 for 30% faster growth and running the environment a bit warmer and hope to have a good 3' X 7' canopy ready for flower at the end of the month. I train the plants to the outside of the grids to get the extra canopy area. I've got a 200 watt 5000k veg lamp on one end of the table and two 30" long 140 watt 5000K tube grow lights at the other over the small plant, 50K LUX on the grid! The details of the veg light(s) construction are posted earlier in this thread if ya wanna know how they were built.
The grow table is an old interior 30" x 6 1/2' door on a slightly tilted 2x4 frame to aid drainage. It's covered in a cushion floor remnant and the sides are strapping screwed to the door covered with vinyl siding channel, the drain is a piece of pipe siliconed and sealed in. The table drains into a under the bed tote and I pump the run off into a bucket and dump it. The 10 gallon air pruning grow bags sit on dollar store shower mat sections, I just removed the wooden cover slates and used the plastic, cheap and it works great. Alternately you could use plastic milk crates lined with weed barrier cloth and it will produce a one pound plant, provided other things are done right. The grids spread and flatten the canopy so the light can get at everything, putting them on the pots makes plant rotation, removal and maintenance much easier.
I'm vegging in my flower room for now, but at the end of the month the big 1.2 KW water cooled rig will cover the table, the timer will be turned back and we can rock! I haven't measured the power consumption of the new configuration yet, but I think I might take some power off the rig when the Citizen COBs go on, but it'll still be a real monster. My goal was to equal out door conditions, but you don't need that intensity for 12 straight hours, lower levels are more suitable in this situation.
The 335 watt lamp on the tripod I call the "left over lamp" and it was made awhile back from, you guessed it, left over stuff. I'll cover it perhaps in the next post. It usually covers the near end of the grow table when the canopy gets real big, I hang it across the table on the end of the water cooled lamp for extra coverage. The side lights come into play later in flower, but I might dispense with them after this grow, the power level on this garden is stupidly high for the number of plants I'm growing. I figure I should be using about 1 KW max on this kind of setup when the new COBs are installed, I probably can get my 2+ pounds with about 800 watts. Sometimes we just get carried away, and I'm still buying this shit! What's the definition of stupid again? As someone on one of these boards once said, "Pot might not be addictive, but growing it is"!
Cheap Chinese Drivers
As many of you know I live in Canada and up here things are a bit different when it comes to setting up and economical small grow and especially for buying or building grow lights. If money's no object or yer selling pounds a month on the side, then order up yer COBs, meanwell drivers and heatsinks, but be prepared to pay dearly. Not a problem if it's say a "business" investment and a few percent in increased efficiency pays dividends over time and will also allow more production from limited power resources. But let's say you just grow for yourself and others and don't sell it, or want to stay inside the new 4 plant limit law that is coming here. In addition let's say you have limited means, or have a medical issue and this is your medicine.
Until recently the price of quality COBs has been very expensive and even though there are some places selling quality COBs now for a good price, there's Canadian shipping, the difference in the dollar and customs, on top of the US purchase price. It's the same story for high voltage meanwell drivers, only shipping is worse for bulky items and heatsinks are even more expensive to ship. American builders often get free delivery and pay no sales tax, so their choices are different (and better) than those who live in other places. When you order on ebay from China, you seldom pay shipping and almost never pay duty, it's just the purchase price. I wish they sold high voltage, high powered drivers too, and if anybody knows if they do, post a link here.
I've been using a half dozen or so of each of 2 types of Chinese 3 amp 100 watt drivers for 3 years now (one type adjustable and the other non adjustable), been running them at 100% and I haven't had one fail yet (though I take care to try and cool them a bit). I didn't expect this, which is one of the reasons why I chose unenclosed drivers, so I could repair them if they screwed up, none have so far. In terms of efficiency, they are just current limited SMPS (Switch Mode Power Supplies) and almost all of those are around 90% efficient when operated at rated output and it doesn't matter much where they are made. I use them to drive pairs of 100 watt floodlight COBs and other better quality COBs, though an an adjustable version is best suited to this task. Of course using high voltage drivers and running COBs in series is best practice for a number of reasons, including: simplicity, efficiency and better power distribution. But if your in Canada the Chinese flood light drivers with free delivery are a viable alternative for the budget conscious builder.
Using enclosed drivers greatly simplifies your build, just add heatsinks, fans and a frame to mount everything on.
Ok that's it for now, post here if you have questions or answers, build ideas, products and designs that can help Canada grow to the four pound limit. If your Canadian and would like this kind of thread, give this post a like
Tens of thousands of new growers will be starting next year, from old timers who grew years ago with gaslight like me (just kidding, I ain't that old) that are starting again to newbies. The wealthy, those with limited means and medical needs, will pay a lot less and have more control over what they consume, if they grow it. In some provinces it might be quite some time before there's available supplies and folks can make their own high quality hash and edibles quite easily and cheaply.
There are a few unique challenges Canadians face, that our American cousins don't, like the difference in the dollar, Canadian shipping and customs duty. The approach to setting up a grow depends on one's circumstances, a wealth person would do things differently than someone of limited means. Many medical patients and older folks are on fixed incomes and many don't have a lot of resources, that's where my primary focus will be.
I usually live on another thread here called Economical multi LED Chip Projects for Growing Click on the link to go there. I'm into low cost DIY lights and dealing with some cost issues that low income Canadians face.
I'll cross post some stuff from that thread here to get things going. So here is a section I wrote recently about my own small economic grow and how I approach things and solve problems. Another section follows on LED drivers and the problems that many Canadian growers face and ways around them.
An Economical Small Grow (currently set up for veg)
As I mentioned I took the summer off and I'm just getting going again with a couple of plants (OG Kush), one clone is an old mother I'm growing out and the other a clone of the same individual filling out the grid. I'm vegging with intense light 24/7 for 30% faster growth and running the environment a bit warmer and hope to have a good 3' X 7' canopy ready for flower at the end of the month. I train the plants to the outside of the grids to get the extra canopy area. I've got a 200 watt 5000k veg lamp on one end of the table and two 30" long 140 watt 5000K tube grow lights at the other over the small plant, 50K LUX on the grid! The details of the veg light(s) construction are posted earlier in this thread if ya wanna know how they were built.
The grow table is an old interior 30" x 6 1/2' door on a slightly tilted 2x4 frame to aid drainage. It's covered in a cushion floor remnant and the sides are strapping screwed to the door covered with vinyl siding channel, the drain is a piece of pipe siliconed and sealed in. The table drains into a under the bed tote and I pump the run off into a bucket and dump it. The 10 gallon air pruning grow bags sit on dollar store shower mat sections, I just removed the wooden cover slates and used the plastic, cheap and it works great. Alternately you could use plastic milk crates lined with weed barrier cloth and it will produce a one pound plant, provided other things are done right. The grids spread and flatten the canopy so the light can get at everything, putting them on the pots makes plant rotation, removal and maintenance much easier.
I'm vegging in my flower room for now, but at the end of the month the big 1.2 KW water cooled rig will cover the table, the timer will be turned back and we can rock! I haven't measured the power consumption of the new configuration yet, but I think I might take some power off the rig when the Citizen COBs go on, but it'll still be a real monster. My goal was to equal out door conditions, but you don't need that intensity for 12 straight hours, lower levels are more suitable in this situation.
The 335 watt lamp on the tripod I call the "left over lamp" and it was made awhile back from, you guessed it, left over stuff. I'll cover it perhaps in the next post. It usually covers the near end of the grow table when the canopy gets real big, I hang it across the table on the end of the water cooled lamp for extra coverage. The side lights come into play later in flower, but I might dispense with them after this grow, the power level on this garden is stupidly high for the number of plants I'm growing. I figure I should be using about 1 KW max on this kind of setup when the new COBs are installed, I probably can get my 2+ pounds with about 800 watts. Sometimes we just get carried away, and I'm still buying this shit! What's the definition of stupid again? As someone on one of these boards once said, "Pot might not be addictive, but growing it is"!
Cheap Chinese Drivers
As many of you know I live in Canada and up here things are a bit different when it comes to setting up and economical small grow and especially for buying or building grow lights. If money's no object or yer selling pounds a month on the side, then order up yer COBs, meanwell drivers and heatsinks, but be prepared to pay dearly. Not a problem if it's say a "business" investment and a few percent in increased efficiency pays dividends over time and will also allow more production from limited power resources. But let's say you just grow for yourself and others and don't sell it, or want to stay inside the new 4 plant limit law that is coming here. In addition let's say you have limited means, or have a medical issue and this is your medicine.
Until recently the price of quality COBs has been very expensive and even though there are some places selling quality COBs now for a good price, there's Canadian shipping, the difference in the dollar and customs, on top of the US purchase price. It's the same story for high voltage meanwell drivers, only shipping is worse for bulky items and heatsinks are even more expensive to ship. American builders often get free delivery and pay no sales tax, so their choices are different (and better) than those who live in other places. When you order on ebay from China, you seldom pay shipping and almost never pay duty, it's just the purchase price. I wish they sold high voltage, high powered drivers too, and if anybody knows if they do, post a link here.
I've been using a half dozen or so of each of 2 types of Chinese 3 amp 100 watt drivers for 3 years now (one type adjustable and the other non adjustable), been running them at 100% and I haven't had one fail yet (though I take care to try and cool them a bit). I didn't expect this, which is one of the reasons why I chose unenclosed drivers, so I could repair them if they screwed up, none have so far. In terms of efficiency, they are just current limited SMPS (Switch Mode Power Supplies) and almost all of those are around 90% efficient when operated at rated output and it doesn't matter much where they are made. I use them to drive pairs of 100 watt floodlight COBs and other better quality COBs, though an an adjustable version is best suited to this task. Of course using high voltage drivers and running COBs in series is best practice for a number of reasons, including: simplicity, efficiency and better power distribution. But if your in Canada the Chinese flood light drivers with free delivery are a viable alternative for the budget conscious builder.
Using enclosed drivers greatly simplifies your build, just add heatsinks, fans and a frame to mount everything on.
Ok that's it for now, post here if you have questions or answers, build ideas, products and designs that can help Canada grow to the four pound limit. If your Canadian and would like this kind of thread, give this post a like
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