Which lights should i buy?

[Dagdu420]

would suggest lighting 1/4 that area after first harvest light the rest

I had the same thought in my mind but then i realized that running my HVAC just for 5-10 plant's isn't economical.

 

[SchmoeJoe]

I had the same thought in my mind but then i realized that running my HVAC just for 5-10 plant's isn't economical.

Lighting a 10x15 for 5-10 plants isn't economical unless you're doing a perpetual with a 2-3 month veg.

 

[Dagdu420]

Buy nice or buy twice. Do like you're saying and only buy the number of lights you can afford to buy without skimping on quality. Especially since the question was what's the best light for growing plants and not what's the best light for under 200$.

There's a few things I'm not clear on here. A 150 square feet is a lot of space to fill with ideal lighting conditions. Don't bother if this project won't at least cover its own cost of operation. It's hard to imagine anyone growing in that much space without planning on selling at least a portion of each crop so if your goal is the best lighting I'd focus on the lights that will give the best yield and most competitive quality.

As far as the heat, you can't light that much space without a considerable amount of heat regardless of what lighting you go with. You may keep you're overhead down a bit on the utility bill but the initial build out would be ridiculous if you want to get quality led's. With 20' ceilings you can use stratification. If you keep your lights close to the ceilings you can exhaust your heat up high and still be able to cool the garden space without having to cool the heat from the lights and without exhausting the cooled air. You would have to run more lights to compensate for the inverse square proportion law so your bill goes up for that anyway but there really is no way to effectively light that much space without laying out a chunk of change on the build out and every month on the utilities.

I was thinking about purchasing something which would give me at least a 3x3ft footprint area. and place them accordingly.

 

[SchmoeJoe]

I was thinking about purchasing something which would give me at least a 3x3ft footprint area. and place them accordingly.

So 3 lights by 5 lights. At 170 those 15 lights would cost you about 3k. Assuming that's you're budget I'd start off shopping around for 6 de hps or 630 cmh systems and try to get them for around 500. If you shop around and tell the shops you deal with what you have and what you're trying to do you can usually find someone who will work with you.

The AC/DE covers a 5x5. Fully set up they'd be around 600 each but 4 of them would cover all but the last 5x10 and give you the option to air cool and leave you some money to cover expenses until the next expansion. The non-air cooled version cost 100 less. If you went that route you could get six and cover the full 10x15.

 

[HydroRed]

HID with air cooled hoods. Should be no issue with hvac if you vent the heat properly -certainly in a room of that size. Lower start up cost than that of LED. With budget and self proclaimed skill set, OP isnt lighting very much of that large space with $2000 worth of reputable prefab COB LED.

 

[SchmoeJoe]

HID with air cooled hoods. Should be no issue with hvac if you vent the heat properly -certainly in a room of that size. Lower start up cost than that of LED. With budget and self proclaimed skill set, OP isnt lighting very much of that large space with $2000 worth of reputable prefab COB LED.

Agreed. The AC/DE let's you cool the reflector without effecting performance and they have the best spread and coverage of any hood. Then there's the DE 630/945/1000 watt cmh bulbs coming out.

 

[Dagdu420]

So 3 lights by 5 lights. At 170 those 15 lights would cost you about 3k. Assuming that's you're budget I'd start off shopping around for 6 de hps or 630 cmh systems and try to get them for around 500. If you shop around and tell the shops you deal with what you have and what you're trying to do you can usually find someone who will work with you.

The AC/DE covers a 5x5. Fully set up they'd be around 600 each but 4 of them would cover all but the last 5x10 and give you the option to air cool and leave you some money to cover expenses until the next expansion. The non-air cooled version cost 100 less. If you went that route you could get six and cover the full 10x15.

how much difference it would make in PAR/Lux values if i use Single ended, Vaccumed HPS insted of Double ended Nitrogen filled bulbs?

 

[Dynamo626]

Agreed. The AC/DE let's you cool the reflector without effecting performance and they have the best spread and coverage of any hood. Then there's the DE 630/945/1000 watt cmh bulbs coming out.

945 have been out because they connect 3 ceramic globes they are extremely fragle. from what I red just running the power through them tears them up and lamp life is very very short compared to the 3-4 years you get out of other de lamps. phillips has an 840w se cmh lamp. hortilux is coming out with a 1000w ceramic hps ment to be run on a hid ballast. it has a much better spectrium than regular hps but it isn't run on a lfsw ballast so it dosnt get the power efficiency that a cmh does

 

[Dynamo626]

how much difference it would make in PAR/Lux values if i use Single ended, Vaccumed HPS insted of Double ended Nitrogen filled bulbs?

props! at my store I specialize in lighting and I did not know de lamps were nitrogen filled. what I do know is a de hps lamp puts out almost 2.2 umole per watt so better than single hps but less than standard blurple led which is almost at standard led output which is close to 2.4 umole/watt/sec.

 

[ANC]

You are working about it backwards, It may turn out that one of the HPS options may be a better fit.
Room needs cooling, How much of the floor space are you covering with light.
I have a room with 12x4 and 9x4 zones. That uses about 45 Luminus COBS, and a driver for every 3 of those. The budget might be tight.
If you do your first run in winter in a non-sealed setup, you may be able to scoop in enough cold air from outdoors to not need an air conditioner, but you would need to plow that first grow's money straight back into buying an aircon that can keep out with the output of your lights.

 

[Dagdu420]

Okay so i took the exact measurement's of my room today and the total area under cultivation will be 12 x 3 ft & 12 x 3 ft rows. Like two straight row's.

 

[Dagdu420]

and after doing some calculations the HPS are not economical for me, just in one cycle without HPS i'll save around 1200-1400$ on my electricity bills. ( 4 months )

 

[ANC]

We total out at 3.8kW of COBs in that space at max flowering levels.

I would set up 2 rows of COBS running lengthwise over the beds (the light spread is quite wide), One every 1 to 1.5' apart. Draw it out and do the math. We run 3 rows over 4' beds.

 

[coreywebster]

Okay so i took the exact measurement's of my room today and the total area under cultivation will be 12 x 3 ft & 12 x 3 ft rows. Like two straight row's.

8x 260w Quantum board kits , 1 per 3x3 area.

$325 per kit at HLG $2600
$350 per kit at Growers lights.com $2800

Ask them if they will do you a discount.

Bit more than your budget but it'll be worth it.

 

[SchmoeJoe]

how much difference it would make in PAR/Lux values if i use Single ended, Vaccumed HPS insted of Double ended Nitrogen filled bulbs?

The biggest difference is running a good digital ballast. Growers House also did a 10 ballast comparison. It showed that most good digital ballasts produced as much as 30% more light with single ended bulbs. There are also SE versions of the AC/DC hood.