help calculate good area
- Thread starter duff420
- Start date
tusseltussel
Well-Known Member
400w will do 3x3 nicely so 9x9 would be good and if you had some thing to move the lights around so the mh is always moving around and use 12x12 square pots with like 9x9=81 plants with prolly 1-1.5 oz each, not too bad ehh
ststepen420
Well-Known Member
get two grow tents, one with the MH for mothers and clones vegging and rooting and the other for the 2 400s flowering
ststepen420
Well-Known Member
im using a berdroom as well with 2 tents in it and i get 2 1/2 to 3 pounds every 2 months.
tusseltussel
Well-Known Member
you could do a lst in a 5 gal bucket under each light... what are your goals????
Old in the Way
Well-Known Member
This is correct....3x3=9s.f. Works out to be 45w/ft....good
Whoa...we went from 9sq per lamp to 81 square with three??......Not going to work (9-400w lights to cover 81 sq.ft)
hhhmmmm.....81 plants @ 1-1.5 oz ea=5-7.5lbs......
hahahahahaNot a friggin chance.....
Put the 400s in a row covering an 8' long by 3' wide area.....24 quare feet......slap 96 clones that have 7-10 days veg time on them (single harvest SoG) and you might pull 2-3lbs.....if you have some serious skills
Thats .66-1g per watt......thats about the best you are going to do if all environmental conditions are maintained at optimal levels......
This means:
Temps
Humidity
Nutes
Ph
Light
Watering...your doing soil, right?
It will look something like this
Typically SoG is the most efficient use of space and light.....without going vertical
Bear*rack Olama
Well-Known Member
or you can go with smaller containers and end up with something like this as well....
Old in the Way
Well-Known Member
Exactly....the point is a SoG.....single lollipops like bear*rack is the best way to maximize yield.....
Bear*rack Olama
Well-Known Member
Exactly....the point is a SoG.....single lollipops like bear*rack is the best way to maximize yield.....
not my grow, one from a thread over @ CannabisCulture or Icmag I cant remember.... I wont show a group of my own plants here. Dont feel safe enough to do so with this many members of a forum...
I often use it as an example as root binding being a myth....
People still try not to believe it even if you explain it to them from a scientific aspect and show them that it obviously works....
However its not the only way to max out yield. If you cant feed plants right dont even attempt small containers because your yields will be devastated because of so. However it is HANDS DOWN the hassle free way of raising plants....it can even be setup to be watered automatically if conditions need be, how can you beat that?
tusseltussel
Well-Known Member
srry i was high and my math was off it would be a 6x6 area with lights on a spinner so the mh does not sit in one space so it would be 36 plants so you would be more like 1-1.5x 36= 36-54 oz. srry for the confusion i was talking about setting em up in a square configuration i was smokin hash all day yesterday and gonna do the same today.... oh and yes i thought we were talking about 4 lights not three which you would get a hps conversion buld for the mh...... i thought he had 4 lights srry for the confusionThis is correct....3x3=9s.f. Works out to be 45w/ft....good
Whoa...we went from 9sq per lamp to 81 square with three??......Not going to work (9-400w lights to cover 81 sq.ft)
hhhmmmm.....81 plants @ 1-1.5 oz ea=5-7.5lbs......
Not a friggin chance.....
Put the 400s in a row covering an 8' long by 3' wide area.....24 quare feet......slap 96 clones that have 7-10 days veg time on them (single harvest SoG) and you might pull 2-3lbs.....if you have some serious skills
Thats .66-1g per watt......thats about the best you are going to do if all environmental conditions are maintained at optimal levels......
This means:
Temps
Humidity
Nutes
Ph
Light
Watering...your doing soil, right?
It will look something like this
Typically SoG is the most efficient use of space and light.....without going vertical
3x8 or 3x9 would be correct srry
Hairy Bob
Well-Known Member
Aiming for 50w/sq ft gives you a 24sq ft area for 1200w of light, so a 6x4 or 5x5 would be ideal.
I think a sun circle is the best way to go, but it'd be expensive if your only gonna use it for one grow. If you got a place to use it at your new house then it'd pay for itself in a few grows, your girls should grow better if they get an even distribution of the different spectrums from your lights.
I think a sun circle is the best way to go, but it'd be expensive if your only gonna use it for one grow. If you got a place to use it at your new house then it'd pay for itself in a few grows, your girls should grow better if they get an even distribution of the different spectrums from your lights.
tusseltussel
Well-Known Member
aiming for 5-7000 lumens psf........ lumens is how light is mesured not watts which is how much power they use
Bear*rack Olama
Well-Known Member
for the price of any lightmovers other than the hydratrack models @ cost of investing...Ill stick to an osscilating fan with a swing arm made on it to pull some strings rigged up to swing the light back and forth b4 Ill cough up that kinda dough. LOL
Light it measured in lumens correct tussel, Honestyly I think this area would do best with a cheapo lighmover invested in it and running several lights from that....
Light it measured in lumens correct tussel, Honestyly I think this area would do best with a cheapo lighmover invested in it and running several lights from that....
Old in the Way
Well-Known Member
your right lumens is how light is measured....for humans
The human eye has a peak sensitivity in the yellow-green region, around 550 nanometers. This is the "optic yellow" colour used for highly visible signs and objects. Plants, on the other hand, respond more effectively to red light and to blue light, the peak being in the red region at around 630 nanometers.
Measuring Light for Humans: Lumens and Lux
First, how do we measure light quantity for humans? The obvious way is based on how bright the source appears and how "well" the eye sees under the light. Since the human eye is particularly sensitive to yellow light, more weight is given to the yellow region of the spectrum and the contributions from blue and red light are largely discounted. This is the basis for rating the total amount of light emitted by a source in lumens.
The light emitted from the source is then distributed over the area to be illuminated. The illumination is measured in "lux", a measurement of how many lumens falls on each square meter of surface. An illumination of 1000 lux implies that 1000 lumens are falling on each square meter of surface. Similarly, "foot-candles" is the term for the measure of how many lumens are falling on each square foot of surface.
Clearly, both lumens and lux (or foot-candles) refer specifically to human vision and not to the way plants see light.
How then should the rating for plant lighting be accomplished? There are two basic approaches to develop this rating: measuring energy or counting photons.
PAR Watts for Plants
Watts is an objective measure of energy being used or emitted by a lamp each second. Energy itself is measured in joules, and 1 joule per second is called a watt. A 100 watt incandescent bulb uses up 100 joules of electrical energy every second. How much light energy is it generating? About 6 joules per second or 6 watts, but the efficiency of the lamp is only 6%, a rather dismal number. The rest of the energy is dissipated mainly as heat. Modern discharge lamps like high pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide convert (typically) 30% to 40% of the electrical energy into light. They are significantly more efficient than incandescent bulbs.
Since plants use energy between 400 and 700 nanometers and light in this region is called Photosynthetically Active Radiation or PAR, we could measure the total amount of energy emitted per second in this region and call it PAR watts. This is an objective measure in contrast to lumens which is a subjective measure since it is based on the response of the subjects (humans). PAR watts directly indicates how much light energy is available for plants to use in photosynthesis.
The output of a 400 watt incandescent bulb is about 25 watts of light, a 400 watt metal halide bulb emits about 140 watts of light. If PAR is considered to correspond more or less to the visible region, then a 400 watt metal halide lamp provides about 140 watts of PAR. A 400 watt HPS lamps has less PAR, typically 120 to 128 watts, but because the light is yellow it is rated at higher lumens (for the human eye).
"Illumination" for plants is measured in PAR watts per square meter. There is no specific name for this unit but it is referred to as "irradiance" and written, for example, as 25 watts/square meter or 25 w/m2.
Photons
Another means of measuring light quantity for plant growth involves the understanding that light is always emitted or absorbed in discrete packets called "photons." These packets or photons are the minimum units of energy transactions involving light. For example, if a certain photosynthetic reaction occurs through absorption of one photon of light, then it is sensible to determine how many photons are falling on the plant each second. Also, since only photons in the PAR region of the spectrum are active in creating photosynthesis, it makes sense to limit the count to PAR photons. A lamp could be rated on how many actual tiny photons it is emitting each second. At present no lamp manufacturer does this rating.
Instead, plant biologists and researchers prefer to talk of the flux of photons falling each second on a surface. This is the basis of PPF PAR with PPF standing for Photosynthetic Photon Flux, a process which actually counts the number of photons falling per second on one square meter of surface. Since photons are very small, the count represents a great number of photons per second, but the number does provide a meaningful comparison.
Another measure appropriate for plant growth, called YPF PAR or Yield Photon Flux, takes into account not only the photons but also how effectively they are used by the plant. Since red light (or red photons) are used more effectively to induce a photosynthesis reaction, YPF PAR gives more weight to red photons based on the plant sensitivity curve.
Since photons are very small packets of energy, rather than referring to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons, scientists conventionally use the figure "1.7 micro moles of photons" designated by the symbol "µmol." A µmol stands for 6 x 1017 photons; 1 mole stands for 6 x 1023 photons. Irradiance (or illumination) is therefore measured in watts per square meter or in micro moles (of photons) per square meter per second, abbreviated as µmol.m-2.s-1
The unit "einstein" is sometimes used to refer to one mole per square meter per second. It means that each second a 1 square meter of surface has 6 x 1023 photons falling on it. Irradiance levels for plant growth can therefore be measured in micro-einsteins or in PAR watts/sq. meter.
These three measures of photosynthetically active radiation, PAR watts per square meter, PPF PAR and YPF PAR are all legitimate, although different, ways of measuring the light output of lamps for plant growth. They do not involve the human eye response curve which is irrelevant for plants. Since plant response does "spill out" beyond the 400 nanometer and 700 nanometer boundaries, some researchers refer to the 350 750 nanometer region as the PAR region. Using this expanded region will lead to mildly inflated PAR ratings compared to the more conservative approach in this discussion. However, the difference is small.
I don't know why people still insist on using lumens for plants......but anyway maybe this will help shed some light on things.....if anyone out there managed to read the entire post
tusseltussel
Well-Known Member
i read it and i know nothing more now than i did b4 so no lummens no actual watts how do we find the proper lighting and the most a plant can absorbe... i dnt know im goin with good ol lummens i know them and ive had a room with just 3000 psf and buds were fluffy i had a room with 5500 and nuggets were dense and dank ive had a room with 9000 lummmens and ther wasnt much diffrnce than the 5500 maybe a lil more penatration but thats it ive had several grow rooms over the past 8 years and i go with lumens it may not be right by your standards but i know you can grow marijuana with amazing results under 5-7000 lumens. so untill i see a publication of what light how much light and a formula to figure out how much a plant absorbs lummens is the standard, ask the guy at the local hydro shop what the par watts are of a 600 watt light, whats he gonna say, im not sure but probably we mesure our light output in lumens. how do you mesure your light. why do we use a lumen meter in a greenhouse if lumens dnt matteryour right lumens is how light is measured....for humans
The human eye has a peak sensitivity in the yellow-green region, around 550 nanometers. This is the "optic yellow" colour used for highly visible signs and objects. Plants, on the other hand, respond more effectively to red light and to blue light, the peak being in the red region at around 630 nanometers.
Measuring Light for Humans: Lumens and Lux
First, how do we measure light quantity for humans? The obvious way is based on how bright the source appears and how "well" the eye sees under the light. Since the human eye is particularly sensitive to yellow light, more weight is given to the yellow region of the spectrum and the contributions from blue and red light are largely discounted. This is the basis for rating the total amount of light emitted by a source in lumens.
The light emitted from the source is then distributed over the area to be illuminated. The illumination is measured in "lux", a measurement of how many lumens falls on each square meter of surface. An illumination of 1000 lux implies that 1000 lumens are falling on each square meter of surface. Similarly, "foot-candles" is the term for the measure of how many lumens are falling on each square foot of surface.
Clearly, both lumens and lux (or foot-candles) refer specifically to human vision and not to the way plants see light.
How then should the rating for plant lighting be accomplished? There are two basic approaches to develop this rating: measuring energy or counting photons.
PAR Watts for Plants
Watts is an objective measure of energy being used or emitted by a lamp each second. Energy itself is measured in joules, and 1 joule per second is called a watt. A 100 watt incandescent bulb uses up 100 joules of electrical energy every second. How much light energy is it generating? About 6 joules per second or 6 watts, but the efficiency of the lamp is only 6%, a rather dismal number. The rest of the energy is dissipated mainly as heat. Modern discharge lamps like high pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide convert (typically) 30% to 40% of the electrical energy into light. They are significantly more efficient than incandescent bulbs.
Since plants use energy between 400 and 700 nanometers and light in this region is called Photosynthetically Active Radiation or PAR, we could measure the total amount of energy emitted per second in this region and call it PAR watts. This is an objective measure in contrast to lumens which is a subjective measure since it is based on the response of the subjects (humans). PAR watts directly indicates how much light energy is available for plants to use in photosynthesis.
The output of a 400 watt incandescent bulb is about 25 watts of light, a 400 watt metal halide bulb emits about 140 watts of light. If PAR is considered to correspond more or less to the visible region, then a 400 watt metal halide lamp provides about 140 watts of PAR. A 400 watt HPS lamps has less PAR, typically 120 to 128 watts, but because the light is yellow it is rated at higher lumens (for the human eye).
"Illumination" for plants is measured in PAR watts per square meter. There is no specific name for this unit but it is referred to as "irradiance" and written, for example, as 25 watts/square meter or 25 w/m2.
Photons
Another means of measuring light quantity for plant growth involves the understanding that light is always emitted or absorbed in discrete packets called "photons." These packets or photons are the minimum units of energy transactions involving light. For example, if a certain photosynthetic reaction occurs through absorption of one photon of light, then it is sensible to determine how many photons are falling on the plant each second. Also, since only photons in the PAR region of the spectrum are active in creating photosynthesis, it makes sense to limit the count to PAR photons. A lamp could be rated on how many actual tiny photons it is emitting each second. At present no lamp manufacturer does this rating.
Instead, plant biologists and researchers prefer to talk of the flux of photons falling each second on a surface. This is the basis of PPF PAR with PPF standing for Photosynthetic Photon Flux, a process which actually counts the number of photons falling per second on one square meter of surface. Since photons are very small, the count represents a great number of photons per second, but the number does provide a meaningful comparison.
Another measure appropriate for plant growth, called YPF PAR or Yield Photon Flux, takes into account not only the photons but also how effectively they are used by the plant. Since red light (or red photons) are used more effectively to induce a photosynthesis reaction, YPF PAR gives more weight to red photons based on the plant sensitivity curve.
Since photons are very small packets of energy, rather than referring to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons, scientists conventionally use the figure "1.7 micro moles of photons" designated by the symbol "µmol." A µmol stands for 6 x 1017 photons; 1 mole stands for 6 x 1023 photons. Irradiance (or illumination) is therefore measured in watts per square meter or in micro moles (of photons) per square meter per second, abbreviated as µmol.m-2.s-1
The unit "einstein" is sometimes used to refer to one mole per square meter per second. It means that each second a 1 square meter of surface has 6 x 1023 photons falling on it. Irradiance levels for plant growth can therefore be measured in micro-einsteins or in PAR watts/sq. meter.
These three measures of photosynthetically active radiation, PAR watts per square meter, PPF PAR and YPF PAR are all legitimate, although different, ways of measuring the light output of lamps for plant growth. They do not involve the human eye response curve which is irrelevant for plants. Since plant response does "spill out" beyond the 400 nanometer and 700 nanometer boundaries, some researchers refer to the 350 750 nanometer region as the PAR region. Using this expanded region will lead to mildly inflated PAR ratings compared to the more conservative approach in this discussion. However, the difference is small.
I don't know why people still insist on using lumens for plants......but anyway maybe this will help shed some light on things.....if anyone out there managed to read the entire post
seems like if par was how it was supposed to be mesured than thats what wouuld be listed on the bulb and the millions of cultivation\horticulture books
and again srry for the erlier confusion