Lighting & Lumens

[MajoR_TokE]

Don't make me ask to see how many people have been using HID's for years without a knock at the door.

 

[videoman40]

The government has enough to deal with, without worrying about somebody growing a few plants. They cant spend enough money on terrorism, where they gonna come up with money for a small pot grow? Nor would they bother.
On another note, it is nice to see the "lighting god" basically admit that hps grows better buds, makes you wonder why he keeps recommending other wise? maybe he is a lighting salesman in disguise? lol

 

[MajoR_TokE]

Because they're not generally interested in solo home growers growing for their own consumption, they're mainly after the 'factories' and larger scale operatives. Its not worth their time going after home growers. That does NOT mean they can't see the heat signatures being given off by HPS and HID lighting though, however small it might be.

They cannot from fluorescents - my point, that puts HID users at a much greater risk of detection than CFL users. Your choice...

I think we all know it's the large scale grow ops they are after. That's why all the guys growing small (a nice personal stach) of AAA buds with HID's have nothing to worry about.

 

[babygro]

On another note, it is nice to see the "lighting god" basically admit that hps grows better buds, makes you wonder why he keeps recommending other wise? maybe he is a lighting salesman in disguise? lol

How did I know you'd have to stick your nose in again?

I've never tried to argue that fluorescents produce better results than HPS systems in flowering, that's something I've maintained all the way along.

What I have said, repeatedly on here and other threads and it's a simple enough concept that's been repeated countless times and you still can't seem to get your stupid thick skull around it, is that HPS is NOT the best solution for vegetative growth and it is NOT necessarily the right solution for everyone - everyones needs are different and for some fluorescents compact or otherwise can provide the right solution.

makes you wonder why he keeps recommending other wise?

You really are very obtuse aren't you? Try actually understanding what people write instead of just reading it. The reason I recommend fluorescents is because in many situations they're the right solution.

 

[videoman40]

Hey dude, not for nothing but....

I'll comment where ever I please. The idea that someone should buy several lights for a beginning grow is NOT in that persons best interest, it is only serving you to make everyone listen to your useless rhetoric.
Have you not yet grasped the fact that money is almost always a factor for a new grower? 2nd to cost, the next thing on a new growers mind is.....you guessed it you simplistic shit, YEILD!
See they want to spend the least, and get the biggest yeild.

They are not the ideal solution in "many" situations, they are simply a solution in some situations.

Not for nothing, but out of sheer curiosity, what other web site kicked your ass out, to bring you here?

 

[splifman]

Don't want to kill all the love in here, but I wondering what your opinions were on the high output T5 tubes. After doing research for the past few days on the high wattage cfls that are available in the US, I've found that these T5 bulbs seem to have more lumen output per watt than the cfls.

According to the manufacturers who make these cfls they put out about 64 to 70 lumens per watt. The T5's put out between 82 and 92 lumens per watt. I'm thinking I might replace my 400 W MH conversion, in my 3' x 3' veg room, with about 10 2' T5's (20,000 lumens).

I came very close to buying one or two high wattage cfls but these T5's seem to be a better bang for your buck; and one would think you can distribute the lumen output a lot better over several plants.

What do you guys think?

 

[nongreenthumb]

Just on this note about it being easier to get busted with a hps system, the fact that the envirolite puts off a bare minimum heat and a hps puts out quite a high amount of heat i can't disagree on.

How many of these busts though involve someone getting done for 2 or 3 plants, how many lights would you have to be running for it to really be noticeable from all the other properties.

How well does this detection camera get through if you had your grow in a basement, with 6 hps running on air cooled supernova reflectors and only being run during daylight hours.

Most of the busts I have read about usually involve other outside influences and stupidity like not having adequate odour control, having a property that looks like where someone grows, permantly closed curtains at windows and other signs that could lead the outside world to believe that your growing herb. If you have a good front for where you are and it just looks like you live there with whoever and everything outside the house looks normal and you dont run lots of hid systems at night your chances for getting busted are as minimalised as they can be

 

[nongreenthumb]

Don't want to kill all the love in here, but I wondering what your opinions were on the high output T5 tubes. After doing research for the past few days on the high wattage cfls that are available in the US, I've found that these T5 bulbs seem to have more lumen output per watt than the cfls.

According to the manufacturers who make these cfls they put out about 64 to 70 lumens per watt. The T5's put out between 82 and 92 lumens per watt. I'm thinking I might replace my 400 W MH conversion, in my 3' x 3' veg room, with about 10 2' T5's (20,000 lumens).

I came very close to buying one or two high wattage cfls but these T5's seem to be a better bang for your buck; and one would think you can distribute the lumen output a lot better over several plants.

What do you guys think?

Correct me if I am wrong but would having say two lights that output 1000 lumens each that anything under would be receiving 1000 lumens, the idea that having those two lights and saying that it was 2000 lumens seems wrong, you would get better light saturation, so that those 1000 lumens were hitting that plant were hitting it from more angles and penetrating better but not actaully putting 2000 lumens on any one spot.

If your outside and the sun is blazing, a real nice day, would you produce more lumens on one spot by shining a torch on something so the idea that having 10 1500 lumens bulbs means the plant is getting 15000 lumens isounds crazy surely all it can do is produce 1500 lumens in more places.

 

[splifman]

Correct me if I am wrong but would having say two lights that output 1000 lumens each that anything under would be receiving 1000 lumens, the idea that having those two lights and saying that it was 2000 lumens seems wrong, you would get better light saturation, so that those 1000 lumens were hitting that plant were hitting it from more angles and penetrating better but not actaully putting 2000 lumens on any one spot.

If your outside and the sun is blazing, a real nice day, would you produce more lumens on one spot by shining a torch on something so the idea that having 10 1500 lumens bulbs means the plant is getting 15000 lumens isounds crazy surely all it can do is produce 1500 lumens in more places.

I'm not sure I totally understand. But let me ellaborate on what I am trying to do here. I want to take my 400 w HPS (with MH conversion in it) and use it elsewhere. Therefore, I need a light to replace it in the veg room. I have come to learn that the 400 w MH was overkill in a 3x3 grow space, almost twice what I need (veg only needs 2000 lumens per square foot). So I want a light that outputs less and therefore uses even less power.

Initially I liked the idea of two 125 w cfls giving me about 16,000 lumens to work with. However, I came to realize that this might be misleading because the plants directly below each light will be exposed to a large percentage of those 8000 lumens (per light), and the plants further away that cannot be directly under the light could possibly be exposed to less than 2000 lumens.

If I went with two 200 W cfls, i wouldn't worry about this because the increased lumen output could probably make up for the distance between the light and the plants that were not directly under it. This would mean that the plants directly under the light would be getting overkill and 400 watts is almost like getting another 400w HID, which I want to avoid.

I guess i just figured that with 8 to 10 24 w 2' T5's (2000 lumens per bulb) every plant would be very close to the light and would be getting near or around 2000 lumens. I guess the point is that the light is better distributed and used more efficiently. At least that is what makes sense to me. Keep in mind this is only my veg room and the heavy duty shit is in the flower room.

I think having one point light source only works well when the light being produced is overkill, kind of like the sun. Whatever is directly under the point source gets the most light, even if it can't use all of it. But because there is so much light, whatever is off to the side, even though it's not getting as much light, is still getting enough.
To use the energy most efficiently it seems like having a 'plane' source makes more sense. Not too mention that the efficiency with regard to lumens/watt is better than the cfl.

 

[GreenGro]

Theoretically, the exposure to UVB radiation should be able to be replicated by fluorescent UVB bulbs similar to those used in reptile aquariums, but not enough study has been made of this to confirm or deny it.

The set up I am just putting together is 2 x 125w enviro in a 1 sqM envirolite reflector for vegging then 4 x 125w enviro in a 1 sqM reflector for flowering. Each set of lights will be over 1 sqM garden. These lights will give 48'000 Lm but as they will only be a couple of inches from the plant tops using the inverse square law theoretically there should be much more Lm output at the plant tops. This should give me plenty of Lm output, I will try this grow out and then for my subsequent grow I will try it with some UVB bulbs to see if there is any difference.

* this is of course so long as the UVB bulbs are not ridiculously expensive.

Does anyone know does a UVB bulb give out a lot of heat?

 

[babygro]

I will try this grow out and then for my subsequent grow I will try it with some UVB bulbs to see if there is any difference.

* this is of course so long as the UVB bulbs are not ridiculously expensive.

Does anyone know does a UVB bulb give out a lot of heat?

That all sounds pretty reasonable.

UVB fluorescents aren't that expensive, they're about the same price as equivalent T5 tubes would be wattage for wattage - £5-30 pretty much. There are the obvious health considerations to bear i mind, wearing protective eyewear, avoiding prolonged skin exposure etc. In my mind, the best way to use UVB tubes would be to have them on a separate timer system to the main lights and simply switch them off when you go to do anything in the grow area, that way you get no exposure to the UVB radiation. Most of the tubes don't output anything like the kind of UVB levels you'd find in the midday sun near the equator, even still, best not to put health at risk.

In that webpage link I gave, there's a table of uvb radiation levels recorded in Hoyleton, Ill. on a sunny day in June, the lowest UVB reading was 12µw/cm2 at 7am and the highest 269µw/cm2 at 1pm, I think the average uvb radiation µw/cm2 for the day is about 110-120. I'd imagine that is the kind of level you'd be looking at achieving and very few uvb fluorescents output that kind of level of uvb at the distances you'd need to use it at, the average is about 60µw/cm2 at about 8 inches distance, so you'd probably need two 2 foot tubes to achieve 120µw/cm2.

The only time you'd need to use the uvb radiation is in the last 4 weeks of 12/12 flowering, when the glandular stalked trichomes are in full development.

The best way to test this yourself would be to grow a mother plant, take two or three clones from it and grow these out without uvb radiation and dry and cure the buds. Then take another two or three clones, which are exact replicas of the mother plant and grow these in exactly the same way as the first two, but this time give them doseages of uvb radiation in the last 4 weeks of flowering, dry and cure the buds. Then smoke both sets of buds and do a comparison between the potency of the ones grown without uvb and the ones grown with it.

According to the grow guru Ed Rosenthal it's supposed to make a difference -

"In a controlled experiment, high quality marijuana plants were grown under identical conditions, except that some were provided with UV light while others didn't receive it. The buds from plants receiving the UVB light had higher percentages of THC."

The reason for cannabinoids

 

[babygro]

According to the manufacturers who make these cfls they put out about 64 to 70 lumens per watt. The T5's put out between 82 and 92 lumens per watt. I'm thinking I might replace my 400 W MH conversion, in my 3' x 3' veg room, with about 10 2' T5's (20,000 lumens).

I came very close to buying one or two high wattage cfls but these T5's seem to be a better bang for your buck; and one would think you can distribute the lumen output a lot better over several plants.

For your own situation it looks like T5's are probably the best way to go, mainly because you have the sq footage to accomodate them. In smaller spaces, CFL's are a good solution because they condense down a lot of those T5 tubes into a compact package than simply don't need the square footage that T5 tubes would.

Personally I think T5's are hard to beat for their flexibility, low running cost, good lumen output and customisable colour spectrums. In a bank of 4 or 8 T5's you can mix and match the colour spectrums to get the exact mix of PAR spectrum you want for whatever you're doing. For rooting and developing clones you might want a higher mix of red in with the blue, for vegetative growth you might want more blue in the spectrum. You can also customise the wattage outputs to get exactly the right numer of lumens for what you want to do with them - obviously for rooting clones and developing seedlings, you need less light than you would if you were vegging 4 week old plants.

T5 systems used in sog setup, where you keep a couple of mother plants in one section of a cabinet and above run T5's to root clones, before transferring to a flowering room with small HPS and efficient reflector can be one of the most efficient 'perpetual harvest' systems you can have that will produce more oz's of bud per month than people running much larger 1000w systems.

For rooting clones, keeping mothers and vegging, the efficiency of T5's are hard to beat in my opinion.

 

[splifman]

For your own situation it looks like T5's are probably the best way to go, mainly because you have the sq footage to accomodate them. In smaller spaces, CFL's are a good solution because they condense down a lot of those T5 tubes into a compact package than simply don't need the square footage that T5 tubes would ............ For rooting clones, keeping mothers and vegging, the efficiency of T5's are hard to beat in my opinion.

Thanks Babygro. I appreciate the knowledgable input; that pretty much seals the deal for me.

 

[shiva]

Going back to that newspaper clipping, fantastic read mate...

particularly the bit that gives the quote form the police chief... something along the lines of 'Cannabis cultivation is a huge problem and needs to be nipped in the bud'

Did he realise the irony in his own comment? lol Class. Absolutely Brilliant.

 

[babygro]

Did he realise the irony in his own comment? lol Class. Absolutely Brilliant.

Goes to show the old bill do have a sense of humour after all

What makes me laugh is the way many of the clippings I've read, the press nearly always refer to weed as Super Strong Skunk! Everyones always growing 'Super Strong Skunk' and people always get high on Super Strong Skunk! Just goes to show how stupid and ignorant these people are.

What really infuriates me is the general level of ignorance many of the people show and demonstrate. The case of the clergyman, who plans to petition the government to re-classify Cannabis to class b from class c on the back of a murder he says was fueled by the perpetrators being high on Super Strong Skunk! Don't these assholes know that just a few tokes of potent herb can make changing a television program over with the remote control pretty difficult, let alone going out finding and shooting someone!

It's the general ignorance displayed by the vast majority of these idiots that oppose Cannabis use that annoys me the most. There's an excuse for lack of knowledge - there's no excuse for ignorance and stupidity - and these people ARE ignorant and stupid.

Unfortunately the status quo will never change whilst this dogmatic attitude to a substance the vast majority of it's opponents have never tried continues to be perpetuated.

 

[babygro]

Thanks Babygro. I appreciate the knowledgable input; that pretty much seals the deal for me.

No worries Spliff, lets us know what you end up getting and how you get on with it.

 

[VictorVIcious]

Well... I did some research too. Not about the CFLs in the 200 watt range. I checked the new T5's. Now please bear with me for a minute. They make a 4' long 8Tube T5 fixture. As babygro has stated you can get bulbs in red spectrum and blue spectrum for flowering and vegging. The T5 flourescent bulb put out 55 watts of light. 440 watts. Ever notice that canpoy effect with the hid lights. No mater how good the reflector is reported to be you always get plants growing in to the center. Thats why we all give all of our plants 1/4 turn everyday, Right?
Videoman look at your pictures using the T5's. Even light spread over the whole area, even growth. I noticed that right off. SO I went to my little Hydro shop. Peter the owners son was there. And he is the one I had talked to about buying two-600watt hids.
THe reason you can't find as much information on the advantages of the T5;s is simple, the Hydro shops have thier money tied up in HID's. AFter the research he has done he is convinced that you will get more usable light from the T5 fixture than you could possibly get from a 600 watt HID light. The fixture with 8 bulbs, your choice of red or blue, is $309.00. Guess what I'll be buying.

 

[GreenGro]

Most of the tubes don't output anything like the kind of UVB levels you'd find in the midday sun near the equator, even still, best not to put health at risk.

dry and cure the buds. Then smoke both sets of buds and do a comparison between the potency of the ones grown without uvb and the ones grown with it.

haha I like the irony of that but I know what you mean, pointless taking needless risks.

Yea I think I'll have a try of it tho - not really gonna be in a position to compare the buds to hps buds tho as I have never grown any, just going down the cfl route as I don't fancy even taking a little chance of being caught, fuck living in a cell for a few months.

 

[splifman]

Well... I did some research too. Not about the CFLs in the 200 watt range. I checked the new T5's. Now please bear with me for a minute. They make a 4' long 8Tube T5 fixture. As babygro has stated you can get bulbs in red spectrum and blue spectrum for flowering and vegging. The T5 flourescent bulb put out 55 watts of light. 440 watts. Ever notice that canpoy effect with the hid lights. No mater how good the reflector is reported to be you always get plants growing in to the center. Thats why we all give all of our plants 1/4 turn everyday, Right?
Videoman look at your pictures using the T5's. Even light spread over the whole area, even growth. I noticed that right off. SO I went to my little Hydro shop. Peter the owners son was there. And he is the one I had talked to about buying two-600watt hids.
THe reason you can't find as much information on the advantages of the T5;s is simple, the Hydro shops have thier money tied up in HID's. AFter the research he has done he is convinced that you will get more usable light from the T5 fixture than you could possibly get from a 600 watt HID light. The fixture with 8 bulbs, your choice of red or blue, is $309.00. Guess what I'll be buying.

Glad to hear it. I will go for the same one except due to my setup I must go with the 2' 8 bulb fixture instead. The 4' tubes actually output 92 lumens per watt where as the 2' ones put out 82 lumens per watt, which is still very good. Wish I could go with the four footers, but ohh well.
BTW, $309 is a great price. HTGSUPPLY sells it for a little cheaper, but once you factor in shipping it works out to about the same. I wish my local hydro shop wasn't such a fuckin rip off. Let me know how it works out for you.

 

[shiva]

Goes to show the old bill do have a sense of humour after all

What makes me laugh is the way many of the clippings I've read, the press nearly always refer to weed as Super Strong Skunk! Everyones always growing 'Super Strong Skunk' and people always get high on Super Strong Skunk! Just goes to show how stupid and ignorant these people are.

What really infuriates me is the general level of ignorance many of the people show and demonstrate. The case of the clergyman, who plans to petition the government to re-classify Cannabis to class b from class c on the back of a murder he says was fueled by the perpetrators being high on Super Strong Skunk! Don't these assholes know that just a few tokes of potent herb can make changing a television program over with the remote control pretty difficult, let alone going out finding and shooting someone!

It's the general ignorance displayed by the vast majority of these idiots that oppose Cannabis use that annoys me the most. There's an excuse for lack of knowledge - there's no excuse for ignorance and stupidity - and these people ARE ignorant and stupid.

Unfortunately the status quo will never change whilst this dogmatic attitude to a substance the vast majority of it's opponents have never tried continues to be perpetuated.

I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, these people do have a tendency to assume that anyone who smokes 'super strong skunk' is basically as thick as two short planks. They seem to completely avoid confrontation with anyone who has a positive opinion about cannabis and can argue it's case on an intellectual level.

Their examples of people commiting such acts whilst 'high' are always associated with too much drink. They seem to disregard the fact that it is a herb also used in medicine and can bring a great deal of pain relief to those suffering.

Who knows, maybe one day, someone with a brain will see reason.