4x4 light for $1,000

I have added these to my room for the last 2 weeks........ they can add up to around 27% more resin if used properly in the end.

Ok well he said they turn purple because of the uv but my light has no uv....but ssh how far down do you dim in veg?

I don't dim them at all........... full power the entire grow. I do just adjust the height which accomplishes the same thing. In veg, I'm at 36-42 inches and 18-20 inches in flowering.

UpstateRecGrower said:

They won’t be able to take 1500, you’ll end up with low quality fluffy stuff. 1200 is even pushing it, aim for a 1000 max..

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im up and over 1500 all the time... u got ur co2 and comnditions right photosythesis is still increasing upwards of 2,000

SSHZ said:

I don't dim them at all........... full power the entire grow. I do just adjust the height which accomplishes the same thing. In veg, I'm at 36-42 inches and 18-20 inches in flowering.

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why not adjust the power of the lights instead of the distance... ur paying for a lot of photons ur not using by doing that... and u have to offset every watt put into the grow room with offsetting wattage to counter it for condisionts.. every watt is roughly 3 btus u need to counter w more wattage from ur AC...

for instance right now i got some plants about 8" ft from the light at about 1200ppfd at about 175w per light... this is cool
my other plants are oughly 14" inches away at about 1200 ppfd at about 280 watts per lights... this is not ideal but its what i have to do at the moment.. over 10 plants that puts another 1000 watts into the grow room just by having the plants 6" higher than the others... thats about another 3,000 btus u need to deal with... so not only are u paying for an extra 1,000 watts u could cut out by jsut moving the lights closer... u also got to pay for all the power to offset the extra heat ur adding that u really dont need to

the goal should be to get the right amount of photons to the canopy w the least amount of power possible

I dont even know how you can give your plant 1200 ppfd in veg I guess it varies by strain

Patriots781 said:

I dont even know how you can give your plant 1200 ppfd in veg I guess it varies by strain

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1200 ppfd in veg is like a 75 DLI.. thats too much light.... and u kinda need to work ur way up to 1000-1200 ppfd and im not usually abe to get that high before i got to flip to flower... i got hydro 8 gallon pots so there is only so much time i can veg them befoe the root system would get too big durring flower.

ideally i will usually try to work my way up to 900ppfd for the flip to flower... thats a dli of roughly 60... then i try to work my way up from 900ppfd to 1500ppfd (dli of roughly 65) by week 4 of flower and hold that from weeks 4-7 or so... then ill lower them a little for the last week or two...

again this is with co2 supplimentation.... at ambient co2 i basically max out at 700-900 ppfd.... i have had more success with that than pushing them to 1000-1100ppfd...

"why not adjust the power of the lights instead of the distance... ur paying for a lot of photons ur not using by doing that... and u have to offset every watt put into the grow room with offsetting wattage to counter it for condisionts.. every watt is roughly 3 btus u need to counter w more wattage from ur AC..."

At 7 cents per kWh, it's almost meaningless towards my electric bill. I don't use or need A/C or co2 either, and my GPW is still killing all you guys. You guys can throw all the numbers around you want, but don't spout off unless you're hitting over 50 oz in a 4 x4 area, cause I'm above that without all those additions.

SSHZ said:

"why not adjust the power of the lights instead of the distance... ur paying for a lot of photons ur not using by doing that... and u have to offset every watt put into the grow room with offsetting wattage to counter it for condisionts.. every watt is roughly 3 btus u need to counter w more wattage from ur AC..."

At 7 cents per kWh, it's almost meaningless towards my electric bill. I don't use or need A/C or co2 either, and my GPW is still killing all you guys. You guys can throw all the numbers around you want, but don't spout off unless you're hitting over 50 oz in a 4 x4 area, cause I'm above that without all those additions.

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im sorry are u saying ur beating the people supplimenting co2... w ambient co2. i dont care who you are and how good you are.... thats not happening. its basic physics.

if ur so good that ur pulling 4 pounds out of ur 4x4.... ud probable be pulling 6 w co2... idk why u would leave those returns on the table

I'm saying just that........or at least 98% of them. What I lose by not having co2, I make up in growing skill, choosing heavy yielding strains, dialing in the grow with exact temps and humidity and proper fertilizer ratio's and such. There are limits to what the space can produce too, and at some point, you just won't get passed a certain number no matter what you do.

It also helps I have great air flow thru the room with negative pressure. My whole point of this is additional co2 is not necessary too produce a high yielding room. I'm not saying it would not help the growth rates, I'm saying other things are a lot more important to heavy production and I think my grows prove that.

JonCreighton said:

im up and over 1500 all the time... u got ur co2 and comnditions right photosythesis is still increasing upwards of 2,000

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I doubt that.. what light and how many watts per sq/ft?

UpstateRecGrower said:

I doubt that.. what light and how many watts per sq/ft?

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i run a ton of HLG 96v2s pread out all over the place... 2 per plant usually.. the wattage is a dance of distance and such based on the size of the plant and such. cages cause a problem getting the lights as close as id want them.. so idk exactly watts per sf ... use an appogee sensor for the readings... right now the bigger plants the drier are at 250 watts. the smaller plants the drivers are at 175 watts.. as the plants get bigger the lights need to be pulled away and turned up some so the difference in photons isnt so much different from top of plant to bottoms of plant.. but when they are small ill just run 1 light about 2 inches above them extrmemely low. but i guess id say if u take an 8x8 room i rtun anwayere from 400 watts - 2500 watts throught the corse of the grow... heres one rrom so u get an idea of what im talking about kinda.

Dude, if you're running CO2, hell.. even if you're not (you can dim), you should seriously consider the Grower's Choice ROI 720E. I posted *here* about it. I am in the process of revamping my 4x4, and just happened to hang this light at 4" from the floor. For shits and giggs, I decided to PAR test at 48" with my Apogee.... yeah. You'll just have to see.

Also, GrowGeneration created their own fixture that is based on the ROI 720E called the ION 720, and they are having a pre-sale right now. I believe you can get it for $850 or so right now. 2.6 umol/J, 720W true watts (puts out like 1800 PPF), 47" x 47" 8-bar LED fixture with Osram LEDs, dimmable (knob or via an external controller). It's a great fixture for the price, I just liked the spectrum and the sheer awesomeness of the ROI. I almost bought the Gavita 1700e, and I am very glad I didn't. Would have been a waste of money.

JonCreighton said:

i run a ton of HLG 96v2s pread out all over the place... 2 per plant usually.. the wattage is a dance of distance and such based on the size of the plant and such. cages cause a problem getting the lights as close as id want them.. so idk exactly watts per sf ... use an appogee sensor for the readings... right now the bigger plants the drier are at 250 watts. the smaller plants the drivers are at 175 watts.. as the plants get bigger the lights need to be pulled away and turned up some so the difference in photons isnt so much different from top of plant to bottoms of plant.. but when they are small ill just run 1 light about 2 inches above them extrmemely low. but i guess id say if u take an 8x8 room i rtun anwayere from 400 watts - 2500 watts throught the corse of the grow... heres one rrom so u get an idea of what im talking about kinda.

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Ok.. so you’d have to be over 60 watts a square foot to achieve 1500ppfd, your sensors are either wrong or you’re reading a hot spot..

UpstateRecGrower said:

Ok.. so you’d have to be over 60 watts a square foot to achieve 1500ppfd, your sensors are either wrong or you’re reading a hot spot..

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the system is built so the hot spots are directly over the plants. the meter is as close as i can get it without covering canopy. it is set at the canopy of the shortest plant of that strain. im going into week two of flower. making my way up to 1500 for weeks 3.5-7ish...

im not sure how u came up w that math. one time i carried the 1500ppfd the whole grow. big mistake lol roots were powering out of the bucket.. but when the plants are small, no cages in the way, not growing too fast... id just have 1 light about 2" above the plant. u can get to 1500ppfd at like 50 watts per light. the room is probable at like 200ppfd. but the plant is at 1500ppfd.

idk about other people but it really does make adifference for me. if ur running a closed system w co2 u want ur temps high 80-85... that means ur humidity has to be up around 70%. when the plants are really small they arnt realising very much water into the room. so u really have to keep nthe AC from kicking on and pulling out the little humnididty you have.

JonCreighton said:

im not sure how u came up w that math.

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The highest umol/j according the HLG on those is 2.6.., so 2.6 x 60 watts per sq/ft x 1 meter - 10% loss (its probably more) =1500ppfd. So you're really running 60 watts per sq/ft? That's pretty impressive if you are..

UpstateRecGrower said:

The highest umol/j according the HLG on those is 2.6.., so 2.6 x 60 watts per sq/ft x 1 meter - 10% loss (its probably more) =1500ppfd. So you're really running 60 watts per sq/ft? That's pretty impressive if you are..

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cool..im not sure to be honest...its hard for me to work within that forula without taking distance from canopy into account. its is by far the biggest weighting factor in the PPFD equation.

when it comes to lighting i think placment of photons is much mroe important than efficnecy of the light... thats why i went w a million 96v2s... im not really sure if it can be factored into an equaltion to evaluate lights. or in any simple manor..

for exmaple all the lights are off in the fower rooms so i cant test the v2s but im working on an HLG blue spec at the moment and jst put a 150 driver on it. just tested it w the appogee sensor...

150 w = 1" 7,000 ppfd
2" 4,000 ppfd
6" 2,500 ppfd
12" 1,200 ppfd
18" 700 ppfd

theres a 10-1 diffferce in ppfd from 1" to 18"... that kinda why i implore people to focus less on the efficency of the light and more on the enegerring of the grow area. being able to adjust the placement of photons is maybe more important than the total amount of photons because as u can see canopy/light distance has a much greater impact than efficiency of light. its easier to place the photons directly where they need to go than it is to just add photons to the room... thats kinda why i chimed in here i think. cheers

JonCreighton said:

the system is built so the hot spots are directly over the plants. the meter is as close as i can get it without covering canopy. it is set at the canopy of the shortest plant of that strain. im going into week two of flower. making my way up to 1500 for weeks 3.5-7ish...

im not sure how u came up w that math. one time i carried the 1500ppfd the whole grow. big mistake lol roots were powering out of the bucket.. but when the plants are small, no cages in the way, not growing too fast... id just have 1 light about 2" above the plant. u can get to 1500ppfd at like 50 watts per light. the room is probable at like 200ppfd. but the plant is at 1500ppfd.

idk about other people but it really does make adifference for me. if ur running a closed system w co2 u want ur temps high 80-85... that means ur humidity has to be up around 70%. when the plants are really small they arnt realising very much water into the room. so u really have to keep nthe AC from kicking on and pulling out the little humnididty you have.

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I do that with my lights. I’m using at least 2500watts less in the room by lowering and dimming the lights and raising them as the plants grow. I start at about 24 inches 400ppfd once I place them in the buckets day 1, week 2 I lower the lights and dim them but I try to hit 600ppfd, I check the PPFD daily and raise the lights as the plants grow. When I flip to flower I gradually raise the intensity upwards 1100 PPFD. At week 7 I start to dim them again. My electricity bill is half of what it was on my older grows because I’m using less electricity for light, AC and my water chiller doesn’t have to work as hard.

UpstateRecGrower said:

600 watt HPS doesn't give much light in a 4x4

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600w will produce fairly decent results in a 4x4, and is a great setup for someone just getting started. I'd say having a 1k in a 4x4 is for more experienced growers with the right equipment.

I know this thread is off track but... I bought a phlizon 640 watt 8 bars bar style led. They have multiple options for leds and drivers too choose from and also make a 1000watt model also. Mine has lm301b and osram leds with a meanwell driver. Price is about half the $1000 budget of the OP. The 1000 watt one even comes in below the budget price. I bought 2 cheaper models with smd 2385 leds and one samsung all with meanwell drivers for just above $1200 US shipped to me in canada