Are LED lights good enough for a scrog grow?
- Thread starter VACAVILLE,CA.GROWER
- Start date
slinkysaurus
Well-Known Member
I have found the less expensive side of LED's to be pretty good!
I haven't had anything expensive to compare them beside but It works. I have 2x 300w and 2x 400w...the 300's were from HG hydro and they're pretty crap, one even blew up after it arrived.
The 400's on the other hand were from ebay, no brand and are excellent! They keep up with the growth of the 600HPS! I will definitely be getting 2 more and using the 300's for cuttings and a mother.
If you're going the route that doesn't cost you thousands, check the LED bulb make, wattage, spectrums and number of Led's on the panel and you can get some pretty good info of the quality of stuff that's been put inside it, even if it is from ebay or such
..you'll find you can get more for less without a brand name if you do your research!
I haven't had anything expensive to compare them beside but It works. I have 2x 300w and 2x 400w...the 300's were from HG hydro and they're pretty crap, one even blew up after it arrived.
The 400's on the other hand were from ebay, no brand and are excellent! They keep up with the growth of the 600HPS! I will definitely be getting 2 more and using the 300's for cuttings and a mother.
If you're going the route that doesn't cost you thousands, check the LED bulb make, wattage, spectrums and number of Led's on the panel and you can get some pretty good info of the quality of stuff that's been put inside it, even if it is from ebay or such
..you'll find you can get more for less without a brand name if you do your research!Soulkipper
Active Member
The price is kinda low. 90W-240W should be good for a 2'x3' and optimal around 10". LED's are a bunch of small lights.. So a 90W might be one panel whereas the more watts you see will use more panels or larger panels. Around 120-180W you will see 2x panels and starting around 400W the panels will be larger or >2 panels. It looks like the 50-90W UFO's are rated to cover 1.5'x1.5'. LED's are probably the most expensive, newest, and most efficient, and cover the largest spectrum of any option on the table so they are going to work. Do some shopping around for the best suiting light system. Not all of them will be big, inefficient LED's that throw off heat and burn out. I would personally look at a 180W panel for that size.
Here's some info:
If you're only doing 1 plant you could use small lights and some reflective material in that 2'x2' room. Anyway, I probably wouldn't use more than 120-240W in that small of a room though. You're still going to fit 4-9 plants in that space, and no matter what you're really limited to plants 18"-27" tall. (2 gal. fabric pots are 8" diameter, 3 gal. are 10-11" diameter). Gallons * 3/4 = how tall your pot will support according to multiple people on RIU.
LED's are perfect for small spaces. LED's require minimal clearance and limited ventilation is needed. You're looking at probably 3-4" of height and the room will very likely stay below 75 degrees in a 70 degree house. Don't forget you're using flowering lights which can operate two sets of plants at a time so your yield can always double if you choose to box up those plants at night and run two sets.
Take a look at V2.0 Lighthouse Hydro BlackStar. They're right around $250 and were recently upgraded. In addition to the following facts they also mention special engineering of the lenses & V2.0 lights can work coverage areas 25% larger than the V1.0. Pay attention when looking around, I believe all of the V2.0 lights are clearly advertised and the V1.0 usually don't distinguish themselves from a normal sale. It looks like 2014-2015 lights are the new model. Hope this all helped.
"Unlike the majority of LED's in the market, Blackstar V2.0 LED's are mounted directly to the aluminum heatsink and not a PCB board. All have 100% solid extruded aluminum heat-sinks which now feature radiator fins. The new series now has 4X the aluminum surface area which results in a 42% reduction in operating temperatures. This means that the LED's will last longer and suffer fewer occurrences of premature failure.
There is no such thing as a perfect electronic device. Although LED's have a 40,000+ hour rating, some will occasionally fail prematurely. The design of ALL LED grow lights from any manufacturer is a series of chained LED's. If one LED completely fails, it will take out the entire series of LED's. In the past if there was a premature failure of a single LED, you had to send your entire unit back for service.
The NEW 2015 Blackstar V2.0 addresses all of this. Revolutionary design has now separated the different LED series into multiple removable boards, and powered each one with it's own dedicated power supply. The connections and power requirements for each segment are also uniform. This means you can replace modules if necessary with the removal of a few screws. If anything ever happens to your board you can simply send the module in for repair and continue to operate the grow light with the remaining boards NO DOWNTIME. You can also swap out boards for others with different light spectrums.
In addition to the new on board design, the new chips are larger and more efficient. Lumen and PAR output of this unit is 15% more than the previous generation."
Soulkipper
Active Member
Lights are lights. Generally, 1 bigger light is better than 2 smaller lights with an equal power rating.
I would opt for a multiple board design in case of failure if you go LED.