Okay so the problem with LED since it came out was its extremely high cost per usable watt. But now that the prices of LED's are beginning to compete with HPS and MH setups why not switch? Especially if you're savvy about your purchases. It is much cheaper to set up a room with LED's than with HPS and MH set ups once you figure the cost of the cooling systems and ventilation involved with removing their excess heat from both the bulbs and Ballasts.
So I went down to my local Hydro shop a couple weeks back and found a killer deal on some Mars Hydro 1200 watt LED's that a guy was selling so he could upgrade. He was selling them at $220 a piece, I picked up one and took it home and set it up. A couple Days later a bank of Lights went out so I took it back to the Hydro shop to exchange it for a different light. We tested out about 10 other mars-hydro's only to find that I had originally purchased the only one with no burnt out LED's. The shop owner gave the owner of the hydro's a call to explain that none of his lights were in full working condition like he had thought. So what happened? The shop owner came back and said "Pick the best 2 and have them" since I had already paid $220. I went home with these 90% working LED's and sent Mars-hydro's customer service a quick little email to see what it would take to get these bad boys working 100% percent again. After a week of back and forth messages, me during the day, and them at 1 in the morning from china, they decided to send me all the replacement LED's and Zenner Diodes free of charge. So all I had to do was simply replace the LED's myself which is a simple DIY if you know how to use a solder.
In the end I spent:
-$220 on 2 1200watt Mars-hydro LED's
-a couple pennies on solder and electronics heat sink glue
-about 3 hours of labor tearing apart and replacing the LEDS
In the end I got roughly 1200 real watts of LED's that have now been customized, 1 for grow light wavelengths and 1 for bloom light wavelengths. You really can't get much cheaper light than that. Even if i had went the CFL route I still couldn't get 1200 real watts of usable light from CFL's for that cheap. My temps with the LEDs running in my small room are sticking under 85 degrees using just one 6" booster fan connected to a cheap homemade carbon filter.
I want to give a big thanks to Winnie at Mars-hydro for the help with the LED's, if any noobs are looking to switch I highly recommend Mars-hydro for their customer service, and use Sara for purchases, she's with their sales team and is part of the US branch.
For anyone looking to do the repair themselves I can make a post explain step by step how I replaced mine, just let me know if that would be something worth doing.
So I went down to my local Hydro shop a couple weeks back and found a killer deal on some Mars Hydro 1200 watt LED's that a guy was selling so he could upgrade. He was selling them at $220 a piece, I picked up one and took it home and set it up. A couple Days later a bank of Lights went out so I took it back to the Hydro shop to exchange it for a different light. We tested out about 10 other mars-hydro's only to find that I had originally purchased the only one with no burnt out LED's. The shop owner gave the owner of the hydro's a call to explain that none of his lights were in full working condition like he had thought. So what happened? The shop owner came back and said "Pick the best 2 and have them" since I had already paid $220. I went home with these 90% working LED's and sent Mars-hydro's customer service a quick little email to see what it would take to get these bad boys working 100% percent again. After a week of back and forth messages, me during the day, and them at 1 in the morning from china, they decided to send me all the replacement LED's and Zenner Diodes free of charge. So all I had to do was simply replace the LED's myself which is a simple DIY if you know how to use a solder.
In the end I spent:
-$220 on 2 1200watt Mars-hydro LED's
-a couple pennies on solder and electronics heat sink glue
-about 3 hours of labor tearing apart and replacing the LEDS
In the end I got roughly 1200 real watts of LED's that have now been customized, 1 for grow light wavelengths and 1 for bloom light wavelengths. You really can't get much cheaper light than that. Even if i had went the CFL route I still couldn't get 1200 real watts of usable light from CFL's for that cheap. My temps with the LEDs running in my small room are sticking under 85 degrees using just one 6" booster fan connected to a cheap homemade carbon filter.
I want to give a big thanks to Winnie at Mars-hydro for the help with the LED's, if any noobs are looking to switch I highly recommend Mars-hydro for their customer service, and use Sara for purchases, she's with their sales team and is part of the US branch.
For anyone looking to do the repair themselves I can make a post explain step by step how I replaced mine, just let me know if that would be something worth doing.
