For those of you interested in the experiences of new LED users who have no "agenda" and which are hype free, I am very happy with my new 90 watt UFO for my admittedly very small grow. I don't know about the claims that these lights are better than 300-400W HIDs, but so far my LED seems to be outperforming my (admittedly modest) previous lighting (detailed next paragraph) in this new grow.
My garden is only 2.5 square feet and I am only growing 2 autoflowering lowryder 2 plants. I have done this same (hydro) grow before a few times using my old lighting which was a 150W HPS combined with a 5000 lumen CFL array (about 21000 lumens total).
At the beginning of week 4, my new batch of plants is about an inch shorter, but has more nodes, leaves, and initial bud sites than my previous grows had at the same time interval. The root development also seems better so far, but that's more difficult to make an accurate comparison to be honest. There seem to be more leaves, greener color, and the plant just looks more healthy with 2+ weeks of LED overall so far to me.
I do not have meaningful pictures because I do not normally photograph my plants and have nothing from previous grows to compare the new shots to even if I took pics of the new plants and figured out how to post them.
I will avoid using any brand names or listing distributors of my UFO to avoid any appearance of promoting any product or distributor, but I will tell the specs of it for anybody who might be interested in trying a similar product.
Lights are focused to 120 degrees of coverage:
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]60x 1W Red wavelength: 660 nm
10x 1W Blue wavelength: 455 nm
10x 1W Orange wavelength: 610 nm
10x 1W White wave: full-spectrum / wide-kelvin[/FONT]
Note: I have seen a video on youtube where one company shows the 630 red spectrum to be better than my 660 and I have read various claims that orange and white LEDs are wasted wattage. I cannot refute this as I have only tried this one LED so far and can only compare it to my previous lighitng scheme for the same garden setup. It's possible other lights might be better than mine, but so far IMO this particular 90W LED seems to be outperforming my old 150W HPS and 5000 lumen CFL combined setup for my small grow space.
Also, the new LED light generates much less heat than even just my CFL array alone used to (no appreciable heat at all really) - and the 150W HPS was hotter yet. Even with great ventilation my old lighting used to increase the heat in my enclosed grow space about 7 degrees above ambient and the LED doesn't increase the temp at all.
Up until now I have also been using the LED at about 12" above my plants (the same height I used with my HID) although I am quite sure I could easily lower it to 6" or less as there is just no appreciable heat at all from it and it would still cover both my plants adequately at their current size.
I'll try to update my progress every week or so and especially compare the final results for anyone interested.
Additional notes: I did use just the CFL array alone for the first week of this grow, because I read that flourescent lighting is supposedly best for initial seedlings. I replaced the 5000 lumen CFL array with the LED after 7 days of growth (plus 2 more days sprouting with no light at all).
My initial impression is that these LEDs are great for small grows and where heat is an issue (closed grow cabinets like mine). While their light quality so far seems comparable to HIDs maybe 2x their size at least, I kind of doubt their coverage area would be as great as HIDs of those wattages? I am also going to begin lowering the light closer to the plants little by little during flowering (which has already begun) and will be interessted to see if this improves performance further...
I hope this helps some of you and look forward to posting more as I learn more...
My garden is only 2.5 square feet and I am only growing 2 autoflowering lowryder 2 plants. I have done this same (hydro) grow before a few times using my old lighting which was a 150W HPS combined with a 5000 lumen CFL array (about 21000 lumens total).
At the beginning of week 4, my new batch of plants is about an inch shorter, but has more nodes, leaves, and initial bud sites than my previous grows had at the same time interval. The root development also seems better so far, but that's more difficult to make an accurate comparison to be honest. There seem to be more leaves, greener color, and the plant just looks more healthy with 2+ weeks of LED overall so far to me.
I do not have meaningful pictures because I do not normally photograph my plants and have nothing from previous grows to compare the new shots to even if I took pics of the new plants and figured out how to post them.
I will avoid using any brand names or listing distributors of my UFO to avoid any appearance of promoting any product or distributor, but I will tell the specs of it for anybody who might be interested in trying a similar product.
Lights are focused to 120 degrees of coverage:
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]60x 1W Red wavelength: 660 nm
10x 1W Blue wavelength: 455 nm
10x 1W Orange wavelength: 610 nm
10x 1W White wave: full-spectrum / wide-kelvin[/FONT]
Note: I have seen a video on youtube where one company shows the 630 red spectrum to be better than my 660 and I have read various claims that orange and white LEDs are wasted wattage. I cannot refute this as I have only tried this one LED so far and can only compare it to my previous lighitng scheme for the same garden setup. It's possible other lights might be better than mine, but so far IMO this particular 90W LED seems to be outperforming my old 150W HPS and 5000 lumen CFL combined setup for my small grow space.
Also, the new LED light generates much less heat than even just my CFL array alone used to (no appreciable heat at all really) - and the 150W HPS was hotter yet. Even with great ventilation my old lighting used to increase the heat in my enclosed grow space about 7 degrees above ambient and the LED doesn't increase the temp at all.
Up until now I have also been using the LED at about 12" above my plants (the same height I used with my HID) although I am quite sure I could easily lower it to 6" or less as there is just no appreciable heat at all from it and it would still cover both my plants adequately at their current size.
I'll try to update my progress every week or so and especially compare the final results for anyone interested.
Additional notes: I did use just the CFL array alone for the first week of this grow, because I read that flourescent lighting is supposedly best for initial seedlings. I replaced the 5000 lumen CFL array with the LED after 7 days of growth (plus 2 more days sprouting with no light at all).
My initial impression is that these LEDs are great for small grows and where heat is an issue (closed grow cabinets like mine). While their light quality so far seems comparable to HIDs maybe 2x their size at least, I kind of doubt their coverage area would be as great as HIDs of those wattages? I am also going to begin lowering the light closer to the plants little by little during flowering (which has already begun) and will be interessted to see if this improves performance further...
I hope this helps some of you and look forward to posting more as I learn more...
