LED grow lights?
- Thread starter Spine Vac
- Start date
growman3666
Well-Known Member
waste of money
GrowGreenGreen
Well-Known Member
Someone's wasted money is another's money well spent, I'm afraid.
Paying for wasted spectrum and heat, and then paying to remove the heat isn't exactly efficient to be fair. All the one-line anti-LED lines feel so neo-con in tone. (Not just this thread...) Some of us are pushing different boundaries than others. Some of us are taking our carbon footprint into consideration. I can't wait for cap and trade. I'll make a mint selling my carbon credits to HID growers.
Paying for wasted spectrum and heat, and then paying to remove the heat isn't exactly efficient to be fair. All the one-line anti-LED lines feel so neo-con in tone. (Not just this thread...) Some of us are pushing different boundaries than others. Some of us are taking our carbon footprint into consideration. I can't wait for cap and trade. I'll make a mint selling my carbon credits to HID growers.
Brick Top
New Member
Actually they are very good but they cost a ton so to get as many as you need it will break you unless you were left a large trust fund or something.
The benefits are they only put out the exact light spectrum that plants need and all other lighting puts out light spectrums plants do not use. They put off almost no heat so that reduces problems and reduces the need for elaborate air intake/exhaust systems (other than for odor control that is but you would not need it for heat control). They use very, very little electricity so they do not run up your bills.
The drawbacks are they are very expensive. They do not give much penetration so you have to basically surround your plants with them and have them above your plants and on the sides of your plants and even to get all you can from your plants to attach them to portable pole you can set between your plants and considering the costs for most people they could not begin to consider paying as much as it would cost to have as many LED’s as they would need.
A few years back on another site I followed a thread by a member who used all LED lighting. The member was swimming in cash and didn’t care in the least to spend thousands of dollars for his lighting. He covered the entire area above his plants with light bars that has different light spectrum LED’s in them that provided what was needed for vegetative growth and for flowering. He also built portable poles using a square piece of plywood with a piece of 4X4 attached and attached LED bars to all four sides and set them in between his plants and then he ringed the outside of his plants with more portable poles with LED bars on them.
His results were absolutely fantastic. His plants were thick and lush from top to bottom and even the bottom buds were large thick heavy buds instead of small or tiny popcorn buds. He never had the slightest problem with heat and even running so many lights he used less electricity. But again he paid through his nose to buy enough lights to do the job.
If the prices of LED lighting would drop like the prices of plasma screen TV’s have, meaning drop a TON, they would be the way to go because then the average Joe could afford as many as they would need to get good to really great results and with it get all the positive things about LED's but since they still cost an arm and a leg they are totally impractical for most to even begin to consider.
The benefits are they only put out the exact light spectrum that plants need and all other lighting puts out light spectrums plants do not use. They put off almost no heat so that reduces problems and reduces the need for elaborate air intake/exhaust systems (other than for odor control that is but you would not need it for heat control). They use very, very little electricity so they do not run up your bills.
The drawbacks are they are very expensive. They do not give much penetration so you have to basically surround your plants with them and have them above your plants and on the sides of your plants and even to get all you can from your plants to attach them to portable pole you can set between your plants and considering the costs for most people they could not begin to consider paying as much as it would cost to have as many LED’s as they would need.
A few years back on another site I followed a thread by a member who used all LED lighting. The member was swimming in cash and didn’t care in the least to spend thousands of dollars for his lighting. He covered the entire area above his plants with light bars that has different light spectrum LED’s in them that provided what was needed for vegetative growth and for flowering. He also built portable poles using a square piece of plywood with a piece of 4X4 attached and attached LED bars to all four sides and set them in between his plants and then he ringed the outside of his plants with more portable poles with LED bars on them.
His results were absolutely fantastic. His plants were thick and lush from top to bottom and even the bottom buds were large thick heavy buds instead of small or tiny popcorn buds. He never had the slightest problem with heat and even running so many lights he used less electricity. But again he paid through his nose to buy enough lights to do the job.
If the prices of LED lighting would drop like the prices of plasma screen TV’s have, meaning drop a TON, they would be the way to go because then the average Joe could afford as many as they would need to get good to really great results and with it get all the positive things about LED's but since they still cost an arm and a leg they are totally impractical for most to even begin to consider.
Brick Top
New Member
Either they have come way down in price in the last year or that wont buy you many LEDs. The last time I figured it up for what I would need for my rather modest area it was more than three times as much.
Cr8z13
Well-Known Member
Check this thing out:
http://www.growrevolution.com/product01.html
Sounds pretty cool, but again, way out of my price range.
Strawberry
Well-Known Member
The one i was looking at in the high times magazine is 250 watt and is said to smoke a 1000 watt HID ?? but there selling them for like 1400 bucks its called the super nova. and covers a 5x5 earea hhhmmm sounds like a good like for a 500 plant grow opp 4 of these babys only using the same power as 1 1000 watt. has anyone else seen these things?? or even used one at 1400 a pop crazy shit ?
Brick Top
New Member
I have not looked at them for about a year now and I have never seen that particular design. It is interesting but like all the others I have looked at it is costly.
About a year or year and a half ago I read an article about a scientist working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who was working on high efficiency lighting and made an LED light about the same size as a standard hand held mirror like women use to check out the hair on the back of their heads and balding guys use to check how much hair they lost on the top of their heads and it was absolutely amazing. The small LED light put out more light than a powerful spotlight, and I dont mean like some spotlight you plug into your cars cigarette lighter but like BIG spotlight.
The problem is the technology is so expensive that unless there is some major breakthrough it may remain far too costly to ever market it. It lights of that technology could be made at a reasonable price and made in grow light spectrums they would totally wipe out all HID sales because they would put out WAY more light and do it VERY cool and using VERY little electricity.
Even some of the more modern present day technology LED lights are putting out more light, as in penetration, but not many of them and all of they cost an arm and a leg so for most they are cost prohibitive and may stay that way for some time to come.
Now depending on the overall savings a person gets from using them when you add of the cost of less electricity for lighting and less electricity for cooling/air intake/exhaust that would not have to run all the time the lights were running and at the most run for a very short period of time to remove odor and refresh the air if the LED lights last long enough and retain their percentage of light spectrum and do not degrade like HID bulbs do they very well more than pay for themselves over time but you still have to bite the bullet and write that big check up front or load up your credit card to get in the LED world and that is tough for many to do. It would be like each time I replaced my heat pumps with higher SEER rated models. I paid a bunch to do it but my electricity usage dropped considerably and in time they paid for themselves plus they were more comfortable temperature-wise so in the long run it is a value but writing the checks still hurt and even though I saved a good bit each month it was not like someone was sending me small checks that totaled what I spent so even though I more than recouped my expenses it was still not like I ever noticed the money because Id just blow that amount of savings of electricity usage on something almost meaningless most of the time like buying a bunch of DVDs or something.
Still if LEDs last long enough they may more than pay for themselves over time, but I do not know if they last that long or not. Also it cuts out the heat profile of your home if you are under suspicion and a heat gun is aimed at your home looking for hot spots that might be enough to get LEO knocking at your door, with a battering ram, and if you consider the savings that LEDs would give you by avoiding that they would have to be considered to be one heck of a bargain even at todays prices. But few people think that way.
WhistlingBeaver
Active Member
I'm just started experimenting with LEDs, and they seem to work best as additional lighting instead of being the only light source. I bought some 10mm high brightness blue LEDs from Radio Shack (cost: $2.80 and are around 640 to 660nm... can't remember the exact spectrum) and wired them to a computer power supply (they can take up to 3.8 volts, computer power suplpy has a 3.3v wire or I just read that you can hook them up to a cellphone charger, but will have to look into that.) and they seem to be very bright, but the angle is only 16 degrees, which make the light too concentrated... so I need to diffuse the light. I am using a 250W HPS light (which is in the yellow to red spectrum), so adding the blue will hopefully help them in the vegetative stage, then I want to switch to Red LEDs for the flowering stage.
Blue and red LEDs fall into the best light spectrum, they just don't seem to put out the lumens and heat unless you have enough of them. Since I am just starting with LEDs, I figure 3-5 10mm LEDs (blue or red) per plant should be enough to make a noticeable difference, maybe up to 10 for each plant if you are using only LED. The 10mm LEDs are fairly new and I have not seen any post of anyone try to use them to grow yet, but they can certainly throw some major light out. I hooked a blue staight to the power supply with no resistors and it was very bright at 15 feet! I threw two resistors on at about 180ohm which dimmed them a bit, but should extend their life to spec. I don't know how long they would last with no resistors on them, but that's something I will have to play with. I will post some pics of the setup once I make a better fixture for the LEDs... Hope this info was able to help, would love to hear if anyone else is using the 10mm LEDs.
Blue and red LEDs fall into the best light spectrum, they just don't seem to put out the lumens and heat unless you have enough of them. Since I am just starting with LEDs, I figure 3-5 10mm LEDs (blue or red) per plant should be enough to make a noticeable difference, maybe up to 10 for each plant if you are using only LED. The 10mm LEDs are fairly new and I have not seen any post of anyone try to use them to grow yet, but they can certainly throw some major light out. I hooked a blue staight to the power supply with no resistors and it was very bright at 15 feet! I threw two resistors on at about 180ohm which dimmed them a bit, but should extend their life to spec. I don't know how long they would last with no resistors on them, but that's something I will have to play with. I will post some pics of the setup once I make a better fixture for the LEDs... Hope this info was able to help, would love to hear if anyone else is using the 10mm LEDs.