LED lighting and heat supplementation

Hello all. First post here. What an awesome website!

Anyways, was wondering what thoughts are about LED lighting from people that have/do use them. Plants will be in a sealed, insulated enclosure approx. 2ft deep/6ft wide/6ft tall, in a basement in northern MN....yeah, gunna get a little cold down there. There will be a plastic "wall" hanging in the basement partitioning most of it off to keep surrounding area around the enclosure a bit warmer. Was looking at these and these lights.

My main concern is how to keep the enclosure warm without setting up some kind of ridiculously complicated heating system. I was thinking maybe a couple of incandescent bulbs in there?

all you ever wanted to know about what people think of growing with LED all wrapped up in a nice little thread https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/108628-first-led-grow-box.html
give that a read and then feel free to post follow up questions

Welcome to the forum!

I think that LED grow lights are the biggest scam in growing. They're less efficient than high pressure sodium. Watt for watt LEDs develop as much heat as any other type of lighting (no way around the 1st Law of Thermodynaics!).

Out of the biggest scams the LGM5 is probably the worst. They can't even grow peppers and the guy importing them is so full of shit that he can't even see strait. I've debating him on other forums. He's a chronic BS artist. You can see real test results in the link below.

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That 45 watt light is much, much better than the LGM5 but they're still full of shit for saying they compare to a 250 watt light. LEDs have been very well studied and there is not one peer reviewed white paper that supports these incredible claim. My own results certainly doesn't support these claims.

I've wasted $700 on LEDs. They are next to worthless for budding out pot. You'd be better with CFLs than LED's. Better yet, get a 400 or 600 watt HPS. With these bigger lights, getting enough heat wont be a problem and you can always keep the ballast in the grow chamber.

I only use LEDs now for mother plants and clones. It's about all they're really good for.

Hope this helps!

Hmm, very interesting read. I know how good the HPS and MH lights work. Thats all you hear about. I was looking for a way around the heat/energy consumption. I will have to read more into this, but I have definitely been made a little weary of using LED's. It will be interesting to see how that LED operation turns out. I thought it was kind of funny on a lot of websites for LED lights I used all bragged about NASA using them. Way to appeal to authority on unsuspecting buyers...geez.

What kind of spectrum do CFL's cover? HPS? MH?

That thread was full of a lot of garbage and bickering, could have been 2 pages long and covered same info presented...but I am now skeptical of the LED claims. Maybe for the mothers, but why waste couple hundred bucks when some CFL's will do the trick, right?

I think reading this thread about sums it up. LED's are just the next COOL THING and I don't see how they can possibly compare to anything else.

I was reading up on the UFO LED and it says it replaces a 400 watt HPS and it uses 1 watt LED's. How can that be ? From what I found a 1 watt LED puts out 45 lumens. it said it burned 80 watts. 80 times 45 = 3600 lumens. Still the brightest is 45 lumens. 400 watt HPS puts out 50,000 lumens, the brightest being 50,000 lumens.

Would you rather your plant be under 45 lumens or 50,000 lumens ?

Plus LED's are expensive. People just think they are neat. That is all there is to it. I wouldn't waste my money and hope nobody else does either.

They are definitely cool. I can see why NASA is interested in them. Low energy use, compact, long life. They will need something for those 2 week long lunar nights for any future bases to be located there if they are going to be self sufficient.

Hopefully the technology can make a leap.

toothdust said:

Hello all. First post here. What an awesome website!

Anyways, was wondering what thoughts are about LED lighting from people that have/do use them. Plants will be in a sealed, insulated enclosure approx. 2ft deep/6ft wide/6ft tall, in a basement in northern MN....yeah, gunna get a little cold down there. There will be a plastic "wall" hanging in the basement partitioning most of it off to keep surrounding area around the enclosure a bit warmer. Was looking at these and these lights.

My main concern is how to keep the enclosure warm without setting up some kind of ridiculously complicated heating system. I was thinking maybe a couple of incandescent bulbs in there?

Click to expand...

you said LED so i am gonna stop you.
please reconsider led is not ready for prime time!
now if you say threw 10 ufo's in a closet you could possibly get something to grow but i don't think you would like the results. save your money and energy and get a hps.