Light

can u grow with a regular light bulb i found a 100w one in my garage

NO.Not nearly enough lumen output from that bulb to help you.CFL,flouros,and HID are the only way to grow.

yes you can, obviously there are better suited lights for growing but yours will workish

lol i found some cfls but theyre all 13w

ok,you can use them,but you are going to have some long,spiny plants with no real bulk to them,dont even waste your time.

jastoned said:

lol i found some cfls but theyre all 13w

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That's perfect. Probably 70 lm/W. most CFLS are under 65 lm/W, especially as wattage increases the efficency drops. Though more small bulbs will produce much more heat due to all the ballasts.

can i use flood lights? i have alot of those

jastoned said:

can i use flood lights? i have alot of those

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Yes. Far from ideal. Not a good idea at all.

yeah,probably not a good idea,most draw more heat than produce light.....

TeaTreeOil said:

That's perfect. Probably 70 lm/W. most CFLS are under 65 lm/W, especially as wattage increases the efficency drops. Though more small bulbs will produce much more heat due to all the ballasts.

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how many lumens would i need per plant?

jastoned said:

how many lumens would i need per plant?

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Depends how big your plants are.

Figure a minimum of 13 watts(CFL's actual wattage!) per cubic foot.

TeaTreeOil said:

Depends how big your plants are.

Figure a minimum of 13 watts(CFL's actual wattage!) per cubic foot.

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so how many lumens per cubic feet?

plant life has been shown to produce the best results with 3,000 lumens per square foot or more of light,any less will still produce results,just not what you may want.

sunlight is considered to burn at an average of 10,000 lumens per in the summer months.So try to get as close as you feasibly can.

jastoned said:

so how many lumens per cubic feet?

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Lumens are for humans. A bulb can have a very high amount of lumens and be very poor at growing plants.

Plants need specific frequencies of light to grow the best. This is measured in watts. So I use watts. Fluorescent bulbs designed for plants(Gro Lux, Plant/Aquarium, Blue/Red, etc.) actually have very low luminous efficacy, as little as 20-30 lm/W. But the plant-usable watts are much higher than other fluoros producing 90 lm/W.

13 watts of CFL is around 900 lumens. This is, again, the minimum suggested. Lumens are related to the wattage by lm/W (lumens per watt), and this is termed the luminous efficiency(or sometimes termed efficacy).

true that,it doesnt mater as much as the spectrum of light the bulb produces.Thats whats really important.