Looking into LEDs but need some help.

your telling me... 1300$ The spread isn't as wide as a HPS IMOP they are great veg obviously and if you wanna flower one POSSIBLY two plants under one light youll have a descent flower.. but i personally I'm still HPS all the way

@stealthyninja66

In your original post you mentioned that you're wanting to light up a 10' x 10' space but later on stated that you only have around 3500$ to spend. My question is are you looking to properly light up a 10' x 10' space, meaning providing every square foot with a decent amount of light? If so, you may want to consider running a 50/50 of HID/COB, as of today, you cannot adequately cover a 100 sq. foot room/tent with commercially available cob-based lighting fixtures for less than 3500$. Take this layout for example for a proposed 10' x 10':





The proposed configuration would offer around 825 PPFD but would cost ~5000$ at current sale price (without considering a bulk purchase discount) and those prices cannot be found to be beaten by anyone at this time.

There's many pros to investing into cob technology though, some being more obvious than others but it ultimately comes down to what you're trying to achieve as well as what you're trying to overcome.

@phil k

I'm glad to see you're still around and well! Thanks for sharing the love!

You could put 4 gavitas in a 10x10 for ~$2k and be done with it. Lol. Then you have $3k left over from the $5k Aquarius says it'll take to effectively cover your space with cobs. Would pay the electricity for them for at least the first cycle and a half, maybe 2. If you ran them on 240v instead of 120v it would it for almost 4 cycles or about a year of electricity for the.

Then, you can save money from that year of harvests to buy the LED fixtures aforementioned for your space.

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@kmog33

That's an option, although I hear the Gavitas like to run hot and need to be placed fairly high in order to avoid frying canopies, thus reducing immediate light count yet increasing overall spread. That PPFD estimate I gave above your comment (~825PPFD) was off and is calculated to be higher, closer to 950 PPFD with all Vero 29 cobs. I don't know what the Gavita's typical PPFD is brand new but one of the pros to choosing cobs over HID is that you can pack a punch in a given area without having to worry about direct heat issues, which means you can get more photons delivered to your plants in a given space, thus increasing overall photosynthetic potential, which ends up bettering your harvested product.

AquariusPanta said:

@kmog33

That's an option, although I hear the Gavitas like to run hot and need to be placed fairly high in order to avoid frying canopies, thus reducing immediate light count yet increasing overall spread. That PPFD estimate I gave above your comment (~825PPFD) was off and is calculated to be higher, closer to 950 PPFD with all Vero 29 cobs. I don't know what the Gavita's typical PPFD is brand new but one of the pros to choosing cobs over HID is that you can pack a punch in a given area without having to worry about direct heat issues, which means you can get more photons delivered to your plants in a given space, thus increasing overall photosynthetic potential, which ends up bettering your harvested product.

Click to expand...

I totally get that. I am running cobs in my current grows. I was just saying the price difference up front between buying 4 gavitas that would definitely cover that space and the cob panels you posted is pretty big. And as his budget is $3k for the space it's probably a more reasonable option. But the first harvest would pay for the gavitas and the cob upgrade next cycle or any of the following year. Just a way to work with a budget in order to make your way to what would be the best lights in that space.


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Oh and here's gavitas ppfd/umole from their site.

Looks like ppfd ~800umole/sec in a 1.5m square.


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Those are good numbers. Thank you for taking the time to dig those up for us!

Thanks for all the help every one. Looks like I have a lot to consider and plan out.