gardenfather
Active member
When growing with LED lights are u having problems keeping heat and humidity? to have a good balance.
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213 Watt LED Nirvana Northern Lights Grow
- Thread starter GP73LPC
- Start date
gardenfather
Active member
what do u like better hps or led? im only talking about yield wise. Not heat, price ect... 
what gives a better yield.
what gives a better yield.
gardenfather
Active member
Great, Yeah im so thinking of getting LEDS more and more everyday, just bought a Ballast and 600w HPS wish i didnt now lol
ok, this thread has come to end.
thank goodness. this definitely was not my best grow. in fact, my worst, but that's life and i accept it. i changed up way to much, paid attention too little and thought i could produce based on my previous experience.
well final results are 92 grams from 213 watts for a .44 gpw ratio. terrible... but i'm high on northern lights
got a couple of nice tinctures made out of this, have 9 clones in reveg state and have 4 more seeds to start another thread and get some fucking seeds this next grow.
thank goodness. this definitely was not my best grow. in fact, my worst, but that's life and i accept it. i changed up way to much, paid attention too little and thought i could produce based on my previous experience.
well final results are 92 grams from 213 watts for a .44 gpw ratio. terrible... but i'm high on northern lights
got a couple of nice tinctures made out of this, have 9 clones in reveg state and have 4 more seeds to start another thread and get some fucking seeds this next grow.
600-750 watts of LED can hang with a 1000 watt HPS.
i prefer LED simply for the heats issues, or lack of them
but what about cost difference i mean what would a 650 wattLED cost compared to a complete 1000 watt kit for 200 bucks giving you 2.5 pound harvest have you seen or herd of a 650 watt even coming close to 650 dry grams ???
So it begs to question, if an LED that uses 650 watts can produce as well as a 1000 watt HPS, as many LED manufacturers claim, why aren’t they taking over the grow light market the way digital ballasts did 8 years ago? Why aren’t they the light of choice for most indoor gardeners?
Personally, I’ve have good success starting seeds and rooting cuttings under a 45 watt LED panel that utilized simple low wattage blue and red diodes. I’ve also grown young plants up to about 10” in height under the same 45w panels. Growth was always adequate and comparable to that of a T5 fluorescent. But my own experience with LEDs was limited and I’ve never used a high powered LED grow light so I needed to find another grower who had actually done some full cycles using an LED light.
I looked up my old friend Doc because I remembered he had been doing some tests with LED Grow Lights. I interviewed Doc because I knew he would give me honest feedback and he was a very experienced gardener. Like myself, Doc was very interested in the concept of using LED grow lights and was hoping for the best when conducting his tests. In the last 12 months he said he was able to do 3 separate tests using LED Grow Lights. Here are his findings.
Test 1
Materials:
LED total power consumption: 650 watts
Diodes: Red, blue, and white 3 watt diodes
Media: Organic potting soil in 3 gallon plastic pots. Drip system.
Nutrient: Popular 100% organic nutrient
Grow area size: 3’10” x 3’10”
In the first test Doc used an LED grow light that used 3 watt diodes and approximately 650 watts of total power. He also used 3 gallon buckets of quality potting soil with a drip system and a premium 100% organic nutrient.
Results: This test was never finished. There was a problem with the soil not drying out fast enough between feedings which Doc believes led to weak growth. Possible complications may have been the lack of heat from the LED light. This was something very new for Doc who like most indoor gardeners have only grown with T5 fluorescent and MH or HPS grow lights. Doc noticed how much his grow room relied upon the heat from his HPS lamps to bring his room up to optimal temperatures. During the test his grow room stayed around 60-65 degrees when his lights were on. Not only is this too cold for proper fruiting and flowering of most summer crops but it also didn’t allow his potting soil to dry out fast enough leaving his root systems water logged and starving for oxygen. About 2 months into the grow Doc decided to start over.
Conclusion: Inconclusive.
Test 2
Materials:
LED total power consumption: 650 watts
Diodes: Red, blue, and white 3 watt diodes
Media/Water: Hydroton in 1 gallon fabric pots. Ebb and flow.
Nutrient: Popular 2-part hydroponic nutrient
Grow area size: 3’10” x 3’10”
Using the same 650 watt LED grow light Doc switched from soil to hydroponics to have more control over the watering. He used 1 gallon fabric pots with hydroton grow rocks in an ebb and flow hydroponic system. He also added heat to bring the temperatures to a more comfortable 75-80 degrees when the lights were on.
Results: This test run was much better than the first and strengthened his theory that lack of heat was the main culprit his first time around. Health was good and bugs and or disease was non-existent. Keep in mind Doc is an expert grower and expert growers know how to keep a grow room healthy and free from bugs or disease. Yield was not as good as Doc would have hoped. While overall quality was consistent with plants grown under an HID light, Doc’s yield for his 650 watt LED grow light were closer to or slightly better than what you would expect from a 400 HPS light using a full spectrum HID bulb.
Conclusion: Fail. Yields were okay but we didn’t get a better yield to watt ratio than an HID grow light. There was also an extra energy cost to run the supplemental heat.
So please don't believe everything you here like the guy said 650 watt led was more comparable to a 400 watt hid a far cry from a 1000 right ???? you mention burn brad burns thread here his plants @ 2 weeks and here a hid at 14 and 21 days you think his led competes to that of a hid ??? oh hell one more for yea showing HID kicks ass day 36
Personally, I’ve have good success starting seeds and rooting cuttings under a 45 watt LED panel that utilized simple low wattage blue and red diodes. I’ve also grown young plants up to about 10” in height under the same 45w panels. Growth was always adequate and comparable to that of a T5 fluorescent. But my own experience with LEDs was limited and I’ve never used a high powered LED grow light so I needed to find another grower who had actually done some full cycles using an LED light.
I looked up my old friend Doc because I remembered he had been doing some tests with LED Grow Lights. I interviewed Doc because I knew he would give me honest feedback and he was a very experienced gardener. Like myself, Doc was very interested in the concept of using LED grow lights and was hoping for the best when conducting his tests. In the last 12 months he said he was able to do 3 separate tests using LED Grow Lights. Here are his findings.
Test 1
Materials:
LED total power consumption: 650 watts
Diodes: Red, blue, and white 3 watt diodes
Media: Organic potting soil in 3 gallon plastic pots. Drip system.
Nutrient: Popular 100% organic nutrient
Grow area size: 3’10” x 3’10”
In the first test Doc used an LED grow light that used 3 watt diodes and approximately 650 watts of total power. He also used 3 gallon buckets of quality potting soil with a drip system and a premium 100% organic nutrient.
Results: This test was never finished. There was a problem with the soil not drying out fast enough between feedings which Doc believes led to weak growth. Possible complications may have been the lack of heat from the LED light. This was something very new for Doc who like most indoor gardeners have only grown with T5 fluorescent and MH or HPS grow lights. Doc noticed how much his grow room relied upon the heat from his HPS lamps to bring his room up to optimal temperatures. During the test his grow room stayed around 60-65 degrees when his lights were on. Not only is this too cold for proper fruiting and flowering of most summer crops but it also didn’t allow his potting soil to dry out fast enough leaving his root systems water logged and starving for oxygen. About 2 months into the grow Doc decided to start over.
Conclusion: Inconclusive.
Test 2
Materials:
LED total power consumption: 650 watts
Diodes: Red, blue, and white 3 watt diodes
Media/Water: Hydroton in 1 gallon fabric pots. Ebb and flow.
Nutrient: Popular 2-part hydroponic nutrient
Grow area size: 3’10” x 3’10”
Using the same 650 watt LED grow light Doc switched from soil to hydroponics to have more control over the watering. He used 1 gallon fabric pots with hydroton grow rocks in an ebb and flow hydroponic system. He also added heat to bring the temperatures to a more comfortable 75-80 degrees when the lights were on.
Results: This test run was much better than the first and strengthened his theory that lack of heat was the main culprit his first time around. Health was good and bugs and or disease was non-existent. Keep in mind Doc is an expert grower and expert growers know how to keep a grow room healthy and free from bugs or disease. Yield was not as good as Doc would have hoped. While overall quality was consistent with plants grown under an HID light, Doc’s yield for his 650 watt LED grow light were closer to or slightly better than what you would expect from a 400 HPS light using a full spectrum HID bulb.
Conclusion: Fail. Yields were okay but we didn’t get a better yield to watt ratio than an HID grow light. There was also an extra energy cost to run the supplemental heat.
So please don't believe everything you here like the guy said 650 watt led was more comparable to a 400 watt hid a far cry from a 1000 right ???? you mention burn brad burns thread here his plants @ 2 weeks and here a hid at 14 and 21 days you think his led competes to that of a hid ??? oh hell one more for yea showing HID kicks ass day 36
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but what about cost difference i mean what would a 650 wattLED cost compared to a complete 1000 watt kit for 200 bucks giving you 2.5 pound harvest have you seen or herd of a 650 watt even coming close to 650 dry grams ???
read this thread
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=221520
Test 3
Materials:
LED total power consumption: 650 watts
Diodes: Red, blue, orange, and white 5 watt diodes
Media/Water: Organic potting soil in 3 gallon plastic pots. Drip system.
Nutrient: Popular 100% organic nutrient
Grow area size: 3’10” x 3’10”
For his third test Doc switched lights and decided to use an LED grow light that used 5 watt diodes which are much brighter than the 3 watt diodes. This light also included orange diodes which the previous light did not. He went back to using an organic potting soil in 3 gallon pots and the same 100% organic nutrient he had used in test 1.
Results: The 5 watt diodes gave off more heat than the 3 watt diodes helping to maintain a more comfortable ambient temperature for the plants. Growth and yield came out equal to the growth and yields he would expect from a digital 600w HPS grow light (which actually consumes around 640-650 watts of power per hour). This improvement led Doc to conclude that the higher powered electrode equalled a higher overall yield. Ambient temperatures were about the same as in test 2 since a heater was used in that test to raise temperatures closer to an optimal range. Supplemental heat was not necessary in test 3.
Conclusion: Fail.The goal of these tests was to get a better yield to watt ratio than an HID grow light, a true test of efficiency, and that didn’t happen. I could possibly have given this last test a pass rating. In my opinion, equalling the yield of an HPS light is an impressive feat. But LED manufacturers constantly claim that LEDs are more efficient than an HPS and so I felt obligated to grade them based upon just that.
Materials:
LED total power consumption: 650 watts
Diodes: Red, blue, orange, and white 5 watt diodes
Media/Water: Organic potting soil in 3 gallon plastic pots. Drip system.
Nutrient: Popular 100% organic nutrient
Grow area size: 3’10” x 3’10”
For his third test Doc switched lights and decided to use an LED grow light that used 5 watt diodes which are much brighter than the 3 watt diodes. This light also included orange diodes which the previous light did not. He went back to using an organic potting soil in 3 gallon pots and the same 100% organic nutrient he had used in test 1.
Results: The 5 watt diodes gave off more heat than the 3 watt diodes helping to maintain a more comfortable ambient temperature for the plants. Growth and yield came out equal to the growth and yields he would expect from a digital 600w HPS grow light (which actually consumes around 640-650 watts of power per hour). This improvement led Doc to conclude that the higher powered electrode equalled a higher overall yield. Ambient temperatures were about the same as in test 2 since a heater was used in that test to raise temperatures closer to an optimal range. Supplemental heat was not necessary in test 3.
Conclusion: Fail.The goal of these tests was to get a better yield to watt ratio than an HID grow light, a true test of efficiency, and that didn’t happen. I could possibly have given this last test a pass rating. In my opinion, equalling the yield of an HPS light is an impressive feat. But LED manufacturers constantly claim that LEDs are more efficient than an HPS and so I felt obligated to grade them based upon just that.
don't judge this grow or what i say on what LEDs can do, read the links in my sig. grows over 1LB and GPW threads...
Doc’s results were very interesting. What stood out the most was the dramatic increase in yield when he switched from 3 watt diodes to 5 watt diodes. Using the same amount of power Doc was able to increase his yield by about 30-40% using the larger diodes. When comparing his yield per watt using the 650 watt LED with 5 watt diodes to that of the 600 watt HPS digital ballast (which uses 640 watts) he realized about a 1 to 1 ratio. So growth per watt was the same. This leads one to theorize that if an LED grow light were to come out with a diode that was larger than 5 watts, then the overall ratio of yield per watt could begin to turn in favor of the LED grow Light. What is unfortunate is that if you believe the sales pitch given by most manufacturers of LED grow lights then you probably believe that you are going to get a much higher ratio and this just isn’t the case. In other words, at least in our tests, an LED using 650 watts of power does not equal a 1000 watt grow light. From what I’ve read online it seems that Doc’s results were closer to those experienced by independent bloggers.
One one of the biggest hurdles LED grow lights have had to get over is the limited plant spectrum LED diodes offer compared to an HPS, Metal halide, or fluorescent grow light. HID and fluorescent grow bulbs can be designed to emit a specific spectrum that has been optimized for plant growth, and more specifically, different stages of plant growth. To date, LED lights are unable to combine all colors in the light spectrum in one single diode. Therefore in order to get a blend of colors, LED lights combine different color diodes to produce a specific spectrum that plants will respond to with healthier growth.
Now this is neither good nor bad. It just means the light spectrum that the grow light is producing is produced differently in an LED compared to a full spectrum HPS. It’s important to note the ability that an LED has to manipulate a specific color in the light spectrum to produce the maximum peak spectral output of a specific color in the light spectrum. The most notable color to mention is red which is a prefered color by plants during the blooming stages. Currently, HPS lights do not have the ability to provide the maximum spectral output of red light that a plant can use but an LED can. By maximizing that spectral output, you maximize the amount of light photosynthesized by the plant. Another advantage over HIDs that many higher end LEDs have is the ability to change the light spectrum using a dial or a set of switches. As technology improves I’d expect that the level of light spectrum manipulation will improve as well.
Light Intensity
Another big area of concern for gardeners thinking about growing under LEDs is the amount of light intensity that LED grow lights are able to provide. We saw obvious differences between the 3 watt and 5 watt diode in our tests with the 5 watt diode showing a much better ability to bloom summer crops that are used to the intense sunlight and warmth available during the summer months. While warmth can be artificially added to a grow room, light intensity is usually supplied by a Metal Halide or High Pressure Sodium HID light. Even the best fluorescent grow lights will not grow fruits and flowers as big as an HID (high intensity discharge) light. So for now I have to give HID lights the advantage over LEDs when it comes to light intensity. Not only is this intense light necessary for fruiting and flowering plants to reach maximum growth but also for the ability of the light penetrate deeper into a plant canopy. This means that when growing taller plants, the more intense your light is, the more budding sites you will see growing vertically along the plants stems. And generally more flowering sites means bigger yields.
Now this is neither good nor bad. It just means the light spectrum that the grow light is producing is produced differently in an LED compared to a full spectrum HPS. It’s important to note the ability that an LED has to manipulate a specific color in the light spectrum to produce the maximum peak spectral output of a specific color in the light spectrum. The most notable color to mention is red which is a prefered color by plants during the blooming stages. Currently, HPS lights do not have the ability to provide the maximum spectral output of red light that a plant can use but an LED can. By maximizing that spectral output, you maximize the amount of light photosynthesized by the plant. Another advantage over HIDs that many higher end LEDs have is the ability to change the light spectrum using a dial or a set of switches. As technology improves I’d expect that the level of light spectrum manipulation will improve as well.
Light Intensity
Another big area of concern for gardeners thinking about growing under LEDs is the amount of light intensity that LED grow lights are able to provide. We saw obvious differences between the 3 watt and 5 watt diode in our tests with the 5 watt diode showing a much better ability to bloom summer crops that are used to the intense sunlight and warmth available during the summer months. While warmth can be artificially added to a grow room, light intensity is usually supplied by a Metal Halide or High Pressure Sodium HID light. Even the best fluorescent grow lights will not grow fruits and flowers as big as an HID (high intensity discharge) light. So for now I have to give HID lights the advantage over LEDs when it comes to light intensity. Not only is this intense light necessary for fruiting and flowering plants to reach maximum growth but also for the ability of the light penetrate deeper into a plant canopy. This means that when growing taller plants, the more intense your light is, the more budding sites you will see growing vertically along the plants stems. And generally more flowering sites means bigger yields.
bottom line as it was mentioned 650 watt led compares to a 1000 then i look on line at a 840 watt led claiming the same thing comparable to a 1000 watt right now LED's are to expensive or the big guys you know the ones making huge yields not talking average grower talking organized crime billion dollar industry would be using it and there not right now i am seeing a few grows where there getting close to or up to gram per watt but there a long way from pulling 1180 dry grams per 1 k and that's over 1 gram per everyone mentions the heat bla bla bla never really mentioning the actuial area a led covers which again doesn't compare to a hid
i read some of that thread link you sent me light movers i own many and there garbage i found a loss in yield using them so there in junk pile its constant light a plant needs and intensity for it to grow and yield LED just doesn;t have the intensity as a id does
i read some of that thread link you sent me light movers i own many and there garbage i found a loss in yield using them so there in junk pile its constant light a plant needs and intensity for it to grow and yield LED just doesn;t have the intensity as a id does
Panel draws 300 watts
Most 1k HPS in a hood, no glass, read 1400 around 24 inches. And then we get into PUR vs PAR... and LED wins.
Sorry this guy tried to rain on your parade GP, keep up the good work you do. I'm watching!
How are those screw in bulbs working for the veg space? I am running 220 watts of PL-L's in mine and want to switch.
those bulbs were working just fine. i have moved those clones under my two wex-c150 arrays now.
i will be starting up some new seeds soon. prolly the last of my NL's. looking for at least 1 male and some seeds in the next grow. so the new bulbs will be put back to work soon.
considering throwing some serious seeds bubblegum into the room also.
