The Ultimate L.E.D Grow. 126w Penetrator - *New Technique

[MeanBean]

Nicoli, Knock it off. The buds I got are great, it's a blurry shot. I never even posted bud pics yet.

Blynx, I get what your saying man! I don't like the formula for grams per Watt myself. I really wish I could find some sort of standard documentation of GPW.

NOW you want me to disregrard time the lights are on and the weeks the grow goes on.

So now where in the handbook does it say if don't use autoflowers or if I divide each plants side I can't use gpw just like anyone else?

 

[TicalionStalion]

Bean, lets see some closeups buddy. Im real interested to see the nugs that these LEDs can grow. I work at a hydro shop and we get atleast 1 customer a day asking if we carry LEDs or what we've heard about them. so far we dont carry any untill they start to REALLY have that penetration and can flower the ladies as well as an HID light. but I feel like in a few years, as the technology keeps improving and improving, LEDs may totally replace HIDs. we'll have to see. thats why I been following ur grow and Im REALLY interested in seeing more threads like it, and the end product. I wonder how these new plasma lights they are making will work. seems promising. I wonder what the future of lighting will be in 5-10 years. guess we'll just have to wait and see!!

nice grow man, I really like how you had everything set-up too. nice scrog for sure!

take care man. POST THOSE PICS!!

 

[MeanBean]

You got it TicalionStalion, gonna set it up this week. I tried once already but I am learning about my camera.

Figured out the prob though, I can't set the pic size for waay bigger than I need, it just makes un necessary blurriness and the need for more stillness. I tested my camera at a wedding over the weekend and I think I got it. Not today though, maybe Thursday I will play around.

The buds look good especially comparing to a similar setup just with hid instead of led.

Also no matter how you wanna cut it I will still get waaaay better gpw than a similar hid grow. even a 250 hid uses 350 watts from the wall.

 

[blazeoneup]

Honestly GPW doesn't mean shit when all you end up with is a buncha fluffy popcorn fluffanoogins. Not to be a dick, but look at that shit.

Also do you think you gave them enough food? What the hell happened here?

Hey nicoli, Whats up dude!!!

I just want to make it clear that MEANBEAN is not the most experienced grower and doesnt claim to be. He is still learning and developing his skills as a grower and skills as a camera man which takes a lot of practice and trial and error.

I must admit they dont look to special in quality but I have taken many pics myself in the past of buds that in person look so awsome and amazing but come out looking like shit in pictures.

Aside from that you cant judge the results of the lights based on a moderate grower skillset, I have no reason to think his stuff would look much different if he used a comparable HID light.

I know your just pointing out what you see, Harsh as you may have worded it. But you should probably be a slight bit nicer.

I have a test grow with the 205w model of LED he is using and though I am weeks from finishing, I am far enough to state that the nugs do develope normally and they dont look any different from any other nugs I've grown using HID lighting. Maybe slightly smaller and less filled out but otherwise completely normal developement.

You have to keep in account meanbeans new to this ad doesnt have 100's of grows and so you cannot expect his pictures and plants to be mouthwatering amazing. Cant blame the light source grower skill and stuff plays a role as well.

ON THE GPW issue you can really look at it either way, Yeah what he done was pretty much the same as having two units one on each side but it still was just one single unit. So its personally how you choose to look at it.

MEANBEAN nice grow, I am sure the pictures dont do the plants no justice!

Nicoli what I am saying is, You sound like your throwing blame at the LEDS, You say it doesnt matter what you got if it looks like his does.

I can say his looks like it does, Based on the strain he is using his environmental settings, His feeding schedule etc, Nothing to do with the LIGHT SOURCE.

If MEANBEAN done the exact same grow with a comparable HID the results would very simular...

 

[MeanBean]

Thanks Blaze, I'm getting the tripod out for this. wish I could do it now but i my girl gets jealous if I am not taking pics of her instead....

Your absolutely right, I have only had 4-5 grows now and man i feel like I have learned alot, lot more to go. Also I have been building these "more than simple" cabs and it's also been a learning experience. I still need a good strain! I haven't even gotten my nutes right yet!!!

But hey with my threads I have been always just been trying to prove that led's are a viable-comparable light source. now you've heard it from blaze himself:

"the nugs do develop normally and they don't look any different from any other nugs I've grown using HID lighting. Maybe slightly smaller and less filled out but otherwise completely normal development.
"

With that being said i feel the price argument should be dead. Plug your current ballast into a power meter and calculate out your grams per KILOWATT hour, not good. Don't even get me started on all the cooling stuff..

Now I am sure someone is thinking about rolling up in here and saying "bla I want BIG buds regardless of power" well if so get in your hummer and floor it to the hydro shop and by 3 1000w bulbs, go home and plug them in bro!!!

But I spent 475 on my light, not sure what i could get for the same amount in a hid bulb, but I would need more venting shit, yeah and it would be noisy. I got 1.4gpw with a constent pull of 118w PERIOD.

Blazeone if you disagree about the power deal i don't mind having your honest opinion here, but thats how I feel.

 

[blazeoneup]

Thanks Blaze, I'm getting the tripod out for this. wish I could do it now but i my girl gets jealous if I am not taking pics of her instead....

Your absolutely right, I have only had 4-5 grows now and man i feel like I have learned alot, lot more to go. Also I have been building these "more than simple" cabs and it's also been a learning experience. I still need a good strain! I haven't even gotten my nutes right yet!!!

You have and will continue to get better and better, We've all been new to this at some point. I remember my 1st grow to this day and the 10th as well, None of which were special and my 5th grow wasnt as good as your 5th so that tells ya something. It's all a learning experience and as long as you keep up the hard work you will get it down Things get better with each new grow and each new experience, Long as you try and progress each time you do a grow you will do nothing but prosper!

But hey with my threads I have been always just been trying to prove that led's are a viable-comparable light source. now you've heard it from blaze himself:

You are some people just cant accept the fact that LEDS work.

Take it from ME!!
the nugs do develop normally and they don't look any different from any other nugs I've grown using HID lighting. Maybe slightly smaller and less filled out but otherwise completely normal development.

With that being said i feel the price argument should be dead. Plug your current ballast into a power meter and calculate out your grams per KILOWATT hour, not good. Don't even get me started on all the cooling stuff..

In some sense yeah, But the truth is if LEDS want to have a future in this business they have to compete with the prices of the lights most widely used or else they may end up being a constant second rate light source. Of course new techs always pricey and I'm sure over the next years we will see quite a price drop, Just not going to happen over night. Meanwhile people should support this new tech because if manufactures are producing units and no one is buying them they will quit, and this just delays the price drop.

Now I am sure someone is thinking about rolling up in here and saying "bla I want BIG buds regardless of power" well if so get in your hummer and floor it to the hydro shop and by 3 1000w bulbs, go home and plug them in bro!!!

Good point

But I spent 475 on my light, not sure what i could get for the same amount in a hid bulb, but I would need more venting shit, yeah and it would be noisy. I got 1.4gpw with a constent pull of 118w PERIOD.

Look at it however one sees fit, Bottom line is you pulled x grams from x ammount of watts!

Blazeone if you disagree about the power deal i don't mind having your honest opinion here, but thats how I feel.

I just made a post in another thread about my opinion on the power consumption.

From my view the bulb replacement for HID is negated by the 20 year + lifetime of coil ballast.

I imagine over the course of 10 years you will have to replace 10 HID bulbs and completely replace your LED light. So added together its pretty close in cost in this area IMO!

The real savings with leds come from direct power consumption. No need for all the air cooling and less overall power consumption.

 

[Snype]

Mean Bean,
I didn't read the whole log yet but I'm getting the impression that you used 1 light for 2 spaces and put in a divider and moved the light to the other space when the other plants went to sleep. If this is true then you didn't get 1.44 grams per watt in anyones standards. That's the same thing as me moving my 1000's to another room every day for 12 hours and then putting it back into my other room after that. If I mistook your log then I'm sorry. If that's what you did then you got .72 grams per watt. If you're going to do logs to show everyone what's up then at least be real. If that's the case then I can just keep moving my HPS lights around and get a fake 2 watts per gram. Don't be misleading like LED girl. Also a 250 watt HID doesn't use 350 watts. Electronic ballasts are here to stay and they don't use that much. At least be real about your tests. If I'm right about how you ran your set up and you're really trying to convince people that you got 1.44gpw when you really did half, you'll only make yourself look like a clown. Don't take this as a flame or anything but it's important to get real information to the people and not your weird way of thinking. Also stems do weigh a lot and do they even crack. Buds can look dry and then wet up again in the jars and you have to air them out again and lose more weight. If I weighed my stems in my calculations, it would not be right cause I would get so much more weight. Maybe I'm misinterprating what you are saying but regardless you have a funny way of thinking.

 

[blynx]

Are you going to keep running this setup (2 areas with mover)?

You seem to have done a lot better using the light in a non-movable manner in your first and second runs.

Your cost per gram is 23% higher using this method than previous grows.

Lets say it costs you $.10 (10 cents) per hour to run this unit. Really this number ($.10) doesn't matter because it is a constant.

Tho if you get charged different rates at different times then this method will actually be more costly than an area that gets charged the same rate at all hours of the day.

Let's use $.10 per hr and say you run your strains 10 weeks (70 days).

In your previous runs you've said you've gotten around a QP under the 126w, so we'll call those grows 112gram dry grows.

For those grows, you ran the light for 12 hours a day.

Your cost per day is $1.20 per day

(12 hours on * $.10 per hour) = $1.20 per day

The light ran 70 days so your total electric cost previous rounds was $84

70 days * $1.20 per day = $84

You got 112g dry, so your previous round gram cost was $.75 per gram

($84 electric cost / 112g dry) = $.75 per gram

This round;

You ran your light for 24 hours a day.

Your cost per day is $2.40 per day

(24 hours on * $.10 per hour) = $2.40 per day

The light ran 70 days, so your total electric cost this round is $168

70 days * $2.40 per day = $168

You got 170g dry, so this round gram cost is $.98 per gram

$168 / 170 = $.98 per gram

Still cheap overall (that's why we grow our own) but it's still costing you, 23% more for that bud than it did your previous two rounds.

 

[MeanBean]

Snype, defending the gpw measurement. it's a generic term how many watts your lights use compared to how many grams you get per harvest. O i know I am beating the system with my ingenuity but I know for a fact there are grows on here where people leave their light on for 24 hours with auto flowers, and still use gpw. My 1/8 piece of plastic was my choice of design, and it turned out pretty good.

If I were to of just let the light go on the mover and ran a auto flowering strain everyone would be all "yeah gpw" meanwhile the same amount of electric is used for my scenario.

Why doesn't someone post their Gram per kilowatt hour with an hid light, then I will do the same. My goal is to have the most efficient system possible, I'd be happy to do a "grow system" vs "grow system" deal for kilowatt hours. Guess if you use soil you already have an advantage over my 7 watt air pump.

 

[MeanBean]

Blynx, Thanks for adding that up for me, I am seriously glad your being cool about this discussion.

So to keep it real, not only did this strain cost me more per gram on your scale, I bet if you added up actual days of electric on this grow was about 3-4 weeks longer so yeah that makes it even worse. this strain is becomming less and less liked by me.

But like blaze said, I'm noobish, no denying it. I have alot of variables going on blynx but I feel this grow coulda gone better if the plants had a bigger root system. Either way I need a faster strain because 12 weeks is way to much electric. I need a dang good 8 week strain no nanners and good quality scrogging machine!!!

It's a battle! But I couldn't even do it without the convenience of led's

 

[Snype]

Mean bean just because most people in life are stupid doesn't mean that you have to stoop to their level. If you want to think about it that way then add double to everyones HPS grows and you see that you don't get the advantage in LED's that you think that you do. Maybe if you can get 2 GPW on a real grow with LED's running for 12 or 13 hours under one space then it is worth it but until that happens, then I see that LEDs are the next scam in the growing world unless you have a micro grow that heats up too much or you have very low ceilings.

 

[MeanBean]

Mean bean just because most people in life are stupid doesn't mean that you have to stoop to their level. If you want to think about it that way then add double to everyones HPS grows and you see that you don't get the advantage in LED's that you think that you do. Maybe if you can get 2 GPW on a real grow with LED's running for 12 or 13 hours under one space then it is worth it but until that happens, then I see that LEDs are the next scam in the growing world unless you have a micro grow that heats up too much or you have very low ceilings.

Snype if you think this is all a scam I cant help ya bro. I am not calling anyone stupid you are. i am just stating how gpw is used here on earth. Yeah it's a REAL broad term. By the way when you calculate out your gpw are you counting the actual wattage or just what the bulb is rated at? might wanna add about 125-200 to that wattage if not, but I am not coming over to let you use my power meter. Just know it's bad.

You only want to use gpw when talking about hid grows, but mine we need to use actual power. Why not make it even???

 

[MeanBean]

If you can read Upside Down THIS MAY SHOCK YOU.​

75 more watts then the 345 watt HGL unit, and it would just stomp this turd.​

 

[blynx]

Blynx, Thanks for adding that up for me, I am seriously glad your being cool about this discussion.

So to keep it real, not only did this strain cost me more per gram on your scale, I bet if you added up actual days of electric on this grow was about 3-4 weeks longer so yeah that makes it even worse. this strain is becomming less and less liked by me.

But like blaze said, I'm noobish, no denying it. I have alot of variables going on blynx but I feel this grow coulda gone better if the plants had a bigger root system. Either way I need a faster strain because 12 weeks is way to much electric. I need a dang good 8 week strain no nanners and good quality scrogging machine!!!

It's a battle! But I couldn't even do it without the convenience of led's

I have nothing against LEDs, they do grow bud.

I just hate seeing numbers thrown around that are mostly used to increase sales, BUT not really showing the true picture.

If you still think that you got 1.44 GPW and not .72 GPW, here's another way to think about it.

In your first two grows you got 112g dry from 118w, ie you got .95 GPW, which cost you 75 cents per gram.

If you only used 118w (as you claim in your 1.44gpw calc), then your cost per gram would go down and not up.

Remember the electric cost is the same per hour. If you used the same amount of total wattage, then your monthly cost would be the same, ie $84 and not $168, but it's not, the total cost went up.

Because your previous grows and this grow are based on separate areas, each on a 12/12 schedule, you have to count each area yield and wattage use for each area.

Your GPW cannot go up while your cost per gram also goes up. That's not how it works.

If you really did increase your GPW (from .95 GPW to 1.44 GPW) using the same amount of wattage then your cost per gram would go down, but it did not, it went up.

The only way to explain an increase in cost per gram, would be to have a decrease in GPW, ie you went from .95 GPW to .72 GPW

 

[Snype]

Mean Bean,
Blynx is telling you how it goes maybe you can understand it that way. It's about watts being used. I agree with you that GPW termanolgy can get a little loose sometimes but it's only taken 3 different ways depending on the equation. You are right though, when doing these tests compared to each other, it is best to include all watts used but there's a lot of people who only use the bulb watts in the equation. It's just mainly used to see how you do personally compared to your past harvests so you can judge it better. It's not that many more watts. About your HID ballast though, magnetic ballasts are old technology and now we have the digital ballasts that are much more efficient. With the digital ballasts (electronic) they are constant. They use microchips in them and it makes it use less watts than the old magnetic ballasts. Magnetic ballasts go down hill over time and also get messed up when you don't warm them up before you turn them off, or power outages and stuff like that. Over time the magnetic ballasts start using more watts but that is old technology. Electric ballasts are the future and will phase out most of the magnetic ballasts. My Lumatek draws out less than 10% of extra electricity and it stays consistent over time. The point is that you are very limited with LED's cause they can only penetrate the canopy so much. They are not bad lights and you have proved that. The problem that I have is that people like LED Girl try to make it seem like you can get so much more than HID's but we can see that it is not true. The whole point is, it's a light that is comparable to HID light. It has it's uses for sea of green micro grows but it'll never be used in commercial OPS. Growers judge how good of a job they did by measuring GPW but you can see that it is still hard to get that number but not impossible once you have your perfect moms that are high yielding and you learn exactly how they want to be grown, fed, and other factors to maximize the yield. I'm sure everyone is happy that you did this log but for me personally, I get offended when people put out information to the masses to confuse them but I know that weren't your intentions. You seem like you're on a good start in your knowledge of growing and that's really dope. You'll do well in this hobby in life and good luck with the rest of your grows.

 

[MeanBean]

Snype, I think your making a pretty bold statement saying led's wont be used in commercial ops. I know you don't like false information but you need to go around and correct everyone else's threads who use their light beyond 12 hours and still used gpw..

The light used in this grow is comparable to a 250hps. you wanna talk commercial then let's see what a few 345w units can do. Plus who knows, an even bigger panel may come around someday.

P.s. i don't have what I need now but I am pretty sure the amps your digital ballast pulls is way higher than a comparable led unit. the kilowatt hours is wayy more. I am gonna gather up some more info and figure out the REAL costs of those. it ain't good man.


There's no smoke and mirrors in this thread, if you don't like my math don't use it. If you want a half pound for 118 watts, do this.

 

[Snype]

There's no smoke and mirrors in this thread, if you don't like my math don't use it. If you want a half pound for 118 watts, do this.

The point is that your math is not correct. You didn't use 118 watts, You used 236 watts. Just because other people calculate the numbers wrong doesn't mean that you should when you are educated to it now instead of trying to hype up your numbers. All the information is here for you to add up and one day you're figure it out. Here's a read on the Lumeteks, There's some good info in there comparing magnetics and electronic ballasts. Look at the picture of all those lights in that warehouse and think about it if they were LED's right on top of the plants for popcorn buds.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=148472

 

[blynx]

There's no smoke and mirrors in this thread, if you don't like my math don't use it. If you want a half pound for 118 watts, do this.

You can use your math all you want, but it's still wrong!

A 170 grams does NOT equal a half pound. 170 grams is 6 ounces, which is ~30% smaller than a half pound.

This is the point we are trying to make. You are throwing numbers around that are incorrect, don't really make sense the way you use them, and are inflated so it makes things sound better than they actually are.

'A half pound for 118 watts' doesn't make sense.

Why don't you say 'If you want to grow 6 ounces with a 126 w LED unit running 24/7, do this'?

 

[MeanBean]

O yeah, ok your right on the 6 ounces thing, should b 8 lol!!

as far as the GPW thing you two can pick it apart all you want, I never saw a post that read 600w hps unit @ 17/24hrs hrs.... why do I have to do this??? I know you would like to hack my gpw in half.

I don't have 236 watts I have 118. THANK YOU!!!

Thanks for repeatedly stating your opinion though. Now go somewhere else and question them about posting their gpw without adding in the time the light was on or your just harassing me. I have asked multiple times for someone using GPW with hours on as part of the formula lol!!!!

 

[Snype]

O yeah, ok your right on the 6 ounces thing, should b 8 lol!!

as far as the GPW thing you two can pick it apart all you want, I never saw a post that read 600w hps unit @ 17/24hrs hrs.... why do I have to do this??? I know you would like to hack my gpw in half.

I don't have 236 watts I have 118. THANK YOU!!!

Thanks for repeatedly stating your opinion though. Now go somewhere else and question them about posting their gpw without adding in the time the light was on or your just harassing me. I have asked multiple times for someone using GPW with hours on as part of the formula lol!!!!

I'll go away now but I think that you were asking for a formula and here it is for you:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=78479&highlight=GPW