cfl watts to yeild

watermelon · Nov 26, 2006

ive seen alot of people growing great plants with good yeilds using 45w cfl's, and such, but all i can find locally are 20 watt cfls.

they come in pretty cheap so i reckon i could bulk up on them and have a decent amount, but what sort of yeild should i expect from such small bulbs?

Pops · Nov 26, 2006

Watermelon, I don't know where you are, but if you have access to a Lowes, they carry the 45 watt. Sorry I can't answer your other question. I have never used cfl for flowering. If you do use one(several actually) make sure that you are using the daylite bulbs for flowering, not the warm or cool white. You need to have different spectrums for flowering than you have for veg.

hoyt · Nov 26, 2006

i disagree with the daylight statement. usually daylight bulbs are more of a bluer K. what you should shoot for is more blue color in veg (around 6300K), and more redish in flower (around 2800K). however, you should have both in both cycles.

DeadlyFoez · Nov 26, 2006

I agree with hoyt in a huge way. My buddy did a scrog grow using about 300 watts of cf's and he got about 1 1/2 ounces. But there was a huge problem with the way the plant grew due to other circumstances which caused him to cut early. But there was extreme potential for about 4 ounces if done longer.

watermelon · Nov 26, 2006

thanks guys thats exactly the info i was looking for.

i think im either gonna need to find some bigger cfl's locally (UK) or just go with a 250hps.

bhuda-master · Nov 26, 2006

try ebay mate, type in envirolites and have a look, ive just picked one blue spec 200w and one red spec 200w for about 23-26 quid, hangers are about a fiver. if you get two blue spec and two red spec and get them going in both veg and flower cycles you should see a very healthy result, good luck with your grow,
bhuda master

R00KIE · Nov 26, 2006

Or if you can get your hands on a 250 yields will be much better than cfl's...

Guest · Nov 26, 2006

some good info here by lougrew! who had CFL's dialed in as well as any I've ever seen.

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=12813&highlight=lougrew

Pops · Nov 26, 2006

Hoyt, I had it backwards and you were right. The full spectrum daylight 6500k is best in veg, not flower. No wonder I use HPS instead of cfl. Sorry for the misinformation. Lowes does carry a good selection of both warm and daylight.

Brastaman · Nov 27, 2006

if you are using 300 watts of cfl lighting then it would the cost the same as a small HID lamp. but the HID lamp would be more efficient.......unless heat may be a problem(but not really).

R00KIE · Nov 27, 2006

Hehe... I'm not totally sure but i think the heat from 300 watts of cfl's may be worse than a 250 hps....
I started with cfls and they get seriously hot....
I burnt my finger on a 42 watt once, pretty f'in bad too... Left a nasty blister...

Guest · Nov 27, 2006

The heat from 300 watts of flo's as opposed to a MH 250 is uh 50 watts of heat lol.a 250 will not put out the heat of 300 watts,it may be diffused differently but its still more heat

Brastaman · Nov 28, 2006

yah. i think fluoros actually generate more heat than hid's but they disperse it differently so it seems like it's less heat, i think.

i would go HID unless you want to experiement wit fluoro's.

pontiac · Nov 28, 2006

I've noticed that smaller CFL setups can yield up to .5g/w. For example, 200 watts of cfl can yield 3.57 ounces. This is all based on speculation, but i find it to be pretty accurate.

Joe A. Grower · Nov 28, 2006

SKELETOR said:
The heat from 300 watts of flo's as opposed to a MH 250 is uh 50 watts of heat lol.a 250 will not put out the heat of 300 watts,it may be diffused differently but its still more heat

Bingo. A lot of guys don't seem to get this idea. Energy is energy, guys. Remember your highschool science. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It just changes forms.

So you've got 300 W of electrical energy going into your system. The ballast and bulb will convert most of that to heat, and the rest into light. The light then gets absorbed by the plant and the various items in the room. So what form of energy is the light converted into? Well, a plant can convert around 5% of the total light input into chemical energy. The rest of those photons get converted into . . . drumroll, puleeese . . . you guessed it! Heat.

Regardless of your lighting system, almost all of the electrical input will wind up as heat. So a 300 W light -- whether it is flouro, metal halide, high pressure sodium, LED, or whatever -- is basically a 300W heater. A 250W light is basically a 250W heater. Flouros tend to spread that heat out more, and don't have a big "hot spot" directly in the center of the light pattern the way HID's do. However, if you were to put 250W of flouros into one sealed grow cab and 250W of HPS into another, I'd bet the overall temperature inside the two would be just about the same.

cobo · Nov 29, 2006

watermelon said:
thanks guys thats exactly the info i was looking for.

i think im either gonna need to find some bigger cfl's locally (UK) or just go with a 250hps.

If your going cfl's you wud be much better getting a ECOLITE (Envirolite) i've got good results from them , they are low energy which helps keep the electric bills down and you will have " NO " Heat issuses to worry about freely available in the UK ... i got the eco lite instead of the envirolite as grow shops said too many enviros were coming back with faults ... have a look at what you can get with eco lite

Envirolites

My ECO lites at work

mangled · Nov 29, 2006

i would say a half Oz to a Oz a plant with cfl
but that can all depend on how long you veg and it you top, lst etc

Guest · Nov 29, 2006

verynice nugs coming from those cfl's....very nice indeed

Lemon · Dec 3, 2006

SKELETOR said:
The heat from 300 watts of flo's as opposed to a MH 250 is uh 50 watts of heat lol.a 250 will not put out the heat of 300 watts,it may be diffused differently but its still more heat

Thats not nesicarily true.

If you have a 300 watt fluorescent lamp, and a 250 watt MH lamp, nothing says you will get 50 additional watts of heat from the 300 watt lamp. This would only hold true if 100% of the energy output from the lamps were in the form of heat.

Different lighting types produce different ratios of energy output forms. All lamps emit heat, light, and a small amount of sound energy.

For example, using the fluoro and MH example:

The 300 watt fluoro setup may very well produce 200 watts of light, and 100 watts of heat.

The 250 watt MH setup may very well produce 150 watts of light and 100 watts of heat.

The end result in this scanario is that both produce the same amount of heat, with the difference of 50 watts being output as light.

cobo · Dec 3, 2006

You can hold an eco lite in ur hand when its on without burning ur hand

cfl watts to yeild

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