Ed Rosenthal Say's CFL's May be Better than HPS for Micro Growing
- Thread starter Thundurkel
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dontae1000
Member
good common sense
good common sense
im surprised that more people arent aware to theese facts u bring up, ganja needs 10000 ish lumes they say to flower, it takes an awful lot of cfl to truly produce this, since half the lite is wasted, they look brighter i agree but thats becuase they are, doesnt mean they brighter for your plants though, the photons just bounce back n forth inside the spiral arch of the tube, its a piss poor design if you ask me(cfl). even for reduceing power consumption for the world, they just flat out waste light. their application for micros that cant fit a a shorter t-8 or t-5 setup is unsurpassed and perfectly applicable, im just surprised people go through the trouble of hooking up so many of them and clutter up thier grow space when they could make it so much easier and more efficient with tubes as opposed to coils.
good common sense
I been reading thru this for a while now and its clear there are haters..lol oh well guess there always will be ignorance.. But anyways its a no brainer that cfls are gonna bring up the ladies better in a smaller enviroment. Better colour spectrums available now and much better spread of light across the plants with multiple cfls.. Someone mention the smaller the better for lumen output, now thats true but dont forget theres always pro's and cons.. For example smaller wattage cfls have alot less light penetration than slightly bigger ones and even tho when scrogging u dont need much you still need an ample amount!! My personal opinion is that T5's are far far better than cfl's as they solve all efficiancy problems associated with the bad design of cfl lights.. dont foget only a small amount light from a cfl is going directly onto the plant.. nearly half is going into the middle of the tube before bouncing out and even then half of that is going upto the reflector before coming back down to the plants.. T5 are essentially a cfl with all the tubes in one long line..U get the picture?? and so have even better light spread!!! In due course i should imagine that hps will have a hard time keeping up with certain high output flouro's in the right set up!!! we shall see... Lumens aint everything. Spectrum of light and spread are just as if not more important..Peace!!!
im surprised that more people arent aware to theese facts u bring up, ganja needs 10000 ish lumes they say to flower, it takes an awful lot of cfl to truly produce this, since half the lite is wasted, they look brighter i agree but thats becuase they are, doesnt mean they brighter for your plants though, the photons just bounce back n forth inside the spiral arch of the tube, its a piss poor design if you ask me(cfl). even for reduceing power consumption for the world, they just flat out waste light. their application for micros that cant fit a a shorter t-8 or t-5 setup is unsurpassed and perfectly applicable, im just surprised people go through the trouble of hooking up so many of them and clutter up thier grow space when they could make it so much easier and more efficient with tubes as opposed to coils.
All I have to say about this is cover your cab with Mylar and you get more with coils hard mounted horizontal than a T5 fixture like my sunblaze strip where the tip of the tube is completely covered by the ballast it's in so I feel I can only get 70% of the light that it producing unlike my CFLs who's light is reflected all over my cab and off every wall
The frustrating thing about the High Times article quoted above is that it's really not comparing a representative fluoro setup to a typical or equivalent HID one. The fluoro technology being used is T12, which are ancient, impotent bulbs (in comparison to, say, a 48" T5HO). A 40-watt, 48" T12 gives off around 2500 lumens, give or take, while a 54-watt T5HO grow bulb the same size throws 5000 lumens. Plus, these latter bulbs are designed to be overdriven. A single 2x overdriven T5HO bulb would put out 8,500 lumens. 16 of THOSE - instead of 16 t-12s - would be approx 136,000 lumens. Now THAT is something worth comparing to an 95,000-lumen, 600Watt HID. T12 fluoro technology is from about three technological generations ago.
forgive me if im wrong rambam but my understanding is that t5ho is already being overdriven and so its unadvisable to overdrive them further. The same goes for pll bulbs which are essentially a t5ho tube bent once. I remember reading aquarium forums for any references to overdriving pll bulbs because i wanted to do this myself, but all the overdring was being dont without HO bulbs- t12-t8-t5. One poster said she had worked for a manufacturer to test the safe limits of pll and there was large variability between individual bulbs. Some could fail and catch fire! although im not sure how far they were pushed
I do not think that a 54 watt T5HO is simply an overdriven 28w T5 bulb. They use different ballasts and have different internal design specs. They are not interchangeable with the only difference being the rated power of the ballasts. From NanoReefaholic at aquariumpros: "T is the style of tube, 5 is the diameter, HO stands for high output. The ballast needs to be matched not only to the output of lamp (NO - normal output, HO - high output, or VHO - very high output) but also to wattage.
You see it common on normal output ballasts that they list T8 or T12 but only 40W. These are both NO (normal output) lamps and both will have 40W @ 48" so the ballast is common to both.
T5's are 28W @ 48" and T5HO's are 54W @ 48". If you were to place the T5HO lamp into the T5 ballast the lamp may not fire. If you were to place a T5 lamp into a T5HO ballast you may be in for a very nasty surprise.
"
You see it common on normal output ballasts that they list T8 or T12 but only 40W. These are both NO (normal output) lamps and both will have 40W @ 48" so the ballast is common to both.
T5's are 28W @ 48" and T5HO's are 54W @ 48". If you were to place the T5HO lamp into the T5 ballast the lamp may not fire. If you were to place a T5 lamp into a T5HO ballast you may be in for a very nasty surprise.
"
A 2X overdriven T5HO would be driven at 128Watts. This is quite commonly done, in a wide variety of applications. 2X overdrive is considered a safe level of overdrive. Even the wikipedia article mentions this. The online article most commonly referenced as a how-to for overdriving is here. It describes overdriving 54 T5HO bulbs as well. http://www.geocities.com/teeley2/overdrv1.html
I totally agree and was wondering why dude was running t12s and in the article
it said 32w bulbs but in the pics I noticed they were 40w T12s
I suppose someone would have to science it out with a HPS, a UV-emitting CMH and a coated CMH. (Some (not all, I assume?) use coatings and glass to control the UV output.)
Maybe I will, I'm about to add a 250 to my arsenal.
And smokey, I know you weren't attempting to be confrontational or anything like that. I'm laid back, we good.
I just like to be clear, cover all the other possible variables when I make a comparison. (In our cases, we even use the FF solubles with very similar feedings and media.) We are trying to science it out ourselves because there's no sense going out of our way to not do what works, or to do what doesn't. I just know that the buds from my:
beat out HPS buds. However, the third member of our little 'grow family' uses HPS with supplemental T12 shop lights. No UVB. He's also been growing for about 4 decades longer than the other two of us - but his stuff beats the straight HPS buds as well. He says he added the tubes for resin production, FWIW. While he certainly grows em better as plants, mine are comparable in resin production. His case brings up a lot more variables, though, so take it accordingly.
And the leafy thing... yeah. Mine leaf up a lot more than the HPS version. But the leaves are caked...
Enough rambling... I blame the heady flouro buds.
-s
Yea I would have to agree with Strainbrain, I had given my buddy who uses a room with 2 1ks in glass sealed hoods with duct work and 3gal pots of coco on drip feeders a Thunder Goo cut I had vegged out for a while that was 12-13" or so . He flowered it and it was the Frostiest girl in the room out of SR71 Purple Kush and Querkle ( since my pheno is normal, not fighting either) but it still didn't get as frosty as when I've grown it out under my fluoros so that was a sign for me to keep playing in my box of CFLs ... I've also read MANY articles and some claim tp be scientific fact that Fluoros produce better quality more potent product but only half the size of HID... Now the problem I have with that is I have been around quite a few GOOD HID grows and trimmed many a HID bud. With that said when I did my coco grow under CFLs (and I cut it a week and a half early mind you) and had a rock hard bud just as fat as A LOT of the HID buds I had seen at harvest on plants that were 3-4ft tall yielding 4-6oz made me wonder just how hard the fluoro grows had been pushed.... I know this may sound like some more fuck HID go CFL shit but it's not I was seriously shocked when I did it as I was a little skeptical but I had to prove fuckers wrong...
So we all know the penitration issue and I have been thinking about the T5 systems with 4-8 bulbs you can hang sideways,verticle,or horizontal and cover the plants in a box of T5 tubes! Toss a few blue and purple tubes in the mix and I'm willing to bet you would have a very decent yield no? I dunno, it's just that my lower buds were a bit fluffy until I put up the mylar and then it was dense nuggage all the way to the soil line. Now I'm thinking with straight light at full power instead of being reflected on the sides would make some fat fucking buds what do you all think???
So we all know the penitration issue and I have been thinking about the T5 systems with 4-8 bulbs you can hang sideways,verticle,or horizontal and cover the plants in a box of T5 tubes! Toss a few blue and purple tubes in the mix and I'm willing to bet you would have a very decent yield no? I dunno, it's just that my lower buds were a bit fluffy until I put up the mylar and then it was dense nuggage all the way to the soil line. Now I'm thinking with straight light at full power instead of being reflected on the sides would make some fat fucking buds what do you all think???
This is just the best site in the world for fluoro-heads, by the way. Lots of support and knowledge. Since you bring up the whole penetration issue, Thunderkel, this is where I think overdriving the T5HO bulb becomes useful, because it makes the light super-blazing-intense. This guy says he used one sunpark SL15 ballast (rated to output 64w-80w)for each 54w T5HO and got the four T5HO bulbs as bright as a 250-watt HPS, in terms of lumens. That is actually just a 1.5x overdrive. 2x is considered safe. http://www.geocities.com/teeley2/overdrv1.html
But if you have to give the bulbs twice the wattage to get 1.7 times the light output, is that still worth it? I really want to see a fluoro compete with HID in terms of yield, but does anyone know how much wattage an overdriven bulb actually consumes?
If you overdrive an 8-bulb sunblaze that normally runs at 432 watts (8x54 watts) 2x by putting on two extra four-bulb ballasts (each ballast rated to output 216w), so that you have a total of four 4-bulb ballasts, each powering just two bulbs, then the AVAILABLE power from the ballasts would be 128 watts per bulb. Now, would power consumption actually be that high? Would that be USING 864 watts of electricity? Do overdriven bulbs draw and consume ALL the wattage made available to them?
If you overdrive an 8-bulb sunblaze that normally runs at 432 watts (8x54 watts) 2x by putting on two extra four-bulb ballasts (each ballast rated to output 216w), so that you have a total of four 4-bulb ballasts, each powering just two bulbs, then the AVAILABLE power from the ballasts would be 128 watts per bulb. Now, would power consumption actually be that high? Would that be USING 864 watts of electricity? Do overdriven bulbs draw and consume ALL the wattage made available to them?
Very interesting questions you have there buddy I'd like to know as well...
I was led to the answer by D.I.trY, which is that they DO consume all that power. In fact, T5HO's are really T5NO (normal output) bulbs with twice the wattage - they are already overdriven. A 48" T5 regular bulb draws 28 watts - a T5HO the same size draws 54, so ~2x overdrive. The ratio of their outputs is 1.7x (5000lumens/2900 lumens), which is exactly what you'd predict for a 2x overdrive. The output is not twice as much since efficiency goes down the more power you add. So adding the levels of power I suggested would amount to a 4X overdrive, which would be TOTALLY UNSAFE and would NOT put out the 8500 lumens per 48" bulb that I was fantasizing about. Whoops, dead end.
hahah well props for the research Rambam every bit helps cuz we are on our own when it comes to this. All of us fluoro growers need to stick together and share info to further our adventure. I believe SO much in them since I saw what DrBud did in soil and what I did with soil and coco so when I get dialed I'm gonna push the shit out of my cab. What I would really like to do is seal it up and add co2 and get those fucking Air Pots! I truly feel that if my buddy's mentor is growing plants in 1.5gal Air Pots twice the size he did before in regular 3gal pots and the buds increased in size too! So in my theory, if I can match mid sized branches grown under 1000w HPS in 20oz bottles. Then I should be able to match what a 400w HPS can do if I use the Air Pots and I know that sounds odd but I'm talking just as fat as the main cola of a plant done under a 400 cuz right now I can get colas that are like the side branches mid way up a 4ft plant under a 1000w.... NO I HAVE NOT TRIED THIS YET IT'S JUST THEORY!!!
Lord Doobie
Member
hilarious thread, guys...all 24 pages
remember to get the best CFL's @ 75 lm/w
this will probably be moot in 18-36 months as LED's get dialed in
remember to get the best CFL's @ 75 lm/w
this will probably be moot in 18-36 months as LED's get dialed in
dontae1000
Member
the best looking buds ive seen on this site have been cfl or flourescent or t-5, not size or glamour but the ones that are just iced up and oozeing trichomes.
i understand the kelvin chart and also understand obviously what my eye sees in the light produced from various spectrum bulbs. but what my eye cant see and no ones can is lets say in a ''white'' spectrum bulb of say 5000k if it contains its energy to acheive this white in just ligh blue ,white , green and a little yellow or does it maybe contain some red and violets as well, which we know the plants need, u see a blend of various quantites of various colors can in the end make white light but still have it be sub par white light, get my drift anyone? there many differant brands of lights and many differant light charts, all of them saying differant things for similar kelvin ratings making me wonder if their really all that accurate, i do see that peek spectrum output in alot of flouros is in the greens which is obviously a waste and im wondering whats been your guys best brand of light and its kelvin rating in cfl that is????? anyone? thundurkel??? , currently ive got 5500 k , 6400 k and one 2700 k, my best growth seems to be witht the 5500 k lights but ive just began really so im not sure if the juries out.....in the end for all of us its got to be about eliminating waste as best as possible and producing the most abundance with the least. one thing about cfl or floro growing is u soon learn how well plants grow in the absence of excess heat stress, and even with 1000 watt 150000 plus hps at over 4 feet away i belive your already under 10000 lumes per squarefoot and thats why one foot below this level in some of the grows ive seen is pop corn bud after pop corn bud under a magical h.i.d. which is waste,, this is of course with horizontal(unscrogged) not vertical circular colesium grows which i think rock and bring out the dormant potential in h.i.d growing. to each his own, i just cant stand the heat sig of h.i.d. as im space challeged...but if u want buds bigger then a beer can its probally h.i.d. time for u and i cant shout u for it-
i understand the kelvin chart and also understand obviously what my eye sees in the light produced from various spectrum bulbs. but what my eye cant see and no ones can is lets say in a ''white'' spectrum bulb of say 5000k if it contains its energy to acheive this white in just ligh blue ,white , green and a little yellow or does it maybe contain some red and violets as well, which we know the plants need, u see a blend of various quantites of various colors can in the end make white light but still have it be sub par white light, get my drift anyone? there many differant brands of lights and many differant light charts, all of them saying differant things for similar kelvin ratings making me wonder if their really all that accurate, i do see that peek spectrum output in alot of flouros is in the greens which is obviously a waste and im wondering whats been your guys best brand of light and its kelvin rating in cfl that is????? anyone? thundurkel??? , currently ive got 5500 k , 6400 k and one 2700 k, my best growth seems to be witht the 5500 k lights but ive just began really so im not sure if the juries out.....in the end for all of us its got to be about eliminating waste as best as possible and producing the most abundance with the least. one thing about cfl or floro growing is u soon learn how well plants grow in the absence of excess heat stress, and even with 1000 watt 150000 plus hps at over 4 feet away i belive your already under 10000 lumes per squarefoot and thats why one foot below this level in some of the grows ive seen is pop corn bud after pop corn bud under a magical h.i.d. which is waste,, this is of course with horizontal(unscrogged) not vertical circular colesium grows which i think rock and bring out the dormant potential in h.i.d growing. to each his own, i just cant stand the heat sig of h.i.d. as im space challeged...but if u want buds bigger then a beer can its probally h.i.d. time for u and i cant shout u for it-
Obviously you haven't read anything too closely.
I have 0 experience with the flouros you're talking about and, if you take the time to read my posts, you'll see I've never mentioned using them. Sorry to hear you've had issues with them by not changing the lamps like you're supposed to. I use only PL-L lamps that (quality ones anyway) last up to 2 years of quality growing light.
HID lamps have effective life spans (for optimum growing) of 3-10 months. How long you should wait to change your HID lamp is heavily dependent on quality of lamp, type, the environment it's being used in and wattage. Yes, an HID puts out plenty of lumens waaaay past the point it doesn't grow plants as well anymore so don't depend on your light meter for that, watch your plants.
HID's are also great for growing, especially quantity, and I look forward to using them more in the future. I'll personally always have a PL-L CFL grow going on for my personal head stash though and for personal/stealth grows they rock!
