Off the shelf retail store screw-in LED and CFL bulb comparisons

[Terpene]

How high wattage do you think you can safely go with bulb leds? 80w per sqft too high?

EDIT - Blynx caught me being stoned and bad at math

Keep in mind that nearly everyone is seeing 3x-3.5x the return per watt of energy used when compared to CFL. So 80w of LED per sqft would be like running 240-280w of CFL per sqft. I've had fantastic results in flower with nine 16w LEDs over a 2x3 and thats only 24w per sqft.

On that note, here's whats currently running under the LEDs
Zamaldelica x Tom Hill Haze (Purple Thunk x White Widow) at 3 weeks in.

(Purple Haze x Malawi) x Napalm around 4-5 weeks in.

 

[blynx]

Here's the LED cab after five weeks of flowering.

Gorilla Glue #4 x (Triangle Kush x Sour Diesel IBL)

Day 35 Flower

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[blynx]

Here's the LED cab after six weeks of flowering.

Gorilla Glue #4 x (Triangle Kush x Sour Diesel IBL)

Day 42 Flower

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[Terpene]

Blynx, its getting comical how good your plants always look.

9 week chop on Purple Haze Malawi x Napalm under 24w per sqft of LED:

I could have waited another 7-10 days, but I'm running out of room in flower due to my LEDs vegging so much faster.

 

[420empire]

Blynx and Terpene! Hats off for you guys. Luv this simpel yet nice way to keep our passion alive, thanks guys.! I would love to go CMH butttttttttt now i saw this thread and OMG stoked ! What about adding some UV LED bulbs in there too? How is the high of the buds, can it compete with other forms of lightning?, sorry for me newbie Q but i heard some say LED dosen´t hit as hard as HPS / CMH, what is your feeling about it?

Looking forward to see how this thread evolve.

Bless.

 

[HuffnPufferfish]

after 15 years of smoking i dont think there is anything i would classify as 'hard hitting' but ive had cannabis grown under led and it honestly felt like acid was kicking in, that special kind of feeling

if you have the pick of cmh or led bulbs, the cmh will prob suit you better, its is an awesome light

 

[Terpene]

I'll open a huge can of worms here, but I don't think the type of light really matters that much as long as the plants are getting the light intensity they need to flower.

Side note: as a test of LED color effect in flower, a good friend is growing in basically the same setup as mine (3000k), but his setup is all 5000k bulbs. I want to see if his plants bud density increases and get frostier than mine do..

7 weeks on the Zamaldelica x [(Purple Thunk x White Widow) x Tom Haze] under the 3000k bulbs

 

[420empire]

thanks for the reply.
Hi HuffnPufferfish, u think I would spend more money on the CMH than a LED fixture with IR + UV light ?? I mean the CMH has it all except the good UV, what I mean is that CMH has a lil bit of UV but it should´t be enough to do the "magic" trick on our plants ( if u however trust that theory). I want a light that has almost anything, where i only need to add as little supp light as possible...what I try to say is that i want the sun in my cabinet!!. CMH looks so nice, but still miss some of the the "full" spectrum, and I can get led + supp light for around the 1/2 the price. However keep doing ehat u do guys,
it´s so nice.

 

[The Revolution]

Wanna thank blynx for firing up this thread. I just picked up a few of the Led bulbs from WalMart. I believe they're 100w equiv. Can't recall the actual wattage. The lumens are up there near 1k or BTR. I'm putting together a small micro cab to run along side my 140w hps cab. It'll be used to keep my males and/or pollination chamber. Just a little extra space to keep a seeded female and make an extra thousand seeds indoors. I would have never even tried this idea if I hadn't seen how well blynx gg4 hybrid was flowering under the "otc" LED bulbs. I'll post up some pics once ice complete the cab.

 

[igrowone]

Wanna thank blynx for firing up this thread. I just picked up a few of the Led bulbs from WalMart. I believe they're 100w equiv. Can't recall the actual wattage. The lumens are up there near 1k or BTR. I'm putting together a small micro cab to run along side my 140w hps cab. It'll be used to keep my males and/or pollination chamber. Just a little extra space to keep a seeded female and make an extra thousand seeds indoors. I would have never even tried this idea if I hadn't seen how well blynx gg4 hybrid was flowering under the "otc" LED bulbs. I'll post up some pics once ice complete the cab.

been checking out those lights myself, prices are very nice
hoping a trail blazer like yourself can show what they can do

 

[HuffnPufferfish]

afaik cmh DOES have uv (its an updated mh light kinda so why not)

will it be better than led, i dont know, not sure anyone does, but both the spec as the results on cmh are.. amazing!
i wouldnt be able to run on due to room/heat/initial costs so my pick was obvious

a week back i replaced some 2.7k for 6.5k's just for fun and giggles, and it felt that it coated everything a bit more, but i cant tell as i dont have any baseline

i switched back to 2.7 2 days ago, for whatever reason

 

[psyphish]

afaik cmh DOES have uv (its an updated mh light kinda so why not)

will it be better than led, i dont know, not sure anyone does, but both the spec as the results on cmh are.. amazing!
i wouldnt be able to run on due to room/heat/initial costs so my pick was obvious

a week back i replaced some 2.7k for 6.5k's just for fun and giggles, and it felt that it coated everything a bit more, but i cant tell as i dont have any baseline

i switched back to 2.7 2 days ago, for whatever reason

I run two 315w GreenPower CDM bulbs, they don't put out UV since they're open fixture rated. The old 400w Retro White bulbs put out UV, but they're not as good as the new 315w bulbs.

I've tried several LED fixtures and none of them came close to the CDM yields and quality. I still haven't tried the white COBs that everyone is building DIY fixtures with, they seem interesting.

 

[The Revolution]

very impressive, and I'm sold. I'm gna begin the build of a few diff cabs this weekend. One for starting seeds to be moved outdoors one for cuttings and one to house a cpl females for making seed. I'll post up My design once ive got everything lined out.
idea i have is to have 2 cabs in a stacked design side x side until ive got enough room to do what I need. Thanks again blynx for bringing this super simple idea to us. I'd have never thought these little led bulbs had a use.
What would u recommend is the max height you'd want to go w a cab before the light is just not powerful enough to give the plant what it needs. Say I built a cab with the 6 bulb arrangement u have what's the highest you'd go with that cab

Here are all the buds from the last round in the 11" x 11" cab.

Gorilla Glue #4

Flowered under 30w of LED for 70 days

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Some bud closeups

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and the final dried weight

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Gotta say I'm happy with 33.46g from 30w of light.

I usually run 115w (5 x 23w) CFL in this cab.

I looked over the yields from previous rounds and the overall average is 32g per run.

I've hit the average yield for the 11" x 11" cab using about 1/3 of the wattage I usually run.

 

[The Revolution]

Hey guys are you getting better results with clones or from seed? I'd imagine from seed would require some rigorous training and bending... Just curious which you prefer. I'll b poppng a lot more seeds once ixlve got my led cabs up n rocking.

 

[HuffnPufferfish]

i would say clones is more efficient if doing a few in one box

but i do prefer seeds because i love the bondage part

 

[The Revolution]

Ill be doing a bit of both. I Grabbed the GE LED A21 (100w Equiv.) bulbs, they were about $16/each, the highest wattage I could find. Got some GE (17w) and GE (16w) a mix of daylight and soft white, some are 2700Kelvin some are 5000K. Some 1600Lumens Some 1700, some 1750 Lumens. I just realized these bulbs are all dimmable. I took the time to specifically get nondimmable bulbs, of the highest wattage and lumen output, and I still somehow grabbed dimmables. I must have had a buzz..Tried to grab a variety of the highest wattage bulbs to see what did best. Was prying at the bulb a bit.. Above posts made it sound like it was plastic...well these ones are glass.. Found that out after I stuck my thumb through the side of the bulb.. Hopefully thats not the only reason Im paying an extra $10/bulb..
So exercise caution folks.. Some are glass..Brainstorming some ideas of how to hang them..Id like to build a recessed fixture.. Dont have a lot of time to spend on it though. Has anyone tried the bulb to socket adapters into the power strip. Hang the strip above kinda deal? I may go for it..Im more interested in using these things for side/supplemental lighting. These bulbs cost under $2/year to run, and they claim to last 22.8 unreal.

 

[The Revolution]

Is that 80 watts total in the newest cab with the GG hybrid, blynx? Would be nice to see you pull down a QP from that one plant. Any tips of building a fixture for 6-8 of these bad boys?


Here is the spectrum of HPS

Here is the spectrum of a LED Light

 

[FranJan]

I always wonder how come you guys who do micro grows don't build your own bulbs nowadays? They give you the ability to use COBs or discrete LEDs and you can go as far as swapping out different Kelvins at different times during the grow. Here's an example, there are other producers who make all kinds of kits for different wattages and LEDs:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/4-Set-5W-LED-bulb-lamp-accessories-E27-E14-B22-Gu10-DIY-Aluminum-shell-kit-LED/32396271658.html?spm=2114.01010208.3.2.HyizwW&ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_2,searchweb201602_1_10036_10035_10034_507_10020_9911_10017_10005_10006_10021_10022_10018_10019,searchweb201603_9&btsid=c09a20aa-b07b-4e7f-b762-1e14608899b9

 

[HuffnPufferfish]

because a diy kit costs the same as a bulb from the store over here

 

[MicroRoy]

You're showing a kit for a 5 watts.

Blinx is working with 10 actual watts for each bulb. Picked them up ready made from a big box store.

CFL'S are on the way out. They won't be on the shelves in a few years. The LED lights will get even cheaper.