Seeking Critique on Vert Colosseum SOG concept.

[Anti]

OK. So I did some readings with my new light meter.... it seems to be similar to the one bobble has from his decription.

So here's the interesting part...

I went outside around 3 in the afternoon on a sunny summer day. Meter shows sunlight as a "7" on the "1000x" scale so that translates to 7000 foot candles.

I currently have only one 400w CMH lit and I put a tape measure up to the bulb and then measured light intensity. At about a 6.5" radius from the edge of the bulb, I'm getting the same "7" I got from mid-afternoon direct sunlight. If I pull the sensor back along the tape measure, I don't drop to "6" until I'm about 12.5" away from the lamp. I can get 34" from the bulb before I get down into the "5" range (which is supposed to represent 5000 foot candles.

Isn't anything above 5000 foot candles considered the thumbnail for vigorous growth?

Image Key:

White = Lamp
Red = Above 7,000
Yellow = 7,000-6,000
Light Green = 6,000-5,000
Dark Green = 5,000

Red Square represents 4ft. x 4ft.

 

[sp3ncer]

Hi Anti!

Maximum respect. There is nothing more precious than documenting your path in every aspect.

I have to say one thing and i do not mean to be rude - since as i said you have all the respect a man can get from me - but poor man's fact number one is constant circulation. So in other words - while building your next step make sure that you have next round coming in at full speed. If they overgrow - let them. You can always train them back in shape.

I say this from experience. I still have (and always will have) figures to achieve but my poorest moments are always when i have to break up the circulation. Lesson learned and nowadays i tear things apart and move on only when i have vegged ladies ready to rumble.

Carry on bro! Your supporters come from every corner of the earth so you know that there is nothing wrong with what you're doing.

Peace, happines & unity.

PS. Never hesitate to take it to the next level. Way back i did. Don't let fear get in your way. As DHF says: Baby shit - handle it. Nike says: Just do it (Nike was nothing before that).

 

[bobblehead]

Your measurements just don't make sense A... The light green is 5-6kfc? and so the dark green would be less than 5kfc... There's just no way you can be 34" from a 400w lamps and still be getting 5kfc. Maybe more like .5kfc... How does the light fall off so fast closer to the lamp, but the 5kfc range is so large? It just doesn't make any sense bro.

My meter is from Pyle, and reads up to 40kfc.

Not trying to be a dick... but I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this. The further you get from the lamp, the faster the light should fall off...

 

[megayields]

sorry couldn't resist!

 

[Anti]

Your measurements just don't make sense A... The light green is 5-6kfc? and so the dark green would be less than 5kfc... There's just no way you can be 34" from a 400w lamps and still be getting 5kfc. Maybe more like .5kfc... How does the light fall off so fast closer to the lamp, but the 5kfc range is so large? It just doesn't make any sense bro.

Honestly, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

I'll recheck everything tonight or tomorrow.

Only thing I was considering was maybe somehow the reflectix covered surfaces were somehow making the difference? My "closet" is 7ft. long by 2.5' deep. I have a single bulb hanging roughly in the center and reflectix on every surface.

I measured several times. I'll try to get pictures. but it's hard to hold camera and light meter with only two hands. I'll see if I can work something out with a tripod.

My meter is from Pyle, and reads up to 40kfc.

Not trying to be a dick... but I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this. The further you get from the lamp, the faster the light should fall off...

I don't think you're a dick. I don't have a pyle meter, and mine measures up to 10kfc. It's cheap. But it claims to be "designed specifically to measure plant light requirements" and "accurate to 2%".

The further you get from the lamp, light continually drops. But it just doesn't drop MUCH past a certain point until I'm all the way out of the closet.

I'm perplexed. And often high. But I did it using a drywall square which measures up to 4ft and those were my measurements.




The *GOOD* news is that I put my 3 mom plants in along with 13 newly rooted clones. I setup a dripline for the 3 moms and I planted the 13 new clones in my treepots with 1 drip line each. And then I went out of town for about 5 days.

I came back today. One of my 13 clones withered. The rest are growing! And the three moms are fucking huge.

So.... next order of business is going to be to take another batch of clones from my 3 big mamas and then transplant them into larger pots and flower them along with the 12 remaining smaller plants.

I'm going to basically do a modified weed donut using my new 600w ushio and then I'm going to build this thing for my 400w lamps:



Hopefully I'll get a decent amount of clones from this next batch (that I will be taking tonight or tomorrow) and then I can put them into the contraption "pictured" above and have it all ready to flip in ~5 weeks. That way my 600w "donut" will be finishing 5 weeks ahead of my 800w cylinder and I can maybe start building a more permanent "room" for the 600w setup.

I'm also going to start some seeds here in the next few days so that i can eventually look forward to a little smoking variety.

Can't complain about my AK though. Anybody who gets it keeps running back for more and I smoke it dusk til dawn without having my tolerance go through the roof.

(Thanks Simon!)

I have some AK backcross1 seeds in my stash, so I may try my luck at picking a male from that stash and breeding it with my own AK and make some freedbies for my homies.

Anyway. I'll do the measurements, attempt to get some pics of said measurements and then plot a new "target" ASAP.

 

[Anti]

Results of SECOND light meter test

Results of SECOND light meter test

^^^ Here's the results. That box is 6 ft x 6 ft. ^^^

See pictures below:

^^^ 2 inches = 6,750 foot candles ^^^

^^^ 5 inches = 6,500 foot candles ^^^

^^^ 19.5 inches = 5,500 foot candles ^^^
​

 

[Anti]

^^^ 41 inches = 4,500 foot candles ^^^

^^^ ~50 inches = 4,000 foot candles ^^^

^^^ ~63.5 inches = 3,000 foot candles ^^^



So that's

2" - 6.8 x 1000
5" - 6.5 x 1000
19.5" = 5.5 x 1000
41" - 4.5 x 1000
50" - 4.0 x 1000
63.5" - 3.0 x 1000

(For comparison, the afternoon sun on a 103 degree day around 3pm registered as a 7 x 1000.)
​

 

[LouDog420]

HAHA sweet measuring rig there Anti! Results looking much more on 'par' with my experience with a 400... With the money zone being roughly between 12 and 18 inches from the bulb. Maybe I'll push it a bit farther this next run, bigger canopy never hurts if the buds are nice

I would be very interested to see the numbers for the vertical spread... In my pod, single 400s only seem to like to cover 18"... Maybe 24" if you push it...

Oh ya, did I say, fuckin' killer

Good vibes bro

 

[Chunkypigs]

Congrats on automating and leaving the grow for 5 days! wish to god I could pull that off.
keep up the good work!

 

[bobblehead]

Hmmm... It looks better, but I'm still not buying it. Something is fishy. Also, your chart has a diameter of 6', but your measurements have a radius of 5'+. I'll see what I can do to replicate this, but I'm running 430w hps son agro lamps on digital ballast... So it won't be exactly the same. All the same good work A. I really like how you put it all together.

 

[Anti]

Congrats on automating and leaving the grow for 5 days! wish to god I could pull that off.
keep up the good work!

You'd be even more impressed if you knew that I had in-laws who are unaware that I even SMOKE staying at my house while I was away.

I was half afraid of my plants dying but I was more afraid of my reservoir draining to the point that the pumps made loud sucking sounds that might attract attention.

 

[megayields]

does digital vs magnetic ballast effect output in lumens?

 

[Anti]

Hmmm... It looks better, but I'm still not buying it. Something is fishy. Also, your chart has a diameter of 6', but your measurements have a radius of 5'+. I'll see what I can do to replicate this, but I'm running 430w hps son agro lamps on digital ballast... So it won't be exactly the same. All the same good work A. I really like how you put it all together.

Ok. I think I may have made a stoney mistake when I made the graph. It's still PROPORTIONALLY right, but the 6ft measurements are off. I think.

(I'm high now too. First smoke of the day, high.)

When calculating the radii for sketchup I halved each measurement... so the 1.5" bulb has a radius of .75"... but then I did the same thing on every subsequent measurement. So the 2" zone became the 1.75" zone (1" is half of 2" + .75" from the bulb) the 5" zone became the 3.25" zone (2.5" is half of 5" + .75" from the bulb)

I should've made the first ring at 2.75" from the bulb... and the second at 5.75" from the bulb.

I'll redo the illustration.

 

[Anti]

Here's the revised image. Hopefully I got it right this time. Good thing my ego is a sado-masochist.

It would now require a (10 ft. 7 in.) box to contain the outer edges of the dark green zone. (Not that I am proposing this would be a good use of the lamp.)

Also, I feel it bears mentioning that these colors represent the measurement at the point of contact with the next color. So for instance, the outer edge of the largest dark green circle is the 3,000 reading. At point of contact between dark green and the lighter green circle within it, the reading is 4,000. And so on. (I don't know why I skipped 5,000. I was pressed for time. Gal wanted to eat.)
​

 

[Anti]

Here's the sun for comparison. The meter could be completely off, but I have to imagine that it is at least SELF-calibrated, right? I did two different locations about 15 - 20 feet apart, both in unshaded space with no obstructions.

 

[bobblehead]

Bro I don't know what to tell you about your meter... cause I had a cheap one like that but it had a dial to choose different light settings... Yours looks different. Now I have a real nice digital meter from Pyle that reads up to 40kfc and does lumens as well.

This is what I got with a 430w Son Agro HPS lamp on a digital galaxy ballast after I let it warm up for 30mins in a 3.5' wide room lined with reflectix...
6" = 10.2kfc
12" = 3.7kfc
18" = 2.3kfc
24" = 1.2kfc
30" = 1kfc

At 24-30" you're seeing mostly reflected light, that's why the drop off is so much less. The light is too diffuse at that point to read so intense. That's why I'm having trouble with your measurements Anti. If they were accurate, everyone would be running 400w cmh lamps! ha ha... No offense, but I know from experience that HPS lamps throw more intense light than a MH or even a CMH. The meter doesn't read PAR or umols, but rather light intensity...

Just trying to help my boy.

 

[megayields]

he is SO fussy!

 

[Anti]

No argument here! Even CMH manufacturers don't claim they are outshining the HPS... they have a slightly lower lumen output that is supposed to be balanced with higher PAR output.... but it's not supposed to be magic and I don't believe it is.

But now I don't trust my meter to do much of ANYTHING. Glad it was only $30.

I can buy a quantum meter which DOES measure micromoles but it's like $250. And I can rent one, but I have to put a $250 deposit down to rent it... so it's not likely to happen soon.

Any idea of the ideal "goldilocks donut" size for a 600w HPS (ushio) on a digital ballast?

I got some rabbit fencing that I'm going to use to make a cylinder around the bulb and then start flowering my three overgrown mama plants, plus 12 new clones.

This chart is familiar to most of you:

According to this chart, my goldilocks zone is between 8" and 29" away from the bulb.


Do any of you (my heroes) have anything to add or subtract from that concept? Like, I make a cylinder with an 8"-10" radius and just rock with that?

A 2 ft. tall, 10" radius cylinder has approximately 10 sq. ft. of canopy space. I have two plants that are about 2 ft tall and a third that is almost 3 ft tall and I plan to wrap the three around the cylinder and tie them down and flip these bitches.

I took 40 clones off the moms today. I'd like to flip them (the moms) to flower ASAP.

Just looking for some last minute thoughts.

 

[Arminius]

No argument here! Even CMH manufacturers don't claim they are outshining the HPS... they have a slightly lower lumen output that is supposed to be balanced with higher PAR output.... but it's not supposed to be magic and I don't believe it is.

But now I don't trust my meter to do much of ANYTHING. Glad it was only $30.

I can buy a quantum meter which DOES measure micromoles but it's like $250. And I can rent one, but I have to put a $250 deposit down to rent it... so it's not likely to happen soon.

Any idea of the ideal "goldilocks donut" size for a 600w HPS (ushio) on a digital ballast?

I got some rabbit fencing that I'm going to use to make a cylinder around the bulb and then start flowering my three overgrown mama plants, plus 12 new clones.

This chart is familiar to most of you:

View Image

According to this chart, my goldilocks zone is between 8" and 29" away from the bulb.


Do any of you (my heroes) have anything to add or subtract from that concept? Like, I make a cylinder with an 8"-10" radius and just rock with that?

A 2 ft. tall, 10" radius cylinder has approximately 10 sq. ft. of canopy space. I have two plants that are about 2 ft tall and a third that is almost 3 ft tall and I plan to wrap the three around the cylinder and tie them down and flip these bitches.

I took 40 clones off the moms today. I'd like to flip them (the moms) to flower ASAP.

Just looking for some last minute thoughts.

My 600w donuts with 6-10 plants start out with the plant center 16-18 inches from the center of the bulb.
My canopy as it grows up the screen during stretch, ends up about 12 inches thick. That puts the bulk of the colas at 12-16 inches from the bulb, with a few lower laterals getting as close as 6" from the bulb. The fan under the light removes the heat so fast, I only start to see bleaching less than 6" from the bulb. I did notice on my of my lower branches last night that was 6" from the light, the bud is going crazy! It is morphing, and throwing new bud growth towards the light...

 

[Arminius]

Hey Anti,
Is the CAD program you are using freeware, or do you know of one? I need to design a couple rooms at a new site...
Thanks!