My First CFL Grow

Hey Jah I'm gonna use this as my all-purpose post for my upcoming all-CFL grow. Right now seeds are en route and I'm choosing out equipment. The medium will be soil, and the strains will be four AK-47's, two Thai Haze.
A question for all of you about lighting. I'm considering buying these two lighting products:
-(red light) (11,600 lumens) 150 watt 120 volt 8U Mogul E39 Base HighMax 2,700K Compact Fluorescent Maxlite Light Bulb
-(daylight, I think?) (12,600 lumens) 150 watt 120 volt 8U Mogul E39 Base HighMax 5,000K Compact Fluorescent Maxlite Light Bulb

How many plants do you think I can put under each (12,600lu; 5,000K) light, while maintaining optimum efficiency and minimum spending? I'm probably going to try to support about 6 plants. I know you guys will figure it out! You green pothead geniuses you.

well since their the same wattage i would go for the most lumens wich is the brightness of the light.so go wit the daylight

princeofgrinch7414 said:

well since their the same wattage i would go for the most lumens wich is the brightness of the light.so go wit the daylight

Click to expand...

Sorry maybe I misstated the question. I'm asking, how many plants could be well supported by a 12,600-lumen CFL wit 5,000K colour in a ScrOG.

My advice would be to use many lower wattage cfl's rather than a few high wattage cfl's. It'll probably be cheaper and your plants will be covered from more angles with less effort.

I wouldnt do more then one or two plant/12,000 lumens but thats just my opinion I like to give as many lumens as possible! I try to keep my plants at 75-80 watts per plant that always treats me well peace man.

krygor said:

My advice would be to use many lower wattage cfl's rather than a few high wattage cfl's. It'll probably be cheaper and your plants will be covered from more angles with less effort.

Click to expand...

These hypothetical lights would be of what wattage? It's just I've noticed a recent trend towards the monster lights so I figured someone had noticed a clear advantage.

a 6 pack of 26w GE CFLs cost about $13.00. Each bulb puts out 1700 lumens. My final rig will consist off 36 of these bulbs and 4 40 watt CFL's (2600 lumens each at $8.00 a piece) for a total of 40 bulbs and 71,600 lumens. Not bad for 4 plants hehe. The main point is that just about every single leaf of every plant will be getting direct light so there won't be any sections of the plant relying simply on second-hand light from the reflector or mylar.

OK, sound reasoning my man. However, would that loss be felt in a ScrOG setup? Just to clarify.

krygor said:

a 6 pack of 26w GE CFLs cost about $13.00. Each bulb puts out 1700 lumens. My final rig will consist off 36 of these bulbs and 4 40 watt CFL's (2600 lumens each at $8.00 a piece) for a total of 40 bulbs and 71,600 lumens. Not bad for 4 plants hehe. The main point is that just about every single leaf of every plant will be getting direct light so there won't be any sections of the plant relying simply on second-hand light from the reflector or mylar.

Click to expand...

That is going to be alot of light. I think that before i would do another cfl grow with that many lights compared to the one that i am doing right now. I would just get an HPS light. You are going to have to get the heat that all those lights are going to produce under control. But i am curious to see your setup when you are done. Good luck

buster7467 said:

That is going to be alot of light. I think that before i would do another cfl grow with that many lights compared to the one that i am doing right now. I would just get an HPS light. You are going to have to get the heat that all those lights are going to produce under control. But i am curious to see your setup when you are done. Good luck

Click to expand...

I too was concerned about the amount of heat the lights would radiate initially however the room which they are illuminating usually runs a temperature of 40 - 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I actually had to put in an oscillating heater with a thermostat in order to raise the room to a safe temperature, so whatever heat the lights actually put off is simply making less work for the heater to do. However, to be honest, I'm not sure my bulbs are generating all that much heat to begin with. The surface temperature of the bulbs can't be higher than 110 - 115 degrees Fahrenheit because I can hold them in the palm of my hand without any severe discomfort. With absolutely zero ventilation at the moment, the soil has sat below these lights for about 36 hours and the soil is right around 75 degrees Fahrenheit, the same temperature the heater's thermostat is set at. Now I know that all this is still only with 8 bulbs at the moment (20% of the final light array) but to be honest I don't think the heat given off is going to be my big problem. My concern is going to be where I can pick up a good pair of sunglasses for cheap because already as is, the mylar in the room is reflecting the light from my 8 bulbs and I have to squint when entering. Anyways I'll be adding 6 - 12 bulbs a week every Friday so you can stay up to date with my progress and see how things are going by visiting my journal: https://www.rollitup.org/cfl-growing/47939-operation-dr-rockso.html

Oddly enough Buster, it was your journal and the results you've published that swayed my decision in massing CFLs as opposed to purchasing a HID light hehe, so cheers mate. Well, that and the fact that on a thermal camera, my light array probably looks like a heating blanket

Good luck and i will be checking you grow journal out.

I've switched my concept to all-42W lights. I'm going to start buying them in sets of 6, $66 per set. The end result will be three 5,000K lights per plant plus one 2,400K light per plant. This makes for a total of 11,200 lumens per plant, a total of 67,200 lumens. I'm going to figure out a calculation where i can position the lights at a consistent rate over the screen, which will be 5.5'X10'.
How's that sound?

Sounds good only you're looking at $11 per bulb and I think you can do better than that buying them in single packs, closer to $8-$9 a bulb at lowe's / home depot.

Unfortunately, the Home Depot up here is useless. When I called to inquire, I believe their highest wattage was 13 or something like that. It actually took me forever to find a good local supplier :\ Canada is tough!
One question as far as the ScrOG method is wether or not my dimensions sound good. I'm thinking 1'X1' pots for each plant with about 6 inches' space inbetween them. The chicken wire supported over them will be 5.5'X10'. Is this good on the chicken wire? Too much? Too little?

I'm germinating using the paper-towel technique, with the 5 Thai Stick in one wrapped-up paper towel and the 10 AK-47 in another. For the last two days, they've been in paper dishes (covered by tin foil) over my 1500W space heater, but the water either evaporated or leaked way too quickly, and the AK-47 paper towel kept getting dry. I'm a bit nervous that that mistake may have hurt the seeds, but I'm hoping that they're stronger than that. In my last grow, my grandma threw my bag seeds in the garbage can! When I dug them out, about 50% of them still germinated, and many of the original seeds didn't even look that healthy. Anyway, now I've got both the paper towels in one ceramic soup bowl- the half-useless kind that you'd normally use to put a soup bowl into, so that it wouldn't burn your hands. I also threw away the old AK-47 towel because it has been drying up so quickly, and switched it for a new one. When I switched, it looked like several of the AK-47 seeds had begun to open up, but nothing more than that. I also checked on the Thai Stick seeds, which didn't seem to have opened up at all- probably ue to the weird conditions they've been in over the past two days. Oh well! They're freebies.

I have a 10,000 lumen 110w ballast, & 4 54w 4ft strip lights 5,000 lumens each.... 30,000 lumens i spent bout 180$ with shipping. more expensive than a bunch of little lights but..... wow wat a bunch of light power! no problems with my plants...

Well, yeah, there's a lot of lumens, it would be good for the plant. My question still stands though.