Which lights should i buy?

SchmoeJoe

Well-Known Member
Hi guys,

Which Lights are best for optimum growing? I was thinking about Cree/Citizen COB or Blurple COB which are the best and from where should i buy one? Plus what specifications should i look for if i decide to purchase any of the lights above.

P.S.

My grow area is huge, almost 15 (L) x 10(W) x 20(H) ft. The lights should produce less heat and more light.

Thanks,
Dagdu
Growers Choice has been making 630 watt de CMH bulbs for awhile. Now they have a proper low frequency square wave ballast for 630 de. If you pair it with the Sun Systems AC/DE or the Big Boss non-air cooled version of it I think you'd have about the best piece of lighting that's commercially available. Growers House online grow store did a side by side comparison of a number of the most popular hoods along with the then new ac/de and it blew them all away for over all spread, consistency of coverage throughout its footprint, and minimizing hotspots.
 

coreywebster

Well-Known Member
Hello......... guys? Please help me out here will ya. :)
Sorry dude, got side tracked with my anti bullshit rants..

Your looking at a big area. Citizen are a good choice for the price but I believe their may be better options for your budget.
@CobKits will know the best bang for your buck with a balance between efficiency and budget.
 

Dagdu420

Member
Sorry dude, got side tracked with my anti bullshit rants..

Your looking at a big area. Citizen are a good choice for the price but I believe their may be better options for your budget.
@CobKits will know the best bang for your buck with a balance between efficiency and budget.
Okay mate, I'll definitely have a look at them. Do you know any other manufacturer?
 

Dynamo626

Well-Known Member
no way your lighting that large of an area with that budget to answer cree cobs are the most efficient out there. most fixtures are ment to cover a 4x4-5x5 area. so a 10x10 needs 4 lights
if you go cob and the cree rating is over 90 you dont need to change spectrum.
630 cmh is nearly as efficient as cob with a spectrium nearly as good also. they are much cheaper than cobs but they do produce a good bit more heat
 

Dagdu420

Member
no way your lighting that large of an area with that budget to answer cree cobs are the most efficient out there. most fixtures are ment to cover a 4x4-5x5 area. so a 10x10 needs 4 lights
if you go cob and the cree rating is over 90 you dont need to change spectrum.
630 cmh is nearly as efficient as cob with a spectrium nearly as good also. they are much cheaper than cobs but they do produce a good bit more heat
Agreed. But they consume a lot more electricity than cobs. Im already spending a lot on my HVAC and if I run it with the cmh I'll probably end up loosing all my money on electricity bills. I already ran one cycle with MH and HPS and trust me the monthly electricity bills were too high. So I ended up deciding that I should go with the LED'S or cobs.
And yeah Cree's are a lot costly and they are sadly out of my budget when it comes to covering 10x15 ft area. Is there any good options rather than going with the cree/cmh? I meantioned few links above, what do you think about them?
 

Dynamo626

Well-Known Member
Agreed. But they consume a lot more electricity than cobs. Im already spending a lot on my HVAC and if I run it with the cmh I'll probably end up loosing all my money on electricity bills. I already ran one cycle with MH and HPS and trust me the monthly electricity bills were too high. So I ended up deciding that I should go with the LED'S or cobs.
And yeah Cree's are a lot costly and they are sadly out of my budget when it comes to covering 10x15 ft area. Is there any good options rather than going with the cree/cmh? I meantioned few links above, what do you think about them?
No cobs dont consume a lot less than cmh. Just a lil bit les. Hid lighting 1.9 umole per wat per second. Cmh 3.49 umole per watt per second and cob 4.0....
Lil more efficient but 0.51 umole per second isnt much.
 

Dynamo626

Well-Known Member
That said you need 285w of cob to equil a 600w hps. 326w of cmh for the same results. Thats a difference of 41watts. The price difference between cmh and cob is huge.
Dont know abought online prices but in my shop a 315 is only 250. A 280w cob is 500 bucks. The cob will be dead before the 40 less watts pays for the extra 250 bucks.
 

Gumdrawp

Well-Known Member
Hi guys,

Which Lights are best for optimum growing? I was thinking about Cree/Citizen COB or Blurple COB which are the best and from where should i buy one? Plus what specifications should i look for if i decide to purchase any of the lights above.

P.S.

My grow area is huge, almost 15 (L) x 10(W) x 20(H) ft. The lights should produce less heat and more light.

Thanks,
Dagdu
Imo with that height go double ended with adjustable wings. It's a pretty cheap option if you're not concerned with the electric bill. With a space like that you could grow monsters and keep counts low. I have a friend with 6ft less of headspace and grows 4-5 plants under 4000w with very good returns, you could easily do 6-8kw in that room and keep your count around 10 and do well in that style. Hps or cmh either would be good.

Is there a reason you're trying to stay away from hotter lights in particular?
 

Dagdu420

Member
Imo with that height go double ended with adjustable wings. It's a pretty cheap option if you're not concerned with the electric bill. With a space like that you could grow monsters and keep counts low. I have a friend with 6ft less of headspace and grows 4-5 plants under 4000w with very good returns, you could easily do 6-8kw in that room and keep your count around 10 and do well in that style. Hps or cmh either would be good.

Is there a reason you're trying to stay away from hotter lights in particular?
Yeah the main reason is power bills as the electricity is much much costlier here. Back in the days I used to run 2x 600w hps in my room and I had bills over 400$ a month including my HVAC and other power consuming things.
 

Dynamo626

Well-Known Member
As soon as you posted this you lost all credibility on this forum, way not cool :-(
why do you say that?
take the 1140 umole that a 600w hps puts out divide that by 1.9 equils 600
divide it by 3.49 umole pes sec you get 326
divide by 4.0 you get 285. you didn't find anything wrong with the umole ratings which is the tougher information to find, after that its just basic math. take the wattage of the light you want to replace divide by the umole gives the wattage you need to replace. 600w hps puts out 1140umole. divide 1140 by the 1.9 (umole for hps) what do you get ......600. 600w at 1.9umole per second is 1140. see how that works? if you divide 3.49 umole/sec (cmh rating) by 1140 ( again that's the total umole/sec of a 600w hps) and you get 326 so that is the wattage of cmh needed to hit 1140 umole/sec
its just simple math. you lose all credibility when you dispute a simple math equasion.
remember at 95 umole/sec/square foot growth becomes limited by the amount of co2 available and it will need to be added to get full potential out of stronger lights. example... don't run over 380w of cob per 4x4 unless you can enrich with co2 (that's a math equasion also let me know if you need it explained :) it takes 4 photons to bind 1 molecule of co2. mabe it was the other way around but either way there is only so much co2 in the air and light not bound by co2 is wasted
 
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Dagdu420

Member
Let's not get into a fight here and concentrate on the actual thread question?
HPS and cree's are a Big NO NO!, what options do i have now? My per light budget is around 150-170$.
Peace :)
 

Dynamo626

Well-Known Member
good luck with that commercial grow lighting is expensive. that money will buy hps lighting and just cheep hps at that. hortilux lamp alone will run 80-130 bucks
 

SchmoeJoe

Well-Known Member
would suggest lighting 1/4 that area after first harvest light the rest
Buy nice or buy twice. Do like you're saying and only buy the number of lights you can afford to buy without skimping on quality. Especially since the question was what's the best light for growing plants and not what's the best light for under 200$.

There's a few things I'm not clear on here. A 150 square feet is a lot of space to fill with ideal lighting conditions. Don't bother if this project won't at least cover its own cost of operation. It's hard to imagine anyone growing in that much space without planning on selling at least a portion of each crop so if your goal is the best lighting I'd focus on the lights that will give the best yield and most competitive quality.

As far as the heat, you can't light that much space without a considerable amount of heat regardless of what lighting you go with. You may keep you're overhead down a bit on the utility bill but the initial build out would be ridiculous if you want to get quality led's. With 20' ceilings you can use stratification. If you keep your lights close to the ceilings you can exhaust your heat up high and still be able to cool the garden space without having to cool the heat from the lights and without exhausting the cooled air. You would have to run more lights to compensate for the inverse square proportion law so your bill goes up for that anyway but there really is no way to effectively light that much space without laying out a chunk of change on the build out and every month on the utilities.
 

SchmoeJoe

Well-Known Member
Let's not get into a fight here and concentrate on the actual thread question?
HPS and cree's are a Big NO NO!, what options do i have now? My per light budget is around 150-170$.
Peace :)
The short answer is that there are no options at that price point if you take hps off the table. Even the hps at that price are crap.
 
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