Sanity check before I buy light for a 2' x 4' x 5'

bri77

Well-Known Member
Hi guys,
I planning a soil grow in a 5' tall tent. I'm looking at a 240 watt two panel lamp from kingbrite. Soil surface will be 12" to 16" high, plants another 30" high, leaving me with about 16" for the light.

Carbon filter will be off to the side of the light with the fan outside the tent.

This is the light in looking at. It has cree ir and 660 and LG uv, making it quite a bit more expensive than the one with epistar chips. I'm going with the cree for longevity as much as performance.

https://kingbrite.de/produkt/qb-v2021-240w-lm301h-ir-uv-cree-lg/

Three questions : does my over all plan make sense? Is it a waste of money going for the expensive board? Are ir and uv even a good idea in the first place considering the amount of white light I'll be giving them?
 

Fruity420

Well-Known Member
Sounds good bro, should be plenty of light just other factors the main one being getting good genetics, grow a solid strain.
I’m not real sure on the dollar value of the light, Cree is good shit I really like my cree cob lights.
 

LEDTonic - Daniel

Active Member
Whenever I see garbage/misleading info like this by a brand, the red flags are flashing for me:

I know a lot of people have seen good results with Kingbrite, and it's difficult to go wrong with a Samsung 301H 3500K diode dominant board, but when companies are either this uneducated or just don't care about science, then I actively try not to support them. Regardless if it's grow lights or any other product.

There are in excess of 500 diodes in total on that lamp and 8 UV and 8 IR among them. In total pulling 240W, so roughly 0.5W per diode. So you get roughly 4W of UV light out of the lamp, which is nothing. The efficacy of UV diodes is far, far, less than any other type of diode. To my understanding, 4W of UV will not do any difference in a 8 sq ft tent. Roughly the same applies for the IR.
A red boost from the 660nm diodes, which has become more and more popular among grow lights, is primarily effective if plants are getting less-than ideal amount of light, i.e. less than around 450 PPFD/PAR.

Most, if not all, growers I know only use UV and IR during shorter duration of a plant's life cycle. IR is, for example, primarily used as a sun-down effect. 30-60 minutes before lights go out. Having both UV and IR turned on all the time or having to manually turn them on/off, I'd argue, do more harm than good. UVA is also somewhat harmful to us, humans. Another reason why these diodes shouldn't be on when working near the lamp.

I can't find a good source for this but if I recall correctly, UV diodes have a significantly shorter life expectancy than the Samsung diodes. It's possible that LG's model, which indeed is a good UV diode, is better than most, but I'd still opt for a standalone UV lamp instead of UV diodes fitted on the main lamp.

Again, you seem to get a decent amount of light for your money so this is not a terrible choice, but one should be a bit vary when opting for a Chinese brand, in my opinion. Would also be good to see a PPFD map so we can actually see the footprint of the light intensity but it seems Kingbrite isn't keen on showing this information.
 

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
Whenever I see garbage/misleading info like this by a brand, the red flags are flashing for me:

I know a lot of people have seen good results with Kingbrite, and it's difficult to go wrong with a Samsung 301H 3500K diode dominant board, but when companies are either this uneducated or just don't care about science, then I actively try not to support them. Regardless if it's grow lights or any other product.

There are in excess of 500 diodes in total on that lamp and 8 UV and 8 IR among them. In total pulling 240W, so roughly 0.5W per diode. So you get roughly 4W of UV light out of the lamp, which is nothing. The efficacy of UV diodes is far, far, less than any other type of diode. To my understanding, 4W of UV will not do any difference in a 8 sq ft tent. Roughly the same applies for the IR.
A red boost from the 660nm diodes, which has become more and more popular among grow lights, is primarily effective if plants are getting less-than ideal amount of light, i.e. less than around 450 PPFD/PAR.

Most, if not all, growers I know only use UV and IR during shorter duration of a plant's life cycle. IR is, for example, primarily used as a sun-down effect. 30-60 minutes before lights go out. Having both UV and IR turned on all the time or having to manually turn them on/off, I'd argue, do more harm than good. UVA is also somewhat harmful to us, humans. Another reason why these diodes shouldn't be on when working near the lamp.

I can't find a good source for this but if I recall correctly, UV diodes have a significantly shorter life expectancy than the Samsung diodes. It's possible that LG's model, which indeed is a good UV diode, is better than most, but I'd still opt for a standalone UV lamp instead of UV diodes fitted on the main lamp.

Again, you seem to get a decent amount of light for your money so this is not a terrible choice, but one should be a bit vary when opting for a Chinese brand, in my opinion. Would also be good to see a PPFD map so we can actually see the footprint of the light intensity but it seems Kingbrite isn't keen on showing this information.
This under the assumption that the uv/ir less are run at .5w per diode, there's no way knowing this unless you have an idea of the wiring architecture of the board. Depending on how it's designed you may see more than the .5w average of the white diodes.
Op: defo go for cree over epistars
 

bri77

Well-Known Member
My reading of it was uv will be around 1% of total output, which is roughly what voloya (or whatever you call them) use in their cannabis spectrum. Im happy with that.
 
Hi guys,
I planning a soil grow in a 5' tall tent. I'm looking at a 240 watt two panel lamp from kingbrite. Soil surface will be 12" to 16" high, plants another 30" high, leaving me with about 16" for the light.

Carbon filter will be off to the side of the light with the fan outside the tent.

This is the light in looking at. It has cree ir and 660 and LG uv, making it quite a bit more expensive than the one with epistar chips. I'm going with the cree for longevity as much as performance.

https://kingbrite.de/produkt/qb-v2021-240w-lm301h-ir-uv-cree-lg/

Three questions : does my over all plan make sense? Is it a waste of money going for the expensive board? Are ir and uv even a good idea in the first place considering the amount of white light I'll be giving them?

I grow in a 5'6" tall 8' x 6' room and supplement mh/hps with 2 cheaper marshydro new model led's 3kand5k,ir.And your issue may be being able to keep the led from burning the plants,my 300 watt actual power led will burn them within 12" at 100% so I have to lower to 50-75%,Anything Cree is gonna be powerful so be careful im assuming its a scrog grow,trust you will majorly increase yield with scrog,Scroggins, also fimming or supercropping may be necessary given your room height.
 

bri77

Well-Known Member
Yeah thats the plan, top and tie them down early, hopefully fill the scrog net 16 inches from the soil. I usually grow in a normal 4 x4 tent, I always just top a couple of times.

This will definitely be a learning experience.
 
Also my marshydro has samsung led's and generic drivers(not meanwell but made well)the 300 watt one uses 2-150 watt drivers and claims 122k lumens on 3k&5k +red and ir.I have it next to my cool tube and the plants like it better than 6500&7200k metal halide,definitely.
 
Yeah thats the plan, top and tie them down early, hopefully fill the scrog net 16 inches from the soil. I usually grow in a normal 4 x4 tent, I always just top a couple of times.

This will definitely be a learning experience.
Yea it always is,this was my first try mixing mh/hps(as I have a 400,600,and a 1000watt digital,dimmable ballast).With lower ceiling height the 1000 watt in a cool tube and a 410cfm extraction fan pulling it will still burn the plants at 15" or less,but nm that i questioned whether any led could get the end effect of a 600 or higher hps @ 2k or 2100k.But it did good,I don't know if the buds directly under led were as big as the other side but it was so close,and my electric was under 600. !
 

Ellisk

Member
Hi guys,
I planning a soil grow in a 5' tall tent. I'm looking at a 240 watt two panel lamp from kingbrite. Soil surface will be 12" to 16" high, plants another 30" high, leaving me with about 16" for the light.

Carbon filter will be off to the side of the light with the fan outside the tent.

This is the light in looking at. It has cree ir and 660 and LG uv, making it quite a bit more expensive than the one with epistar chips. I'm going with the cree for longevity as much as performance.

https://kingbrite.de/produkt/qb-v2021-240w-lm301h-ir-uv-cree-lg/

Three questions : does my over all plan make sense? Is it a waste of money going for the expensive board? Are ir and uv even a good idea in the first place considering the amount of white light I'll be giving them?
 

Ellisk

Member
that's a very nice light for $300 you get the Samsung diodes and a meanwell driver, those are top notch. And a dimmer, that's nice. I have a similar light in my 2' x 4' tent. and it's awesome. I ran out of ceiling on my first grow and that was in a 6 ft. high tent. I am learning LST now and scrog. Good luck.
 
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