Nice to be back , it's been a long time since my last visit here !

I've done a DIY LED growbox in the past with home made Lowryder beans which provided a worse yield to under CFLs . Cost me a good few hundred quid to build , came to the conclusion that the best LEDs to use were the 1 watt Luxeon warm whites and royal blues with the next best being cool white 1 watters . All the plants under these did the best . The 5mm types were crap , I wasted a good few days soldering near enough a thousand of these unreliable pieces of shit to stripboard (the blues were the worst) . I lost interest but about eight months ago I noticed a lot of the higher power types became slightly cheaper and easily available . I bought and added 10 x 3 watt Luxeon III 455NM royal blue 3 watt LEDs to the outside of my 400W HPS reflector in the flowering room . The blue light is visible on top of the 400's yellow . This 30 watts of 455NM blue LED seems to help keep the plants nice and squat . I grew all plants to the 10" allowable height in the vegbox under a 150W blue Enviro then added to the flowering room , the 400 is lowered about 4" lower than it was before so I'm presuming the LEDs are doing something

I've noticed recently there a lot more LED growlights on the market especially these 'UFO' things . There seems to be
several versions of this device , with prices ranging from $199 (smelling like a Chinese factory) to $599 (also possibly smelling like a Chinese factory) . These things all have very different specs to match the price . Caveat emptor ! Ditto the 'Budlamp' or whatever it's now called . Some are now claiming to use 660NM red 1 watt units which just weren't available a few years ago which got my attention . A power 660NM red LED should make a decent , but not cheap , DIY LED growlamp a possibility . I've now managed to source some 5 watt 660NM red stars which weren't cheap at £7 plus VAT each . Now running 2 panels of 6 x 5 watt 660NM red , with 1 x 5 watt 470NM blue and a 5 watt 630NM red with a single 470NM 3 watt blue and 5 x 3 watt 455NM royal blue + 1 x 3 watt panel . These panels combined are 98 watts replacing a 150W blue Enviro . After only a week the results are encouraging , there is a lot more branching than before and the plants seem nice and squat .

I would be very interested to hear any opinions from people who have used these new commercial lamps , especially watt for watt against HPS/MH or who have built their own setups with high power LEDs . I know a lot of people here really slag off LED growlamps but I'm pretty certain LED growlights are now a viable option for vegging , providing the thing has the right specs to start with . Please don't chew my bollocks off for saying this and yes I realise the expense I'm not convinced for larger spaces or flowering 100% LED is the way to go . I'm tempted to substitute the 400W HPS for a 250W HPS for security and add 100 watts of 660NM 5 watt red to see what happens . At least then I won't have a horrid failure , only a large LED bill and smaller buds

So far saved 52 watts at 18 hours , the LEDs will pay for themselves in a few years . So much for electricity savings makes a nice project ::

Thermio

Have read that LEDs ain't at the stage where they should be used as a primary light source, but have read of great results using them as supplemental lighting to fill in the spectrums missing with other lamps. Would be interesting to see your setup and what kind of results you can get with it

hi thermio.....

i did a lot of reading on leds about a year ago and got right into it, was following an american students thread (can't remember his name but it was on the line of 'the perfect led grow light')on cannabis.com. Anyway, at that time another chap highly respected was 'snstealth' and i've looked back and found this....http://boards.cannabis.com/grow-log/147698-led-growing-instructional-grow-log.html......

i will be getting back into it soon. have a double height soft drinks fridge that i want to convert to an led grow room.....don't know what peoples thoughts are on this forum,but over there is some proper interest in led.
regards silverback

bows and lets composteverte go first

Seems like a lot of expense to grow something to smoke, but thinking about that converted fridge, one thing strikes me - there's the potential to make the top of a grow into one big heatsink to dissipate the 90 percent waste heat passively ... thereby giving a very low profile...

Still doesn't avoid the need to deal with the pong though - which means a fan with a hefty suck ...

Hello ,
The vegging room is doing very well , no signs of leggyness and theres more branching than under the Enviro . The day after the first post I added 6 x 5watt Ledengin deep red 660NM stars to the flowering room which also has 30 watts of 455NM Royal blue Luxeon 3 watt LEDs and a 400W HPS . Today added 12 x 660NM 5 watt 660NM deep red & 2 x 630NM red LEDs making a total of 100watts of red and deep red and 30 watts of royal blue . The new panel is built on a large heatsink , under the 70 watts of 660 and 630NM reds my hand feels funny , slightly tingly and when I turn the panel on pointing the thing at the wall the room goes a dark red colour and I can't see fuck all . That's not even looking directly into the LEDs ! Next step is to change the 400Watt for a 250Watt HPS . After this I'll shut down the HPS altogether when/if we get a hot summer and risk it , will have some auto flowerers on the go outside just in case . For the time being I'm pleased with how it's going and hopefully will get some pics up soon

cheers

T

centre panel = 5 x 455nm royal blue + 1 x 470nm blue 3 watt Luxeon stars (140 degree beam)
each outside panel = 6 x 660nm deep red , 1 x 630nm red + 1 x 470nm blue Ledengin 5 watt stars (90 degree beam)